Category Astronomy/Space

Occator Crater (57 miles, 92 kilometers) on Ceres, home of the brightest spots on the dwarf planet, in a simulated view using Dawn images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The movie shows Ceres in enhanced color, which helps to highlight subtle differences in the appearance of surface materials. Scientists believe areas with shades of blue contain younger, fresher material, including flows, pits and cracks.

The animated flight over Ceres emphasizes the most prominent craters, such as Occator, and the tall, conical mountain Ahuna Mons. Features on Ceres are named for earthly agricultural spirits, deities and festivals.
The movie was produced by members of Dawn’s framing camera team at the German Aerospace Center, DLR, using images from Dawn’s high-altitude mapping orbit...

This comparison shows the relative complexity of the solar magnetic field between January 2011 (left) and July 2014. In January 2011, three years after solar minimum, the field is still relatively simple, with open field lines concentrated near the poles. At solar maximum, in July 2014, the structure is much more complex, with closed and open field lines poking out all over – ideal conditions for solar explosions. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Bridgman

The sun sports twisting, towering loops and swirling cyclones into the solar upper atmosphere, the million-degree corona – but cannot be seen in visible light. Then, in the 1950s, we got our first glimpse of this balletic solar material, which emits light only in wavelengths invisible to our eyes...

This false-color image, derived from observations in infrared light by the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument, shows where the spectral features of water ice are abundant on Pluto’s surface. It is based on two LEISA scans of Pluto obtained on July 14, 2015, from a range of about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers). The scans, taken about 15 minutes apart, were stitched into a combined multispectral Pluto “data cube” covering the full hemisphere visible to New Horizons as it flew past Pluto. A data cube like this is a three-dimensional array in which an image of Pluto is formed at each LEISA-sensitive wavelength.

Water ice is Pluto’s crustal “bedrock,” the canvas on which its more volatile ices paint their seasonally changing patterns...

This image shows from left Paul Warren, Edward Young and Issaku Kohl. Young is holding a sample of a rock from the moon. Credit: Christelle Snow/UCLA

The moon was formed from a violent, head-on collision between early Earth and ‘planetary embryo’ called Theia ~100 million years after the Earth formed, almost 4.5 billion years ago. Many thought Earth collided with Theia at 45 degrees or more. New evidence substantially strengthens the case for a head-on assault.

The researchers analyzed seven rocks brought to the Earth from the moon by the Apollo 12, 15 and 17 missions, as well as 6 volcanic rocks from the Earth’s mantle – 5 from Hawaii and 1 from Arizona. The key to reconstructing the giant impact was a chemical signature in the rocks’ O atoms...