Pic of the Week: Icelandic Volcanic Fissure

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Volcanic fissure in Iceland. (NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison)

This week’s image comes from NASA’s Earth Observatory. It is an image from last November showing a volcanic fissure on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula not far from the country’s capital, Reykjavík

Here is more about the image from the NASA site:

The image…shows lava coming from an eruptive fissure near Stóra Skógfell peak, along the Sundhnúkur crater row—a similar location to the February 2024 eruption. This natural color scene, acquired by the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 on November 24, is overlaid with an infrared signal to help distinguish the lava’s heat signature. A plume of gas, consisting primarily of sulfur dioxide, streamed from the lava, although the eruption did not affect flights to and from Iceland.

The lava flowed east and west from the fissure, rather than toward the town of Grindavík. The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service reported that the latest event forced the evacuation of some of the town’s residents and the Blue Lagoon resort, a geothermal spa. A tongue of lava flowed over the car park of the spa, enveloping a small service building located there.

The Reykjanes peninsula eruption is the seventh in a series of events that began in December 2023. As of November 26, 2024, the Blue Lagoon was closed to the public, but lava movement toward the spa had slowed.

Note: Another image from NASA’s Earth Observatory is also very relevant this week. The image below shows the Los Angeles fires that are still burning. This particular image shows the Eaton fire, which erupted on the evening of January 7 in Altadena, located north of downtown Los Angeles.

Image (Credit): The Eaton Fire on January 7, 2024. (NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025) processed by the European Space Agency)

Pic of the Week: Spiral Galaxy NGC 2566

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Spiral galaxy NGC. (ESA/NASA)

This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the bright and colorful spiral galaxy NGC 2566, which is about 76 million light-years away.

Here is a little more about the image from NASA:

A prominent bar of stars stretches across the center of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each end of the bar. Because NGC 2566 appears tilted from our perspective, its disk takes on an almond shape, giving the galaxy the appearance of a cosmic eye.

As NGC 2566 appears to gaze at us, astronomers gaze right back, using Hubble to survey the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions. The Hubble data are especially valuable for studying stars that are just a few million years old; these stars are bright at the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to which Hubble is sensitive. Using these data, researchers can measure the ages of NGC 2566’s stars, which helps piece together the timeline of the galaxy’s star formation and the exchange of gas between star-forming clouds and the stars themselves.

Pic of the Week: Cosmic Wreath

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Star cluster NGC 602. (X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand)

This week’s image from NASA showing a cosmic wreath is appropriate for the holiday season. It comes from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Here is the full description from NASA:

The [image] depicts star cluster NGC 602 in vibrant and festive colors. The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. The green hues and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the appearance of a wreath made of evergreen boughs. Hints of red representing X-rays provide shading, highlighting layers within the wreath-like ring cloud.

The image is aglow with specks and dots of colorful, festive light, in blues, golds, whites, oranges, and reds. These lights represent stars within the cluster. Some of the lights gleam with diffraction spikes, while others emit a warm, diffuse glow. Upon closer inspection, many of the glowing specks have spiraling arms, indicating that they are, in fact, distant galaxies.

Pic of the Week: Quasar RX J1131-1231

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Quasar known as RX J1131-1231, which is located roughly 6 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Crater. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg)

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope. It was highlighted in USAToday as one of the best images from 2024. It shows the gravitational lensing of RX J1131-1231, which is a quasar about 6 billion light-years from Earth.

Here is more about the image:

It is considered one of the best lensed quasars discovered to date, as the foreground galaxy smears the image of the background quasar into a bright arc and creates four images of the object. Gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein, offers a rare opportunity to study regions close to the black hole in distant quasars, by acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources. All matter in the Universe warps the space around itself, with larger masses producing a more pronounced effect. Around very massive objects, such as galaxies, light that passes close by follows this warped space, appearing to bend away from its original path by a clearly visible amount. One of the consequential effects of gravitational lensing is that it can magnify distant astronomical objects, letting astronomers study objects that would otherwise be too faint or far away.

Pic of the Week: Grand Design Spiral Galaxy NGC 5643

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is located roughly 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess, D. Thilker, D. De Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble))

This week’s image comes from the NASA/European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope. It shows colorful spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is located roughly 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus.

Here is more on the spiral galaxy from the ESA Hubble site:

NGC 5643 is what’s known as a grand design spiral, referring to how the galaxy’s two large, winding spiral arms are clear to see. The spiral arms are defined by bright blue stars, lacy reddish-brown dust clouds and pink star-forming regions. As fascinating as the galaxy appears at visible wavelengths, some of NGC 5643’s most interesting features are invisible to the human eye. Ultraviolet and X-ray images and spectra of NGC 5643 show that the galaxy hosts an active galactic nucleus: an especially bright galactic core powered by a feasting supermassive black hole. When a supermassive black hole ensnares gas from its surroundings, the gas collects in a disc that heats up to hundreds of thousands of degrees. The superheated gas shines brightly across the electromagnetic spectrum, but especially at X-ray wavelengths.

NGC 5643’s active galactic nucleus isn’t the brightest source of X-rays in the galaxy, though. Researchers using ESA’s XMM-Newton discovered an even brighter X-ray-emitting object, called NGC 5643 X-1, on the galaxy’s outskirts. What could be a more powerful source of X-rays than a supermassive black hole? Surprisingly, the answer appears to be a much smaller black hole!

While the exact identity of NGC 5643 X-1 is not yet known, evidence points to a black hole that is about 30 times more massive than the Sun. Locked in an orbital dance with a companion star, the black hole ensnares gas from its stellar companion, creating a superheated disc that outshines the galactic centre.