Pic of the Week: Mars InSight Lander

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Mars InSight lander on the Martian surface. (NASA)

NASA recently shared an image showing the accumulation of Martian dust on the solar panels of the Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) Mars lander. The photo above was taken on April 24, 2022.

The Mars Insight lander was launched May 5, 2018 to study the interior of Mars. The lander already accomplished its primary mission and has been on extended mission. It has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes. However, as a result of the dust buildup, the mission is expected to end this summer.

In the NASA news release, Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, stated:

InSight has transformed our understanding of the interiors of rocky planets and set the stage for future missions…We can apply what we’ve learned about Mars’ inner structure to Earth, the Moon, Venus, and even rocky planets in other solar systems.

You may recall an earlier posting about Martian dust and its impact on another mission.

Pic of the Week: The Cat’s Paw Nebula

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Cat’s Paw Nebula. (Stefan Steve Bemmerl & Team Wolfatorium, Hakos/Namibia)

This week’s image is from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website. It was the picture of the day for May 10, 2022. This is the story that goes with the image:

Nebulas are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat’s Paw Nebula visible toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). At 5,500 light years distant, Cat’s Paw is an emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized hydrogen atoms. Alternatively known as the Bear Claw Nebula and cataloged as NGC 6334, stars nearly ten times the mass of our Sun have been born there in only the past few million years. Pictured here is a deep field image of the Cat’s Paw Nebula in light emitted by hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur.

Pic of the Week: Comet Over Stonehenge

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image/(Credit): Comet Neowise as seen flying over Stonehenge. (James Rushforth)

This week’s photo is from photographer James Rushforth who caught Comet Neowise over Stonehenge. The comet was discovered by astronomers on March 27, 2020 during the NEOWISE mission of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. 

Mr. Rushforth’s photo was one of about 4,500 photos entered into the 2021 annual Royal Observatory Greenwich astronomy photography competition. His image above made the shortlist. You can see other shortlisted entries here. The winning entry, announced last September, is shown below.

Image/(Credit): Titled “The Golden Ring,” the image shows an annular solar eclipse taken in the Ali region of Tibet on June 21, 2020. (Shuchang Dong)

Pic of the Week: Stars and Planets over Portugal

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Night sky in Portugal. (Miguel Claro, The World at Night, Dark Sky Alqueva)

This week’s photo is an amazing night shot in Portugal showing planets, stars, and galaxies. Here is the full description from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The mission was to document night-flying birds — but it ended up also documenting a beautiful sky. The featured wide-angle mosaic was taken over the steppe golden fields in Mértola, Portugal in 2020. From such a dark location, an immediately-evident breathtaking glow arched over the night sky: the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. But this sky had much more. Thin clouds crossed the sky like golden ribbons. The planet Mars appeared on the far left, while the planets Saturn and Jupiter were also simultaneously visible — but on the opposite side of the sky, here seen on the far right. Near the top of the image the bright star Vega can be found, while the far-distant and faint Andromeda Galaxy can be seen toward the left, just below Milky Way’s arch. As the current month progresses, several planets are lining up in the pre-dawn sky: Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn.

Pic of the Week: Europa in All its Glory

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Hubble images of Jupiter’s moon Europa. (NASA, NASA-JPL, University of Arizona)

This week’s photo of Jupiter’s moon Europa was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in June 1997 (and released by NASA on October 14, 2021). Here is the story about these two images (the left one in natural color and the right one enhanced) from the Hubble site:

This photograph of the Jovian moon Europa was taken in June 1997 at a range of 776,700 miles by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft.

Slightly smaller than Earth’s moon, Europa has a very smooth surface and the solid ice crust has the appearance of a cracked eggshell. The interior has a global ocean with more water than found on Earth. It could possibly harbor life as we know it.

Hubble Space Telescope observations of Europa have revealed the presence of persistent water vapor in its very tenuous atmosphere. Hubble observations, spanning 1999 to 2015, find that water vapor is constantly being replenished throughout one hemisphere of the moon. This is a different finding from Hubble’s 2013 observations that found localized water vapor from geysers venting from its subsurface ocean. This water vapor comes from a different process entirely. Sunlight causes the surface ice to sublimate, transitioning directly into gas.

This color composite Galileo view combines violet, green, and infrared images. The view of the moon is shown in natural color (left) and in enhanced color designed to bring out subtle color differences in the surface (right). The bright white and bluish part of Europa’s surface is composed mostly of water ice, with very few non-ice materials. Long, dark lines are fractures in the crust, some of which are more than 1,850 miles long.