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A Perfect Storm of Turbulent Gases

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NASA Picture of the Day (click picture for larger image)

"Resembling the fury of a raging sea, this image actually shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen gas and small amounts of other elements such as oxygen and sulfur.

The photograph, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The image was released to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of Hubble's launch.

The wave-like patterns of gas have been sculpted and illuminated by a torrent of ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars, which lie outside the picture to the upper left. The glow of these patterns accentuates the three-dimensional structure of the gases. The ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold hydrogen gas clouds. The warmed surfaces glow orange and red. The intense heat and pressure cause some material to stream away from those surfaces, creating the glowing veil of even hotter greenish gas that masks background structures. The pressure on the tips of the waves may trigger new star formation within them. "

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU)

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Utopian Plain

NASA Picture of the Day

"A boulder-strewn field of red rocks stretches across the horizon in this self-portrait of Viking 2 on Mars' Utopian Plain.

Fine particles of red dust have settled on spacecraft's surfaces. The same dust is responsible for Mars' salmon-colored sky as the particles hang, suspended in the atmosphere. Color calibration charts for the cameras are mounted at three locations on the spacecraft. The circular structure atop the craft is the high-gain antenna, which is pointed toward Earth. Viking 2 landed Sept. 3,1976, some 4,600 miles from the twin Viking 1 craft, which touched down on July 20."

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Great Southern Land

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NASA Picture of the Day

"This sweeping mosaic of Saturn's moon Enceladus provides broad regional context for the ultra-sharp, close-up views NASA's Cassini spacecraft acquired minutes earlier, during its flyby on Aug. 11, 2008.

This false-color mosaic shows that coarse-grained and solid ice are concentrated along valley floors and walls, as well as along the upraised flanks of the "tiger stripe" fractures, which may be covered with plume fallout that landed not far from the sources. Elsewhere on Enceladus, this coarse water ice is concentrated within outcrops along cliff faces and at the top of ridges. The sinuous boundary of scarps and ridges that encircles the south polar terrain at about 55 degrees south latitude is conspicuous. Much of the coarse-grained or solid ice along this boundary may be blocky rubble that has crumbled off of cliff faces as a result of ongoing seismic activity. This mosaic complements the imaging coverage acquired during Cassini's July 2005 flyby of Enceladus."

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

 

The Life of Stars

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NASA Picture of the Day

"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this stunning true-color picture of the giant galactic nebula NGC 3603 on March 5, 1999 with its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

This single view nicely illustrates the entire stellar life cycle of stars, starting with the Bok globules and giant gaseous pillars, followed by circumstellar disks, and progressing to evolved massive stars in the young starburst cluster. The blue supergiant with its ring and bipolar outflow marks the end of the life cycle."

Image Credit: NASA, Wolfgang Brandner (JPL/IPAC), Eva K. Grebel (Univ. Washington), You-Hua Chu (Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign)