Saturday, August 28, 2010

GOODS South Survey

This shot of several Galaxies in the early Universe is a product of the GOODS survey.

From Wikipedia: The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey or GOODS is an astronomical survey combining deep observations from three of NASAs Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory along with data from other space-based telescopes, such as XMM Newton, and some of the worlds most powerful ground-based telescopes. GOODS is intended to enable astronomers to study the formation and evolution of galaxies in the distant (and hence early) universe.

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Enceladus shoots water into space.

Much like the Jovian moon Europa, Saturnian moon Enceladus is also believed to harbor a massive ocean of water under it's icy surface. However, unlike Europa, where scientists must determine a way to burrow through the miles and miles of ice, Enceladus offers up it's insides on a platter to us. Massive geysers spray water from deep within the moon out into space. Cassini shot this (raw/unedited) image of these spouts on August 13th, 2010.


While this picture may be "boring" compared to the more exotic shots found in the Universe, the fact that these geysers may offer our first glimpse of a 2nd genesis of life in the cosmos gives it a special place to me.


Source: http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/140/Enceladus_Tethys_and_Dione_Rev_136_Raw_Preview


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NASA's Great Observatories Examine the Galactic Center Region

Hubblesite has a great image of the Galactic Center Region from NASA.

Source: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/the_universe/pr2009028b/npp/all/titles/true/

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Europa and IO

New Horizons caught these two Jovian moons as they passed near each other. Europa is a calm, icy world; thought to perhaps be a possible home to alien life, as it likely has a massive ocean under it's surface. While Io is a volcanic moon, with gigantic and violent eruptions (one of which can be seen in the photo).

Source: http://www.ciclops.org/view/3957/Io_and_Europa_Meet_Again

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Neptune's Atmosphere

While not much is well known about the distant planets in our Solar System, Voyager 2 did manage to snap this awesome picture of the Atmosphere of Neptune, some 12 years after it left Earth.

Source: http://www.ciclops.org/ir_index/82/Voyager_at_Neptune

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The Greatest Picture Of Jupiter

Cassini captured what is known as the "Greatest Picture of Jupiter" on it's way to Saturn on November 13th, 2003. The massive planet is shown in full color, half-lit by the Sun.

Source: http://www.ciclops.org/ir_index/3/Jupiter_Encounter

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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Jupiter and Io

New Horizons shot these images which are a montage of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io. They were taken during the spacecraft's Jupiter flyby in early 2007. The image of Jupiter is an infrared color composite taken by the near-infrared imaging spectrometer on the spacecraft.

Source: http://www.ciclops.org/view/3976/Jupiter-Io_Montage

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