What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter
as if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and
ammonia must be silent ?
Richard Feynman.
I regularly visit NASA's picture of the day; I've also trawled through the archive collecting links to nice pictures and
classifying them in a manner of my chosing. What a remarkable universe we
inhabit !
The distance light travels in a year is called a light year and its standard
abbreviation is ly; applying standard SI quantifiers, we get k ly for a thousand
light years, M ly for a million, G ly for a milliard of them and so on. One
millionth of a light year, a µly, is 9.46 million kilometres (5.88 million
miles). Light from the Sun takes 8.28 minutes (15.74 millionths of a year) to
reach the Earth.
The headings of some nested portions of the following list provide links to searches in the archive. This page
comes with two style-sheets: a plain one and one which folds away
the
parts you're not looking at – if your browser supports suitable style
features, of course. The folding version (which takes some getting used to, but
saves a lot of paging up and down; and provides a hierarchic approach to finding
things) depends on hover, which might only work with a mouse; and only works if
your browser considers all ancestors of any hovered element to be hovered.
- Cosmic
Images of the whole sky, from one end of the spectrum to the other.
- From inflation to WMAP
- A pictorial history of time.
- Aminated Gamma Ray Sky simulation
- Fermi's first light
- Full sky in γ-rays, from a new space telescope launched 2008 June
11. Four days of observation, with plenty more to come.
- Gamma Ray Sky
- Hot Gas Filaments
- Chandra's X-ray view of normal matter as filaments throughout the universe.
- X-Ray Sky
- ROSAT Explores The X-Ray Sky
- All-Sky Panorama
- 51 wide-angle photograph mosaic in visible light
- 2 micron sky
- The 2MASS Galaxy Sky – the whole sky at two microns; also available with distance encoded by colour.
- Background anisotropy
- Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data on the microwave background's variations.
- Cosmic Background
- 22 to 90 GHz, with galactic foreground and the Doppler yin-yang (below) eliminated.
- Cosmic Yin-Yang
Doppler dipole dominates variation in the cosmic microwave background. - Infrared Sky
- COBE's DIRBE instrument; sky at 3.5 microns. Cool stars in our galaxy and
dust in the solar system are prominent.
- Far Infrared Sky
- Our Dusty Universe
- COBE's picture of the dusty background (far IR)
- Radio Sky @408MHz
- Radio Hydrogen
- A Sky Full Of (atomic) Hydrogen, seen in the (21cm, 1.42GHz) radio
emissions from flipping the electron and proton spins between opposite and same.
- Deep Field
If you stare into an apparently empty bit of sky for long enough, you'll see
stars; they're just further away than the others.
- Hubble Ultra Deep Field
- Includes link to HDF, which links to HDF South
- Chandra Deep Field
- Hubble's Deep Field South in X-rays
- Hubble Deep Field
- A ten-day exposure of a dark corner of Ursa Major
- Hubble Deep South
- A Deep Field In The Southern Sky
- IR HDF
- The Hubble Deep Field in infra-red
- Spitzer's deep background
- Showing a diffuse IR glow suspected of coming from the first generation
of stars, 13ish G yr ago and hundreds of times as massive as our Sun.
- NTT SUSI Deep Field
- Galaxy @ z=4.92
- Behind CL1358+62: A New Farthest Object
- GRBs and Quasars
or gamma-ray bursts and quasi-stellar objects, to give them their proper names.
Distant things of extreme brightness, implying spectacularly energetic sources.
GRBs have proven so elusive that a dedicated satellite, Swift, if constantly on
the look out for them, to alert other telescopes to look at their sources before
they can fade back into obscurity.
- Galaxy-powered cannon
- Quasar 3C175 emits relativistic jets of particles
- spat ?
- Did galaxy NGC 4319 eject Quasar Markarian 205 at high speed ? Or
are they merely randomly juxtaposed on our view of the sky ?
- 6 Portraits
- A Quasar Portrait Gallery
- Micro-Quasar Puffs
- GRS1915 is a small black hole on the far side of our Galaxy; here seen
expelling gas jets at .9 c
- GRB080319B in X and UV
- The most distant thing ever seen by the naked eye, 7.5 G ly away.
- Galaxies
Groups, clusters and collisions.
- Bulls Eye Einstein Ring
- The Sloan Great Wall
- … and other structures on a scale that dwarfs superclusters –
clusters of clusters of galaxies.
- The Bird
- A collision of three galaxies, with relative speeds up to 0.4 Mm/s
- Close neighbours and the mess between them
- Galaxies tend to keep one another company.
- One behind the other
- NGC 3314: When Galaxies Overlap
- Spiral and Ellipse
- c. .35 G ly away
- The dance of M81 and M82
- A spiral and an ellipse; the latter is also
known as the cigar galaxy. Each is stirred up by
the tidal stresses of their mutual orbit, about 12 M
ly away in Ursa Major.
- Extra-galactic dust
- Intergalactic dust lane
- NGC 1410/1409: Intergalactic Pipeline, 300 M ly away, 20 k ly apart
- NGC 5905 and 5908
- Two spiral neighbours, one face-on, the other edge-on
- The Leo Triplet
- Groups and clusters
- When they get crowded, things can get quite intense. Clusters tend to
comprise tens or hundreds of galaxies; groups are smaller. On a truly cosmic
scale, clusters can band together to form superclusters. When many galaxies
hang around close together, the intergalactic gas is apt to contribute
significantly to the total mass (of normal matter – dwarfed by the
accompanying dark matter) and is often hot enough to emit X-rays.
- Hydra Cluster
- Four of Stephan's Quintet
- Seyfert's Sextet
- Abell S0740
- 0.45 G ly away and most of a M ly across
- Markarian's chain
- Several galaxies moving together, and a few more imaged near them,
within the Virgo cluster which, being only 50 to 70
M ly away, is the nearest cluster to (and has a definite gravitational effect
on) our local group; there are over 2000 galaxies in the
cluster, which spans about 10 degrees on Earth's sky, so it's 8 to 12 M ly
across.
- The bullet cluster
- Showing separation between its (non-dark and dark) matter
distributions.
- Coma Cluster
- Group HCG 87
- Hickson compact group 40
- Hickson Compact Group 87 – two spirals and at least one elliptical
– with a spiral in their back-ground.
- Hickson compact group 44
- a.k.a. NGC 3190; several spirals and an ellipse, 60 M ly away
- MACSJ0025: cluster collision
- 6 G ly away in Cetus, two large clusters, spanning about 3 M ly, are
colliding – and their dark matter gets dislocated from the normal
matter.
- The Perseus
Cluster
- Dominated by central NGC 1275 (a.k.a. Perseus A; over 100 k ly across,
so only slightly wider than our galaxy, but rather more massive), the Perseus
cluster is roughly a quarter G ly away.
- Many galaxies
- X-Ray Skull
- The Perseus Cluster's X Ray Skull; image of intracluster gas, more
massive than all the cluster's galaxies.
- Ribbons of Perseus
- Unusual gas filaments surround NGC 1275, shown here in pink.
- X-Ray: Perseus cluster core
- 250 M ly away; a very dangerous place to be
- Hubble's visible NGC 1275
- … combined, when hovered, with Chandra's X-ray and radio from the
Very Large Array.
- Colliding Galaxies
When galaxies collide, the stars miss one another but the interstellar gas and
dust clouds get pummelled into bouts of star-forming. Violent prettiness
ensues.
- NGC 4676, The Mice
- Long tails, warring jelly-fish
- Galactic fire-ball: the Antennae collision
- Near Infrared Antennae
- X-Ray Antennae
- NGC 4038 and NGC 4039; c. 60 M ly away towards Corvus, c. 0.5 M ly across.
- NGC 3256: mid-collision
- Two galaxies appearing to be one, as they pass through one another; 0.1
M ly across, 100 M ly away in the Hydra-Centaurus supercluster.
- Spiral Galaxy NGC 3310
- Interacting
- Whirlpool Pair
- Spiral M51 (NGC 5194) and blob NGC 5195.
- Sharper Whirlpool Pair
- High resolution image of M51 from Hubble's ACS.
- Arp 188: Tadpole's Tidal Tail
- Arp 271: Colliding spirals
- Arp 272: collision in progress
- a.k.a. NGC 6050, IC 1179. 450 M ly away in the Hercules cluster.
- Arp 295: linked galaxies
- Linked by a trail of stars and debris 250 k ly long; 270 M ly away
- Stretched spiral NGC 6872
- Fornax A's Radio Lobes
- The Giant Radio Lobes of Fornax A – NGC 1316's jets, spanning 100 M ly.
- Arp 230: United spirals?
- Apparently one galaxy, suspected of being the result of two that collided
- NGC 520
- a.k.a. Arp 157; 100 M ly away, 100 k ly across.
- Galaxy
Individual island universes: jewels nestling deep in the velvet blackness of the
sky.
- Cartwheel
- Residue of a collision, with star-formation wave-front expanded out to
its edge; diameter is 0.1 M ly and it's about 0.4 G ly away.
- Marble
- Unusual giant galaxy NGC 1316 –
elliptical, but with dust lanes and a disk, suspected remants of a spiral that
collided with it.
- X-Ray Cygnus A
- Galaxy belting out jets
- Irregular NGC 55
- Believed to be an analogue of our neighbour, the large Magellanic cloud;
but seen edge-on, instead of face-on.
- Hoag's Strange Ring
- Elegant Ring AM 0644-741
- 300 M ly away, 150 k ly across; ripple of star-formation caused by earlier collision
- Alchymic whirlpool fumes
- NGC 4388 Expels Huge Gas Cloud
- Helix galaxy
- NGC 2685 / Arp 336: polar ring galaxy; disk galaxy except for the bits in
orbit in a perpendicular plane. 50 k ly across, 40 M ly away, in Ursa Major.
- Black hole power
- NGC 4696, a large globular galaxy (150 M ly away) with a super-massive
black hole in it, generating huge amounts of energy which the galaxy radiates in
X and radio.
- Beyond Blue
- M94 / NGC 4736: contrasting a spiral in red and UV
- Circinus
- colourful whirl-pool; technically a spiral, but not in the classic pattern …
- Polar Ring NGC 4650A
- Dwingeloo 1 Emerges
- Nearby galaxy (only five times as distant as Andromeda) almost obscured
by our own Milky Way.
- Ghostly NGC 2915
- A dwarf galaxy surrounded by a full galaxy-sized cloud of (atomic)
Hydrogen; 15 M ly away, just outside our local group.
- NGC 4449: small and irregular
- Similar to the Large Magellanic Cloud; 12 k ly across, 20 M ly away in
the Canes I
group.
- M101 in UV
- A giant spiral galaxy, seen by the light of its hottest stars.
- I Zwicky 18
- 59 M ly away and initially mistaken for a very young galaxy.
- Centaurus A
- A globular galaxy (60 k ly across, 10 or 13 M ly away) with an anomalous
centre, about 1 k ly across, suspected of being the remains of a spiral galaxy
swallowed up about 0.1 G yr ago.
- In context
- Rippling outer shells
- Dusty heart
- Center: natural colour, showing dust clutter well
- Color and Mystery (X-ray)
- Galaxy inside
- Spitzer image, in infra-red.
- Across the spectrum
- A composite of radio, visible and X-ray, showing a 13 k ly jet of plasma
coming away from a black hole in its core.
- Spirals
The elegant class of peers of our own Milky Way; galaxies in which most of the
stars lie in a disk and circulate in a common sense around its centre; they are
usually dominated by dark dust lanes and a few arms
, in the form of equiangular spirals.
- Face-on
- The classic view.
- M74: Perfect Spiral
- Archetype of the spiral
- M77 (NGC 1068) and its outskirts
- NGC 6946
- Also known as the Fireworks Glaxy
- NGC 1309 and Friends
- M74 with ULXs
- Ultra-luminous X-ray sources – 1e4 Sun.mass black holes –
and a pretty face-on spiral.
- UV Ring in NGC 6782
- Barred spiral, 80 k ly across, 180 M ly away towards Pavo
- Starburst M94, in Canes Venatici
- 39 k ly across, c. 15 M ly away in the Canes I group
- Barred spiral M95
- A bright and shiny Catherine-wheel
- Fried egg
- NGC 7742, a Seyfert spiral; has highly active (and variable) central region
- Panchromatic
- From IR to UV; NGC 1512.
- Unusual starburst NGC 1313
- Only 15 M ly away, distincly messed up, but with no evident neighbour to
mess it up.
- NGC 1232
- M63: Sunflower (a.k.a. NGC 5055)
- The Whirlpool
- M51/NGC 5194 in Dust and Stars, combining images from Kitt Peak and Hubble
- Gangly NGC 3184
- face on, with plenty of blue sparkles in its arms
- IC 342 not quite hidden
- … behind the Milky way; and a more recent, clearer picture from Kitt Peak.
- Detailed Pinwheel
- Wispy Pinwheel
- M101: The Pinwheel Galaxy. 25 M ly away, c. 170 k ly across.
- Spitzer: M101 in infra-red
- Southern Pinwheel
- M83, a.k.a. the thousand-ruby galaxy, only
12 M ly away, the closest of a group of galaxies, around
15 M ly away, that includes Centaurus A and NGC 5253.
- NGC 2997
- Early image from Antu, the first of the four Very Large Telescopes of the
European Southern Observatory, in Chile.
- M61 in Virgo
- a.k.a. NGC 4303, discovered in 1779
- NGC 4314's halo
- NGC 4314: A Nuclear Starburst Ring – old galaxy with new ring of
purple shiny stars and an inner micro-galaxy.
- One Armed NGC 4725
- Infrared, 41 M ly away, .1 M ly across.
- Slanted
Naturally, very few galaxies are exactly edge-on or face-on; but many are close
enough to one or the other for a rough, if somewhat arbitrary, classification.
The rest fall in between.
- Distant NGC 4603
- Used in HST study of Hubble's constant and the Expanding Universe.
- NGC 1350
- Pearly blue blob; 85 M ly away towards Fornax, 0.13 M ly across.
- NGC 1365
- 0.2 M ly across, 60 M ly away; a dominant member of the Fornax cluster
- M96, a dominant member of the Leo I galaxy group
- with a more distant edge-on spiral visible through its outer spiral arm
- Distorted NGC 2442 in Volans
- Normal Spiral
- NGC 300. Very pretty, and studied in great detail.
- Nearby spiral NGC 2403 from Subaru
- 10 M ly away, just outside the local group; has
open clusters, dust lanes, a tight nucleus and some cute blobbiness.
- NGC 3370
- Sharp view from Hubble ACS
- M65 in the Leo Triplet
- M66 in the Leo Triplet
- NGC 2841
- Mottled NGC 2903
- M64: the black eye
- 17 M ly away, 80 k ly across, with a central part 6 k ly across
rotating in the opposite sense to the outer parts.
- Arp 77 and its satellite
- A spiral, a.k.a. NGC 1097, with long arms tangling with a satellite
about 43 k ly from the spiral's centre, 45 M ly away in Fornax.
- M106 in Canes Venatici
- Seyfert active galaxy, a.k.a. NGC 4258, 30 k ly across, 21 M ly away,
in the constellation of Hunting Dogs.
- M106's extra arms, in X-ray and radio
- Sleeping Beauty
- NGC 613 from Paranal
- 65 M ly away, 0.1 M ly across, with a bar and rather more arms than
usual; in Sculptor.
- M81,
a.k.a. NGC 3031
- It's 11.8 M ly away, 70 k ly across and the principle member of a small
group (comparable to our local group). Its dance with the
cigar galaxy, eliptical M82, shall doubtless end in a union. Our view of it is
partially obscured by barely visible dust clouds just outside our own galaxy,
the integrated flux nebula (named after the subtle technique needed to observe
it), but individual stars are discernible.
- Visible
- Through the integrated flux nebula
- Deep image
- Hubble resolves individual stars
- Across the spectrum
- From IR to X-ray, highlighting its voracious black holes.
- Hot young stars in UV
- Showing its satellite, Holmberg IX.
- Edge-on
The view that best exposes (often photogenic) dust-lanes.
- NGC 5866
- 60 k ly across, 44 M ly away towards Draco and lenticular
- Supernova beside Spiral
- Rumors of a Strange Universe
- Leo Sideways
- NGC 3628 in Leo (which also includes spirals M66 and M65)
- NGC 4013 and its tidal tail
- Knife-edge or splinter: NGC 5907
- Needle
- Needle, NGC 4565, in Coma Berenices, only 30 M ly away, .1 M ly
diameter and similar to Milky Way.
- Whale
- Side-on neighbour
- Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC 4945, only six times as far away as
Andromeda…
- Bubbling Cauldron
- NGC 3079, expelling pillars of dust from its centre at c/180 or so.
- Dust Bunnies
- Side-view of NGC 891 showing dust kicked up by supernovae
- Warped ESO 510-13
- ESO 510-13 in context
- NGC 253: dusty star-burst
- Hubble's ACS's close-up of NGC 253
- NGC 891 sideways
- The Sombrero
Galaxy, M104.
- One of the finest examples of an edge-on spiral, with a dusty rim; 28 M
ly away, at the southern edge of the Virgo Cluster.
- Across the spectrum
- IR Sombrero
- Sombrero
- Hubble remix
- Local
Group
Our Milky Way Galaxy has a few travelling companions: one larger spiral galaxy,
Andromeda, and an assortment of about 30 smaller galaxies.
- Antlia
- A dwarf spheroidal galaxy with only about a million stars.
- NGC 2366 nurseries
- Bright stars, dim galaxy – a small irregular galaxy, scarcely more
than a pair of star-forming clusters; but mighty powerful with it; 10 M ly away.
- Sextans A
- A seemingly square galaxy; small dwarf irregular, 5 k ly across, 10 M ly away.
- The Aquarius Dwarf
- 3 M ly away in the local group
- Leo A
- Dwarf Irregular, 10 k ly across, 2.5 M ly away towards Leo.
- Barnard's NGC 6822
- A dwarf irregular galaxy, roughly rectangular, with many emission nebulae;
a.k.a. Barnard's Galaxy; 1.5 M ly away, towards Sagittarius.
- Andromeda's Satellites
- Galaxies move slowly, so it can be hard to work out whether one is
gravitationally bound to another. But it looks like Andromeda has a few
satellites.
- Dwarf elliptical M32
- Elliptical M110
- 15 k ly across; has young stars and dust clouds, atypically for ellipticals
- Dwarf elliptical NGC 205, a.k.a. M110
- Central M33 in HII
- Sparse spiral M33 in O and H
- Also known as triangulum and pinwheel; may
be orbiting Andromeda (M31). Over 50 k ly across, the third largest member of the local group (a quarter of
the size of the first two) is about 3 M ly away.
- Pegasus
- Small dwarf spheroidal, probably orbits M31; c. 2 k ly across.
- Andromeda
M31: the even bigger member of our local group, 2.5 M ly away, with over twice
the diameter of the Milky Way and a million million stars, compared to 0.4 times
that for the Milky Way.
- X-ray
- Visible
- Long exposure
- Infra-red
- With Hale-Bopp
- The Comet and the Galaxy
- With Ikeya-Zhang
- Comet + Galaxy
- Compared to Selene
- Satellites of the Milky Way
- Counting only the galaxies: the galactic halo is also home to about 150
to 200 globular clusters.
- Canis Major Dwarf
- Closest of the dwarfs being swallowed up by the Milky Way; only 42 k ly
from the Galactic center, and so spread out it's more a stream of debris than a galaxy.
- Sagittarius Dwarf
- Our 2nd closest neighbour, an ancient irregular galaxy.
- SagDIG Tidal Stream
- An artist's depiction of the stream of detritus around our galaxy, left
as it tears apart the Sagittarius Dwarf.
- Magellan's clouds
- LMC; next day SMC.
- LMC deep field
- LMC
- LMC gas profile
- LMC close-up
- Stellar Laboratories in the LMC
- UV SMC from UIT
- SMC and 47 Tucanae
- Leo I
- A young dwarf spheroidal galaxy, only just orbiting the Milky Way, about
a quarter M pc (.8 M ly) away.
- Our Galaxy
The smaller of the two big spirals dominating our local group.
- Milky Way Band
- Panoramic mosaic across 90 degrees.
- Seen, with Jupiter, from the high Andes
- IR GLIMPSE
- The galactic plane in infra-red
- Wide angle deep exposure
- Seen in breadth and detail from Chile
- IR model
- COBE IR
- Loop I in Northern Sky
- Large-scale structure in our galaxy, shown in rather pretty blobby
false-colour X-ray.
- Gamma-Ray Halo
- Star Clusters
- Like its peers, our galaxy has a halo of globular clusters
orbitting it; and where a large cloud of dust and gas has collapsed down to stars, once these have finished blowing away the remnants of the cloud, the resulting open cluster is often a
beautiful sight, shining like jewels in a box.
- Globular cluster M55
- A tenth of a million stars, 20 k ly away, about 100 ly across.
- NGC 1818: LMC globular cluster
- Unlike the globular clusters in our galaxy, typically 12 G yr old, this
one's actually young; about 40 M yr.
- Omega Centauri
- The largest globular cluster orbiting the Milky Way, c. 10 million
stars, 150 ly across, 15 k ly away.
- NGC 104, a.k.a. 47 Tuc
- 13 k ly away, 120 ly across and containing several million stars.
- The Pleiades
- (a.k.a. seven sisters or M45); an open cluster of over 3000 stars, 400 ly
away, 13 ly across.
- Twinkle, twinkle M3 stars
- RR Lyrae stars in M3, varying in brightness during the course of a
night.
- Open cluster NGC 290
- Milky Core
The centre of the Milky Way: a turbulent place ruled by a black hole – or,
at least, the orbits of stars near the centre imply the presence of more than
two million times the mass of our Sun (Swarzchild radius almost eight and a half
times The Sun's radius) in a space less than 17 light hours (under 123 AU or
26.4 thousand times the Sun's radius) across.
- In X and γ
- … and theory predicts that an accretion disk can only produce
γ if it involves a black hole.
- A map
- Radio
- 1 metre wavelength, super-nova remants
- The galactic centre radio arc
- IR side-view
- 8 year IR movie
- Showing fast-moving stars in the central region.
- Deep infra-red
- Close-up, 2 ly across, highlighting where S2 moves fast 17 light hours
from the centre.
- Infra-red
- The heart of our galaxy, in mid-infrared (10
micron)
- Stars
- Spitzer's infra-red view of a 900 light-year-wide swathe of the centre,
26 k ly away.
- X-Ray
- X-Flash in Milky Core
- Galactic Center X-Ray Flicker Indicates Black Hole
- Orion
Our Sun is in the same spur, between the two spiral
arms of the Milky Way, as the stars of Orion, after which this spur is
named. Orion's Great Nebula, M42, is a major stellar nursery, conveniently
visible thanks to violent winds from bright young stars, 1.5 k ly away and and
13 or so ly across.
- Emission nebula
- Witch Head
- Wisps of dust reflecting Rigel's light, about 1 k ly away; a.k.a. IC 2118
- Kleinmann-Low Nebula
- An explosion of red, with water-maser glow.
- Dust Clouds
- Reflection nebulae M78 and NGC 2071
- Gas bullets
- South of Orion
- Reflection nebula NGC 1999, partly hidden by a Bok globule
- Orion's Belt
- Al Nitak, Al Nilam and Mintaka: blue giants, c. 1.5 k ly away. Note
horse-head in bottom left.
- Fiery mess IRAS saw
- In infra-red, you see the clouds rather than the stars
- Star colour cones
- Varying focus during an exposure to reveal colours
- Hunter's profile
- Canaries Sky (La Palma) showing the nebulae and their structure:
Barnard's loop looks enough like a belly to make it easier to interpret the
constellation as a picture of a man.
- Around
Al Nitak
Al Nitak (a.k.a. Zeta Orionis) lights up the Flame Nebula; not far away, a sheet
of glowing gas which we see side-on serves as back-drop to another dust cloud,
whose shadow evokes the shape of a horse's head.
- H-α Deep Field
- Composite Deep Field
- Nebulosities
- Composite picture: includes Horse-head, Flame and Orion Nebulae, with
Alnitak and other stars.
- Through Comet SOHO
- Flame and Horsehead nebulae seen through a passing comet
- Flame nebula
- Horsehead in context
- Wisps around Horsehead
- Horsehead Close-up
- Horsehead in Pink
- Knights in HII satin …
- M42: The
Great Nebula in Orion
- Visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch – just below and to the
left of Orion's belt – the Great Nebula rewards closer study. It's a
stellar nursery centred on a bright open cluster called The Trapezium. It spans
about 40 ly, lies about 1.5 k ly away and is expected to slowly disperse over
the next 0.1 M yr.
- ESO-Hubble mosaic
- from Hubble and ESO's La Silla (following day includes a detail from it)
- Hubble Mosaic
- Showing an inner region of width 2.5 light-years
- Colorful Clouds
- Infra-red from Spitzer
- Infra-red from Subaru
- Showing assorted things hidden in visible
- Light and texture
- Near Infra Red from VLT
- Wisps in red and pink/blue
- In SHO light
- Hydrogen pink
- Contrast balanced for detail
- Pink, grey and brown dominate
- Red demon, blue polyp
- Trapezium clouds
- In the Center of the Trapezium
- Super-Novae
When a big star reaches the end of its life, it goes out spectacularly. The
remnants are often quite fascinating.
- Remnant of Kepler's supernova, in X-ray
- The new star (stella nova) recorded and studied by
Kepler and his peers in October 1604, without the aid of telescopes, gave rise
to the term
nova
; but it was actually what we'd now describe as a type 1a
supernova. This most recent stellar explosion in our galaxy happened only 13 k
ly away.
- Optical Vela
- Visible Vela
- Runaway Star
- HD 77581 hurtling along under the influence of SNR pulsar Vela X-1
- Sher 25: a pending supernova ?
- Two in a distant galaxy
- Star Wars in NGC 664
- RCW 86 in X-Rays
- 8.2 k ly away and 50 ly across; quite likely the remnant of a new star
recorded by Chinese astronomers in AD 185.
- 1994D by Galaxy NGC 4526
- Supernova 1994D and the Unexpected Universe
- Pretty SNR N63A
- Rampaging Supernova Remnant N63A; flames and dust
- Simeis 147
- Spanning 3 degrees in Taurus, this remnant is 0.1 mega years old, 150 ly
across, 3 k ly away.
- Colliding SNRs
- DEM L316: two bubbles of hot gas bumping together
- N49's Cosmic Blast
- Cygnus
Loop, a.k.a. Veil Nebula
- Whispy remains of a super-nova seen on Earth about 7.5 k yr ago; as the
shockwave hits nearby clouds of gas and dust, it glows prettily. It's about 1.4
k ly away and around 70 ly across.
- HOS: Cygnus Loop
- The Veil Nebula
- Witch's Broom
- NGC 6960, West end of Veil Nebula
- Pickering's Triangle
- Slightly South and East of the Width's Broom
- X-Ray images of remnants
Ejecta from the explosion spread outwards, bashing everything they meet so hard
they dislodge even the inner electrons of heavy elements – making them
bright even at high energies. Several of these images are from the Chandna
observatory.
- Tycho's
- X-Rays from the remnant of the supernova Tycho saw in 1572.
Looks like a sponge !
- Jelly
- N132D and the Color of X-Rays
- Small Star Explodes
- Type 1a supernova, DEM L71 in LMC, white dwarf ejecting stuff that fell
onto it from its companion.
- SN 1006
- Remnant of a star first seen a millennium ago, in X-ray, optical and radio.
- Ribbon among the remnants of SN 1006
- Elements in the aftermath
- SNR 0103 72.6: Oxygen Supply
- X-ray image of an SMC SNR. Pretty blobs of false colour ;^)
- IC 443
- Not only is its neutron star far off
centre; its wake points in the wrong direction, suggesting vigorous flows in
the remnant gas. About 5 k ly away and 65 ly across.
- Cassiopeia A
- Remnant of a supernova seen on Earth c.1700, 1e4 years after it happened.
- In X-Ray
- Pretty coloured flecks in round blob
- Recycling elements
- Light Echoes in Infrared
- The supernova of 1987
- Formally known as SN1987a, in the Large Magellanic Clouds.
- Mysterious rings
- The neighbourhood
- A Supernova Starfield
- Shock-ring
- Shocked by Supernova – debris at c/18 hitting material ejected
before the supernova.
- Fireball Resolved
- With inset images of the central explosion
- Echoes
- The crab nebula
M1: remnant from a supernova witenessed in 1054 CE.
- Gyrating pulsar
- HII/X composite of pulsar
- Pulsar shrugs
- HST: complex filaments
- IR/visible/X composite of nebula
- With the neighbourhood of the pulsar plainly visible inside
- From the VLT
- Expanding
- Animation showing difference across 28 years
- Fine detail
- From the Norwegian Optical Telescope.
- Eta Carinae
- A star with suspected suicidal leanings; and its environs, largely sculpted by it.
- Keyhole
- Part of the mess around Eta Carina; actually looks more like a flint
arrow-head, to me.
- Dust and Eta Carinae
- Hickup
- Carina Clouds
- Includes
the finger
- The Homunculus Nebula
- A dumbel of ejecta from Eta Carinae's burts of vigour
- In HOS light
- Nebula around Eta Carinae, a likely future supernova; a.k.a. Keyhole
Nebula, NGC 3372.
- Carina's shroud
- Sculpting the South Pillar
- Mountains of dust in NGC 3324
- Nebula
Miscellaneous fuzzy blobs in the sky. See also: Emission Nebulae.
- TT Cygni: Carbon Star
- The Puzzling Cone
- 2.7 k ly away, near S Monocerotis
- Barnard 68
- The total darkness of a molecular cloud, 500 ly away and half a light
year across.
- Northern Cygnus
- CG4: Pac-Man
- A ruptured cometary globule; Pac-Man on his way to eat a galaxy; but
actually one end of a larger gas cloud.
- Dust around Polaris
- AE Aurigae
- and the accompanying Flaming Star Nebula, IC405. The star is actually a
refugee from Orion, escaping at 90 km/s, and the Nebula is a dust cloud it just
happens to be passing through. Auriga, the charioteer, would be proud of how
fast it's going.
- False colour
- In red
- From CFHT
- Lone star
- One star is all it takes to make a dust cloud pretty.
- IC 4592: head of dragon (or horse)
- Nicely shows that dust cloud black just needs light to be blue
- Bubble hits cloud
- Pretty Bubble Nebula
- NGC 7635: 10 ly bubble blown, by bright blue star, in a giant molecular cloud
- Nova Firework
- California and comet Holmes
- NGC 1499: California
- H-glowy cloud illuminated by Xi Persei
- NGC 7023: Iris
- Bright young star makes surrounding
clouds of muck glowy; 1.3 k ly away, c. 6 ly across
- Pistol
- The brightest star yet known, Pistol star (100 sun-mass, 1e7 times as
bright), and the nebula it's shed.
- T Tauri and Hind's variable nebula
- Teamwork
Several
stars together can achieve some major impact.
- Pismis 24 and NGC 6357
- Several big stars and an emission nebula in which stars are being born;
see following day for context.
- Fox Fur
- Fluff round young open cluster; image with crisp stars
- Fox Fur Blur
- Blur round young open cluster; image showing the cloud clearly, stars a
bit dazzled.
- Dust, Stars, Corona Australis
- Bright blobby star light
- Dust and Gas Surrounding Star R Coronae Australis
- IC 410's tadpoles
- Blobs with tails swept by galactic cluster 1893, which IC 410 hides: in
SHO light; 70 ly across, 12 k ly away.
- UV-blown dust
- Hot Stars in the Southern Milky Way
- IC 5067, the Pelican Nebula
- an emission nebula in Cygnus, 2 k ly away; in true-colour, but hover for
synthetic colour from spectra of Oxygen and Sulphur.
- Rho Ophiuchi
- The Colorful Clouds of Rho Ophiuchi
- Dust lit up by an open cluster
- NGC 6188, home to the Ara OB1 association, an open cluster whose core is
called NGC 6193; all 4 k ly away in the galactic disk.
- NGC 6188 in SHO light
- The Rosette Nebula
A particularly pretty fuzzy blob, 3 k ly away in the constellation Monoceros
- SOH Rosette
- HOS Rosette
- See the
above photograph
link for best results ;^)
- Rosette in context
- Rosette's centre
- NGC 2237
- Long stem
- Rosette close-up
- Showing dark filaments of dust cloud sculpted by hot young stars 3 k ly away
- Wolf-Rayet stars and their surroundings.
- Wolf-Rayet stars are so energetic they destroy themselves. In the
process, they make pretty things.
- WR 124: Stellar Fireball
- Wolf-Rayet star, nuking itself into oblivion
- NGC 3199, blown by the wind from a Wolf-Rayet star
- Wolf-Rayet NGC 6888 (WR 136) in SHO light
- Sulphur, Hydrogen and Oxygen light from a 25 ly-wide bubble around a
hyperactive star 5 k ly away.
- H-Alpha Thor's Helmet
- Thor's Helmet
- A cloud of dust being puffed about by a big blue Wolf-Rayet star, with
hints of emerald due to Oxygen in the cloud.
- Crescent Nebula's edge
- Cradle
The birth of stars is a dramatic process.
- Radio Cygnus
- Blobs and filaments in pretty-lit clouds
- N81: SMC cluster cradle
- N81: Star Cradle in the SMC
- NGC 602: SMC cluster nursery
- Whispy clouds left behind as new-born stars blast aside the dust-cloud in
which they were born, spanning 200 ly.
- IR: dusty NGC 1333
- Revealing the innards of a reflection nebula, 1 k ly away towards Perseus
- RCW49 in IR
- Building Site, seen by Spitzer in infrared, exposing young stars and
probably protoplanetary disks.
- NGC 7129: newborn stars
- NGC 604
- Big hot young new stars blast cavern in dust cloud in spiral galaxy M33,
Triangulum, a.k.a. Pinwheel.
- Still Life
- Dusty nebulae and hot stars in Monoceros
- Cocoon
- IC 5146 in Cygnus – puffy clouds well lit
- NGC 3576
- 9 k ly away, 100 ly across, in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way.
- Cradle to Grave
- NGC 3603: from beginning to end, Sher 25 and its neighbours
- NGC 6334: Bear Claw or Cat's Paw
Massive stars forming in a cloud …- All kinds of mayhem
- Stars, Dust and Nebulae in NGC 6559
- NGC 2170: more mayhem
- Southern Crown's Coronet in radio and X-ray
- Ghost Head
- Hubble X
- Pocket of light in the distant darkness
- M17: Star facrories in SHO light
- M17: Omega
- a.k.a. Horseshoe, or Swan. 5.5 k ly away, 20 to 50 ly across
- RCW38 in IR
- Star Forming Region RCW38; looking though its dust-cloud veil using
infra-red.
- Detail within the heart nebula
- The heart nebula, IC 1805
- and its central region
- Its companion, IC 1848, a.k.a. W5, in IR
- 200 ly across; pressure waves from the inner stars' formation are provoking the surrounding clouds to form new
stars.
- Heart and Soul
- Two cute blobs about 6 k ly away in
Cassiopeia (in the Milky Way) spanning 300 ly and full of young open
clusters.
- Northern Trifid
- NGC 1579 – not to be confused with M20. It's in Perseus, about 2.1
k ly away and about 3 ly across.
- Single star views
When we can distinguish a single star forming, we can sometimes almost make out
what's orbiting it…
- Newborn LkHa101
- The Hole in the Doughnut; in infra-red, the debris cloud surrounding the
new star shows bright and clear. Watch closely for new planets …
- S106: hourglass with wings
- Star Forming Region Sharpless 106 in infra-red, home to many brown dwarves.
- Cosmic Tornado HH49/50
- Jet blasted out by young star, hitting inter-stellar gas, 450 ly away
- RY Tauri
- 450 ly away, 2/3 of a ly across; a molecular cloud being blown away by
the star it's created in its heart.
- Beta Pictoris
- Star with a disk of clutter suggesting a planetary system.
- Stellar provocation
- The winds from hot young stars, or the shock-wave from a supernova, can
compress and agitate a cloud of dust and gas, provoking the formation of new
stars.
- Breeding Bubble
- RCW 79: gas bubble, blown away by bright hot young stars, collides with
interstellar muck and causes yet more stars to form.
- RCW 49: Westerlund 2 in X and IR
- Cygnus Wall
- The Cygnus Wall of Star Formation, in the North America Nebula.
- Mountains of creation
- Infra-red view of cold gas and dust 7 k ly away in Cassioppeia, spanning
70 ly, with a few embedded stars.
- Young Stars of NGC 346
- 210 k ly away in the Small Magellanic Cloud; stars can be bright even
before they start fusing Hydrogen.
- Henize 206
- Cosmic Generations; a supernova remnant triggers new stars forming in
the Large Magellanic Cloud.
- The Trifid Nebula
About 50 ly across and 5 k ly away, towards Sagittarius; also known as M20.
- Polychrome
- The Trifid Nebula from CFHT – very pretty.
- Central region
- Inner centre
- Filaments of dust highlit by stars behind
- Horns
- Pillars and Jets in a corner of the Trifid nebula, looking like a
monster's head with long straight horns.
- Infrared
- Beautiful Trifid
- Trifid Nebula, M20, seen with surrounding star-field, part of Sagittarius.
- in context
- from AAO. Shows neighbouring reflection nebula as well as nearby dust clouds
- The Lagoon Nebula
- Over 100 ly across, about 5 k ly away in Sagittarius; also known as M8.
- Starbirth
- Hydrogen and dust
- In H, S, O
- In H, Si, O
- The busy center of the Lagoon Nebula in three colours
- Gas, dust and stars
- Twist
- Glowy clouds elegantly framed by dark ones.
- East of Lagoon
- Sagittarius triplet
- Lagoon and Trifid in context
- Ignoring stars
- With and without stars
- IC 1396
2 k ly away, about 20 ly across in the constellation Cepheus
- Oschin's Red and Blue
- In H-Alpha
- In H light
- HOS light
- Glowy cloud with dusty intrusions and baby stars
- Elephant's Trunk in SHO light
- Glowy Elephant's Trunk
- An Unusual Globule in IC 1396. Nice glowiness with crisp obstacles and
bright stars.
- The Eagle nebula
- M16: 20 ly wide birth-place of an open
cluster, 6.5 k ly away.
- In three spectral lines
- In infra-red (Spitzer)
- Castle
- X-rays and The Pillars of Creation
- Clown
- Infrared Star Hunt; I see a clown's face ;^)
- Fairy
- a dust pillar sculpture
- In the
Large Magellanic Cloud
Assorted nurseries in one of our home galaxy's close satellites.
- Fine detail from Spitzer in IR
- An LMC Star Cloud
- N11B dust cloud with new-forming stars
- Superbubble N44
- Angel-face
- Super-bubble N44, without so much context,
in such light as leaves it looking like a face.
- DEM192 in LMC
- A Star Forming Region in the LMC; evident signs of explosions.
Colour-coded by elements producing the light.
- LH 95 in detail
- High resolution image of a star-forming region, taken in carefully
chosen spectral lines so as to glean more information about star formation.
- The Tarantula Nebula
- The largest, most violent star forming region known in the Local Group,
so big it would span half the sky if it were as close as the Orion Nebula. Also
known as 30 Doradus.
- Tentacles of Tarantula
- Includes a link to an ESO page which lets you zoom in to see fine detail
- Star cluster R136 emerges
- Shaping the Tarantula with the force of the winds from its big hot new
stars, among the hottest and brightest known.
- Tarantula's Hodge 301
- Star cluster Hodge 301, a Denizen of the Tarantula Nebula,
with red giants due to blow, seeding the nebula with more pressure waves to make
more stars.
- 30 Doradus
- (a.k.a. Tarantula) in X, UV and Hydrogen; supernovae in the cradle of a
globular cluster.
- Spitzer: Tarantula
- The Tarantula Zone
- and Doradus is in an area called Dorado
- Grave
Planetary Nebulae. When a star of modest size (such as our Sun) grows old, it
sheds its outer layers. The results can be marvelously pretty.
- Planetary Nebula Show
- cycling gif, with links to lots of examples
- Stingray
- Hen 1357: New Born Nebula
- NGC 6751
- Stringy iris-like nebula round old dying star
- Blinking Eye
- NGC 6826; planetary nebula
- NGC 7027
- NGC 7008: the foetus nebula
- Little NGC 7027 in IR
- Only 14 kAU across …
- IC 4406: side-on cylinder
- Spirograph
- IC418 went boom, now it's surrounded by cute filaments of glowy stuff
- Eskimo
Star gone boom – surrounded by fronds and glowy-ness- Little Ghost
- Eye-ball in the sky with a white dwarf in the middle, whose boom made the blob
- NGC 2440: Cocoon of a new white dwarf
- NGC 2440: Hottest known white dwarf
- 4 k ly away, 0.2 M K hot, surrounded by a 1 ly wide planetary nebula
- NGC 6210: Turtle
- Red outer cloud being blasted from within by jets of hotter gas.
- NGC 6369 Donut
- Anular planetary nebula in Ophiuchus
- Symmetric NGC 5307
- Pretty blob of a planetary nebula.
- NGC 7009:
Saturn
- The Saturn Nebula, a low-mass white dwarf
- Ghost of Jupiter
- 1.4 k ly away, with mysterious red side-flashes
- Blue Snowball
- FLIERs around the Blue Snowball nebula.
- The Skull Nebula
- NGC 246: 2.5 ly across, produced by the dead member of the binary it
surrounds, 1.6 k ly away.
- Mira and its UV tail
- Bipolar lobes
Many planetary nebulae have a pronounced spreading along an axis.
- Red Spider
- Planetary Nebula, NGC 6537
- Bipolar NGC 6164-5
- 4 ly across, 4 k ly away, complete with a few cometary knots
- Rotten Egg
- aka Calabash nebula, OH231.8+4.2, in Puppis.
- Butterfly Twins
- NGC 2346; two stars in mutual orbit feeding a surrounding cloud
- Wings of a butterfly
- M2-9, 2.1 k ly away; two stars orbiting in a cloud cast off pretty results
- Butterfly close-up
- Early image from 8.2 m Very Large Telescope in Chile. NGC 6302.
- Mz3: The Ant
- MyCn18: an hourglass
- Cthulu's Eye !
- Egg's Searchlight Beams
- Polarized Boomerang
- Pretty false-colour pattern
- Hollow spaces
Sometimes, the star hollows out a bubble
in the middle of its planetary nebula, generally with beautiful results.
- NGC 3132: Eight Burst
- Cloud hollowed out by star boom and glowing in its light, with
decorative dust wisps to make it prettier.
- Helix and its dust
- NGC 7293: Helix
- Nebula of a nearby star dying, with cometary
knots; seen in infra-red by Spitzer; 2 ly wide, 700 ly away in
Aquarius.
- Spherical Bubble
- Planetary Nebula Abell 39
- NGC 7635: the bubble nebula
- 10 ly across, 11 k ly away, blown in a molecular cloud by a star 10 to
20 times as big as our Sun.
- M57: Ring
- cool glowy eye-like barrel-shaped planetary nebula
- Rosy round the Ring
- M57 with its surrounding rings of glowy
redness
- Annular Shapley 1
- M76: The Little Dumbell
- Similar in form to M27 (below), but fainter; 3 to 5 k ly away, over one
ly across.
- The Cat's Eye Nebula
It's a planetary nebula, over half a light-year across, about 3 k ly away but
looks a bit like a deep-sea blobby life-form. It's filamets and inner folds are
marvelously intricate.
- Shells
- Ripples
- X-ray
- X-ray and visible
- Halo
- Surrounding the inner details there's another layer of complex structure.
- In context
- Light Echoes
- 20 k ly away, in the constellation Monocerotis, on the edge of our
galaxy, a quite unusual star, V838 Mon, had an outburst: the light from that
first came to us directly in January 2002; but now we get to watch the light
illuminate the surrounding cloud – the outer layers the star had
previously shed.
- The Echoes Begin
- first signs of oddity; 2002, May and September
- 2004, February and October
- 2006, September
- Dumbbell
- About 1.2 k ly away; also known as M27.
- Pretty Dumbbell
- Glowy Dumbbell
- Star boom left-over in glowy colours
- In [Hα,O,Hβ]-light
- Dumbbell
- another synthetic colour picture
- Near Neighbours
We can more readilly learn about stars nearer to us.
- Sol's Local Bubble
- Our Galactic Neighborhood (schematic)
- Proxima Centauri
- The nearest star to The Sun, 4.22 light years away; so faint it wasn't
found until 1915, despite being in orbit around the third brightest star in the
sky.
- Young star, hot planet
- 500 ly away a newly-formed sun-like star is observed, in infra-red, to
have a companion. Estimated to be about 8 times as massive as Jupiter, it's 330
AU (1.9 light days) from its star – 63.4 time as far as Jupiter is from
our Sun.
- Gliese 581's habitable zone
- It's only a red dwarf, but has a planet a bit bigger than Earth orbiting
it once every 13 days, at such a radius as to have a likely surface temperature of zero to 40 Celsius. With a
mass estimated to be 5 times that of Earth, and a diameter 1.5 times that of
Earth, its surface gravity is about twice that of Earth. This is 20 ly from
home.
- Our Sun
It looks so serene and perfect until you study it closely and discover that it's
a raging inferno in perpetual turmoil. Galileo was the first to see it thus;
since 1995 the SOlar and Heliospheric
Observatory, in Earth's L1 Lagrange point, has hugely enriched our knowledge
of our nearest star's tumult.
- ISS's spotless transit
- Stereo Sun
- in red and blue
- Great Ball of Fire
- A Great Day For SOHO – returned to service.
- Plasma flows
- Solar surface and near-surface plasma flows relative to an average rate
of surface rotation.
- Coronal Holes
- Helios Helium
- Solstice Celebration
- Blue In Fe11+ UV
- In X-ray
- With links
to daily images of the sun.
- Eclipses
By a happy coincidence, we are living in an epoch in which the Moon's distance
from the Earth (which slowly increases) is in the same ratio to the Moon's
diameter as the ratio of the Earth's distance from the Sun to the diameter of
the Sun – to an approximation good enough that routine variations in the
distances involved suffice to make each ratio sometimes larger than the other.
Consequently, when the Moon passes between Earth and Sun, it can exactly mask
out the whole of the Sun's body, revealing its corona.
- Crescent Sun: Solstice Eclipse
- Eclipse Corona
- Corona, Mercury, stars
- Both edges of totality
- The last moment before, and first after, a total eclipse, seen from
Novosibirsk. The Sun shines through lunar valleys.
- The corona in all its glory
- Spots, flares and coronal mass ejections
- Prominence Erupts
- Eruption on the hellish surface, in He UV
- Prominence in profile
- again, in He UV, from STEREO (Ahead).
- Coronal Rain, Solar Storm
- Sun Inferno
- A Solar Filament Lifts Off
- Plasma Slinky
- AR9077: Solar Magnetic Arcade
- Sunspot 875 flares
- Plasma TRACE
- An Active Region of the Sun
- Neutrino image
- Super Kamiokande's 500 day exposure
- Surface ripple
- Solar flares cause sun-quakes
- Mega-Kelvin TRACEs
- Escaping Prominence
- Sun-spot side-view from Hinode
- Sun-spot in UV
- Showing violent electromagnetic activity around AR 9169 on a
quiet
day in September 2000.
- Planet
- Satellites of our Sun which: are big enough that their own gravitation
obliges them to be roughly spherical, and; constitute most of the mass in orbits
near their own; are classified as planets – or
major planets
, to distinguish them from Pluto, which also gets described
(mainly thanks to historical accident) as a planet. The eight major planets
fall into two groups, separated by the asteroid belt: the four outer planets are
gas giants, of low density thanks to vast amounts of Hydrogen in their
atmospheres; the four inner planets are much smaller balls of rock, with
atmospheres (where present) dominated by less cosmically abundant – but
weightier – substances.
- Mercury
Named for the messenger of the gods. Has negligible atmosphere. NASA's
Messenger probe has, in early 2008, made the first of a series of fly-bys that
shall ultimately put it into a mapping orbit on 2011, March 18th; it has already
greatly expanded on the limited data from the one earlier visitor, Mariner 10,
in 1974. In 2013, Europe and Japan shall launch a joint mission to Mercury,
Bepi-Colombo, which shall include X-ray sensing.
- Transit: crossing the Sun's face, amid clouds
- Mariner composite
- Full disc, with obvious alien landing-strip.
- Half-face
- Mariner 10, 1974
- Degas Ray Crater
- The other half
- Messenger's first look at what Mariner 10 missed.
- Close-up of craters, from terminator to horizon
- Coloured crescent
- Colour-enhanced Caloris
- A view from Messenger's second fly-by
- Venus
Named for the godess of love. Venus
is a common way-station for space-craft heading out to the gas giants and
beyond; it provides a handy gravity-assist. Its
atmosphere is apallingly corrosive, immensely thick and hot – the first
few space-craft we sent there were destroyed before the reached ground
level !
- Venus
Transient
- At intervals of a bit over a
century, Venus and Earth manage to line up twice, eight years apart, in such
a way that observers on Earth see Venus pass across the face of the Sun. It
happened in 2004 and it'll happen again in 2012.
- Venus-scape
- Atete Corona and surrounding features
- Rock domes
- The surface was once molten, as Magellan's radar made clear
- en passant
- Galileo's fly-by picture of Venus
- Arachnoids
- Surface mess; fractures forming concentric ovals and complex networks;
resemble spider-webs.
- Radar surface
- View through Venus' clouds thanks to Magellan's imaging radar, with a
bit of help from Arecibo. Resolution is 3 km.
- Optical
- Our home's boiling cloudy twin.
- UnVeiled
- by Magellan's radar, naturally.
- Phase variation
- Ultraviolet
- UV×4 from Stereo Ahead
- Sulphuric acid clouds
- Noticed by ESA's Venus Express probe.
- Earth
The planet on which I was born.
- Big Blue Marble
- Earth at Night
- That famous planet-wide composite …
- True Color
- Cloudless daylight composite
- In gamma-ray
- Gravity Map
- Siblings
- Earth and Moon
- Seen from afar
- Moon passing Earth, seen from 50 Gm away by Deep Impact.
- Two South Poles
- Earth and Moon seen by NEAR
- Apollo 17's view
- NEAR-view
- A Passing Spaceship Views Earth, on its way from Mathilde to Eros
- Ultraviolet
- View from the moon ;^)
- Phytoplankton
- Ocean Planet Pole To Pole – false colour skewed to emphasise phytoplankton.
- Methane Clouds
- Big Ozone Hole, 1998
- Double Ozone Hole, 2002
- False colour maps of ozone levels
- Water Vapor
- Image in 6.7 micron IR.
- El Nino Water Rhythm
- Pacific warm-water picture.
- Temperature Map
- With link to updates
- Clementine's mosaic
- Antarctic summer
- As seen by Galileo during 1990 fly-by
- Barringer Crater
- Sahara: Richat Structure
- Sahara: Terkezi Oasis
- Bay Area from Landsat
- Landsat 7 Views Planet Earth
- Katrina making waves
- Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico, as seen from GOES-12. Very
neat central hole.
- Ivan the Terrible
- 2004's Hurricane Ivan, seen from the ISS.
- Mars
Named for the god of war. When at its closest to us (in opposition,
i.e. opposite the Sun), Mars shows us its full day-lit face; given how thin its
atmosphere is, this has given us a nice clear view of its surface. When the
best telescopes couldn't quite resolve the details, but nearly could, its
surface features looked tantalizing almost comprehensible – leading to
some rather fanciful guess-work.
- Pathfinder's rusty sunset
- A rock called Yogi
- Martian Analemma
- Viking views
- What our first robots found when they got there.
- Valles Marineris
- The Grand Canyon of Mars
- Viking Mars
- Seems to be the complement of the Valles Marineris picture. Provides
links to lots of on-line literature about Mars.
- Schiparelli-centred full face
- Big crater.
- Phobos Over Mars
- Viking Olympus
- The infamous face
- Among thousands of hill-ish shapes in pictures, it should be no
surprise that at least one vaguely resembled a pattern our brains are hard-wired
never miss, at the expense of sporadic false positives. Sure enough, more recent pictures show a less surprising
mesa.
- Seasonal water ice
- Global Survey
- In 1997, NASA's dedicated survey mission arrived and went to work
– now we have really good pictures of all of Mars, from close up.
- Olympus Mons
- Sun-set over a 24 km tall extinct volcano that's 64 km across.
- Rock strata in Marineris
- Stratified rock visible in mountain (amid dust desert).
- Marineris detail
- In A Grand Canyon On Mars
- Victoria Crater
- 800 metres across, 70 metres deep, c/o Opportunity rover
- Schiaparelli Coastline
- Ancient Layered Rocks on Mars, in Schiaparelli Crater.
- Volcano and clouds
- Volcano Apollinaris Patera
- Nanedi Vallis
- Martian River Bed ?
- Dunes
- Mars Global Surveyor's view of blobby dune array.
- Thawing dunes
- Glint
- Distorted image from Global Surveyor at noon
- Topography
- Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter chart
- Thermal Map
- Mars Express
ESA's orbiting observer arrived at the end of 2003. Its passenger, the
Beagle 2 lander, failed; but the satellite has sent back some fine imagery.
- Vales Marineris
- 4 km cliffs at Echus Chasma
- Ice-pool in Crater
- Water Ice in a Maritan Crater – just begging to be domed over and
warmed to make a lake.
- Steep cliffs
- North polar region, in a mish-mash of materials, with cliffs
approaching 2 km in height.
- Cydonian mesas
- Mars express image, including
The Face
, which was shown in
closer detail the previous day.
- Sprit and
Opportunity
- Also in 2003, NASA sent two Mars Exploration Rovers, which (having
landed safely, unlike Beagle 2) have been sending back excellent images long
after their original design lifetimes of 90 days. They travelled separately but
both landed in January 2004. Spirit explores rocks and hills within Gusev
Crater while Opportunity, half a world away, visits a selection of smaller
craters.
- Gusev Crater
- Sprit's landing site
- Inside Eagle Crater
- Opportunity's landing hole, a small crater in Meridiani Planum.
- Tiny hematite spherules
- Bonneville Crater panorama
- Layered rock in Endurance Crater
- Opportunity's heat shield's crater
- Friendly dust devil
- Sunset over Gusef Crater
- View from Husband Hill
- Bumpy Boulder
- found at Spirit's winter quarters
- The rocky road to Victoria Crater
- On the brink
- Opportunity studies the cliffs beside which it'll make its fateful
descent.
- Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter
- Launched in August 2005, the MRO is dedicated to looking for signs that
there was ever persistent water on Mars's surface. It reached Mars in March
2006 and has since been sending back a wealth of excellent images from its high resolution cameras, notably
including HiRISE.
- Opportunity's way down
- Seen from above while searching for a route
down into Victoria Crater.
- Sprit in the Columbia Hills
- A hole
- … in Mars – not Blackburn, Lancashire. A later close-up revealed near-vertical walls.
- Layered rocks in Aureum Chaos
- The sandy layers of Chasma Boreale
- Views from Earth
or, at least, from Earth Orbit – mostly from the Hubble space telescope:
- Halloween '95
- Spring arrives
- 1996 September
- Summer starts
- HST scouting in March '97 ready for Pathfinder and Global Surveyor
- Summer's End
- View from Hubble a week before Pathfinder landed, 1997 June 27
- Autumn Begins
- 1997 September 12
- HST pair
- Images about a quarter turn apart.
- Wet Infrared
- Storm brewing
- Engulfed
- The Great Sand-Storm of 2001
- Jupiter
Named for the king of the gods.
- Crescent
- Rings, discovered by Voyager
- Eclipsed Galileo's ring-side view
- Unrolled
- Cylindrical projection.
- Brain
- Aurora
- Jupiter's pole with a crown of auroral light.
- Direct hit
- Jupiter Swallows Comet Shoemaker Levy 9
- Jove's Clouds
- from Cassini, and from New Horizons.
- The
Great Red Spot
- Amid its bands of stormy clouds, fast-spinning Jupiter sports a giant storm; Hooke
(1664) and Cassini (1665) first described such features, one of which may be the
same as has been consistently observed since the 1830s. With extents of
12–14 Mm in latitude and 24–40 Mm in longitude, the area it covers
is roughly equal to the total surface area of the Earth.
- Great Red Spot movie
- Approaching Jupiter, Voyager 1 took a succession of pictures of the GRS.
- Storm's tail
- West Of The Great Red Spot, colour-coded to show cloud height and thickness.
- Storm clouds over The Spot
- Galileo close-up of Red Spot
- Computed, from three filtered images, to get true colour.
- Red Spot Conjunction
- The Great Red Spot has a companion (2006) and they've even passed quite
close to one another.
- Spots: three red, two white
- A third red spot had developed by May 2008; all three are seen together
here, along with a couple of white spots.
- RIP Baby Red Spot, May–July 2008
- Eaten by the Great Red Spot during a three-way collision with Red Spot Jr.
- Jove and its satellites
- Various probes visiting Jupiter have captured excellent pictures of the
planet, often accompanied by its moons.
- Io (snitch), by Jove
- Io over Jove's clouds (B+W)
- Voyager 1 pic from 5 Million Miles From Io looking down on Jupiter, in
black and white.
- With Io, from New Horizons as it passed by
- Rich color, with Io
- and Ganymede's shadow, too.
- Ganymede, by Jove
- Triple Eclipse
- Io, Callisto and Ganymede together
- Europa and Callisto, by Jove
- Europa rising
- Jove and Family
- Jupiter and its four Gallilean satellites.
- Saturn
Named after the father of Jupiter.
- In true colour, with Titan
- From beyond
- Looking over Saturn's shoulder in 1980 just after passing it; Voyager 1 outbound.
- au naturel
- Saturn in true colour, with Enceladus dot in front of it; as seen by
Hubble, while Cassini was en route.
- Hubble: infrared
- Cassini (VIMS): across the infrared spectrum
- Stormy Weather
- Long-lived electrical storm
- Wider than the Earth and over three months old.
- Dragon Storm
- South polar storm
- Slightly bigger than the Earth, with winds over 150 m/s (550 km/hr); and
it's probably been going for giga-years.
- Aurora
- Seen by Lunar Limb
- Grazing Lunar Limb
- Seen from above a pole
- North pole's hexagonal cloud ring
- The Rings
- Visible, even with early telescopes, from Earth: we now know that the
other gas giants have ring systems, too, but we knew about Saturns's first.
- Ring-waves
- A Wavemaker Moon in Saturn's Rings (Keeler gap).
- Ring particle size map
- Particle Sizes in Saturn's Rings – Cassini sent radio waves home;
reception revealed data on particle sizes in the centimeter range; there may
well be bigger ones …
- Silhouette
- From deep in Saturn's shadow, Cassini looked towards the sun and caught
a beautiful view.
- Dark side of the rings
- Ring through-scatter
- Saturn's Rings from the Other Side – seen with sun behind camera
but on the other side of the ring plane.
- Earth seen through the rings
- … and their shadows
- The rings cast shadows on Saturn, with often pretty effects.
- Ring-side view
- Cassini Spacecraft Crosses Saturn's Ring Plane
- By the light of the razor ring
- Polarized IR revealing how much a 1 km thick band of rubble can scatter
- Thin vertical line
- Tethys, Rings and Shadows
- Excellent crisp image; separate rings' shadows form a neat pattern of
lines on Saturn. Crescent Tethys shows its clear disk just sun-ward of the
Planet's terminator.
- Uranus
Named after a mythical character from the ancient pagen world, father of Saturn.
- Infrared Uranus
- Uranus
- Uranus, ring and its Moon 18
- IR: Moons and rings
- IR: Moons, rings and clouds
- With ring system
- Neptune
Named after the god of the sea.
- Crescents of Neptune and Triton
- Voyager 2's passing view
- Southern Hemisphere
- Composite view from Voyager 2, passing over the south pole.
- Neptune's Weather
- Pretty blue and green, with a smudge of red-yellow
- The late great dark spot
- In 1989, Voyager 2 saw this giant storm with 24 Mm/s winds; but it didn't last
- Southern springtime in Blue
- Neptune and Triton from Palomar
- Heavy Blue Giant
- Rubble
- Some planets have moons (also called satellites) trapped in orbit around
them; and there are assorted other stray lumps of matter floating around the
solar system.
- Selene
Better known as The Moon,
Earth's constant companion, always keeping the same face towards Earth. Its
unprotected surface, bombarded by cosmic rays, shines
brightly in γ-rays, brighter by far than The Sun.
- Twenty full moons
- May 2005 to Dec 2006, showing size variation and libration
- Twelve lunar eclipses, 2006 to 2008
- Animated Lunation
- Glitter-ball
- Colour-coded
- Exaggerated colour
- Eclipsed
- in visible light
- Eclipsed in infra-red
- Lunar peep-show
- Sequence of images of Selene sliding through Earth's shadow during a
total eclipse.
- Lunar close-up
- Moon Mare and Montes
- Lingering Lunar Eclipse
- Crescents of Moon And Venus
- De-occluding Saturn
- Earth-lit Moon, Pleiades
- Crescent moon over-exposed to show dark
side by Earth-light, with Pleiades alongside.
- Far Side
The parts we never see from Earth- Moon and Eclipse corona
- Apollo 11 panorama by East Crater
- Bay of rainbows
- Lunar close-up
- from Apollo 17, 1972; Eratosthenes and Copernicus craters.
- Panorama with Shorty crater
- Taurus-Littrow valley, moon rover and impressive crater, from the last
human visit to the Moon, Apollo 17.
- Man, Boulder
- Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt beside a boulder in the
Taurus-Littrow area.
- Copernicus Crater in 1966–1967
- 93 km wide, as seen from the Lunar Orbiter reconnaissance missions
- Orange
- So near horizon its light is reddened; complete with a red flash at its
lower edge.
- Poseidon's temple
- Moonrise, Cape Sounion, Greece, with a nice classical ruin in the foreground.
- N Polar Ice
- S Polar Ice
- X-Ray Moon
- Largest Impact Crater
- Martian
Mars has two natural mooons, both suspected of being captured asteroids, plus
a variable population of man-made visitors.
- Stickney Crater, on Phobos
- Phobos
- Dust Hip Deep on Phobos
- Doomed Phobos
- About 5.8 Mm above Mars, orbitting in
under 8 hours.
- Deimos
- The smallest moon in the solar system, only 9 miles across
- Deimos close-up
- Viking 2 picture, from 18 miles close.
- Asteroid
Stray lumps of rock in roughly circular orbits about the Sun are known as minor
planets; those which orbit (mostly) closer than Jupiter are known as asteroids;
the ones caught at Jupiter's Lagrange points (leading and trailing Jupiter by
turn/6) are known as Trojans; those orbiting (mostly) between Jupiter and
Neptune are known as Centaurs. Beyond Neptune, there's a zone known as the
Kuiper belt in which many similar bodies orbit; including Pluto, king of the
minor planets (though not actually the largest of them). The asteroids of the
inner solar system attract plenty of attention, now that we've realised how close some of them come to hitting Earth.
- Dog-Bone Asteroid
- 216, Kleopatra, between Mars and Jupiter
- Stereo Eros
- Eros craters and boulders
- Asteroid 433 close-up; 40×14×14 km, visited by NEAR Shoemaker
- Vesta height map
- False colour representation of Vesta.
- Ida and Dactyl
- Little Dactyl's a mile across (looks less to me); Ida's 36 miles long,
14 across and lumpy.
- NEAR 253 Mathilde
- 60 km across, with at least one 20 km crater that's about 10 km deep.
- 951: Gaspra
colour-enhanced, main-belt asteroid; about 11 miles long.- Sylvia, Romulus and Remus
- First observed triple asteroid; 380 km Sylvia; 710 km, 33 hr orbit for 7
km Remus; 1360 km, 87.6 hr orbit for 18 km Romulus. Rhea Sylvia was the
wolf-cubs' mother.
- Itokawa
- an Earth-crossing asteroid visited by Japan's Hayabusa probe (2005 to 2006)
- The Approach
- Successive views, in-bound, 2005/September
- Hayabusa's shadow
- Two months later, in orbit; Itokawa is 300 m across
- No Craters
- rubble and slush with no visible cratering
- Puzzlingly Smooth
- Ceres and Vesta
- Ceres, first and largest
- The first
asteroid found, Ceres (933
km in diameter), filled a gap in the Titius-Bode sequence: start with 0 and 0.3,
then double at each subsequent step to get 0.6, 1.2 and so on; add 0.4 to each
entry in that sequence; you now have 0.4, 0.7, 1.0, 1.6, 2.8, 5.2, 10.0, 19.6;
which are respectably close to the orbital radii of the planets out to Uranus
(measured as multiples of Earth's orbital radius), save for the entry between
Mars (1.52296 ≅ 1.5) and Jupiter (5.1998 ≅ 5.2). Once this
coincidence had been noticed, astronomers went looking for a planet orbitting at
the missing radius – after the satisfying success of finding Ceres (on the
first day of the nineteenth century, in an orbit with radius 2.77 times as big
as Earth's), they were a little surprised to find it was (rather small and) not alone –
Pallas, Vesta and Juno showed up soon
after.
- Jovial
The moons of Jupiter caused quite a stir when Galileo first noticed them. More
recently, they've proven even more interesting when seen from closer
range.
- Inner Moons
- Metis, Adrastea, Amalthea and Thebe; all in the electromagnetic storm
within Io's orbit.
- Amalthea
- Io
- Hot, sulphurous and volcanic
- Resurfacing
- Prometheus Plume
- Tvashtar's eruption
- Seen by New Horizons, passing on its way to Pluto
- Spinning Io
- In shadow
- Io lit by aurora and volcanic plumes in Jove's electromagnetic
maelstrom, seen while passing through that giant's shadow.
- Vulcanism
- Pele region before and after a Pillan Patera eruption.
- Sodium cloud
- In triplicate
- Three Galileo images, plain and digitally enhanced, showing colour diversity.
- Ra Patera erupts
- Crescent Io seen by Galileo, with blue volcanic plume at its edge
- Europa
Icy on the outside, but might there be life in oceans within ?
- Full face
- Galileo using natural colour
- Spun
- Ice shapes
- Cracks and Ridges on Europa
- Ice Cusps
- possible evidence of tectonic activity
- Pwyll Crater
- Ice jigsaw
- Oceans under Europa's surface? Following day shows ice rafts, this one
shows the ice sheet with lots of cracks.
- Impact
- Impact crater over-laid with cracks.
- Close-up
- Galileo: 560 Kilometers Above Europa, showing lumpy terrain
- Cracked ice plains
- Ganymede
The largest moon in the Solar System.
- Messy surface
- Mysterious Features on Ganymede – a non-crater circular arc, cut
by a linear crater chain, beside a broad linear feature.
- Crater chain
- Crater Chain on Ganymede, left by a Torn Comet.
- Minerals
- Galileo orbiter's mineral analysis.
- Contrast-enhanced mosaic
- Callisto
- A jagged ice-field with possible sub-surface ocean
- A dark face, full of spots
- Too cool to re-arrange its surface and hide the impact scars left by
everything that's hit it.
- Enhanced
- Showing big crater Valhalla; previous day has same view in true colour.
- Big cliff
- Saturnine
Saturn has plenty of moons plus a beautiful system of rings. It also has an
artificial satellite, called Cassini, which has sent us back lots of delightful
pictures.
- Pandora
- 80 km wide, partner to Prometheus; together they shepherd the F ring
- Epimetheus and Janus
- Twin moons with orbital radii within 50 km, 91 Mm above Saturn's
cloud-tops, doing a perpetual dance – swapping orbits every four years and
sheperding the A ring. Epimetheus is about 115 km across; Janus is about 190 km
across, with a shape reminiscent of a potato.
- Epimetheus
- Epimetheus
- Epimetheus
- Janus
- Epimetheus and Janus
- Seen together beside the rings
- Mimas' nipple
- Mimas (not the
death star
from Star Wars) seen (c/o
Cassini) half-face, with its (130 km span) huge nippled crater, Herschel, facing
us on the terminator.
- Anthe and its arc
- Enceladus and Mimas passing Rhea
- Enceladus
- An ice-ball with clean surface, stripey in places, and geysers.
- Ring Enceladus
- Creating the E ring
- Saturn, rings and Enceladus
- Saturnian Moon and Rings
- Spots and stripes
Tiger stripes
- Fountain of Ice
- Enceladus crescent view, showing what those tiger stripes are up to.
- Tethys and Telesto
- Sharing an orbit; Telesto inhabits Tethys'
forward Lagrange point.
- Smooth Telesto
- 24 km across in Tethys' forward Lagrange.
- The Great Basin on Tethys
- Tethys and rings
- With its Great Basin making Tethys look disturbingly like the
death
star
from Star Wars.
- Ithaca Chasma
- Tethys
- Tethys: cratered ice cliffs
- Cassini view from 32 Mm away; ball (mostly) of ice is c. 1 Mm in diameter
- Dione and Helene
Another Lagrange pair, just outside the E ring. Dione is mostly water ice, but
has enough rock to make it perceptibly heavy.
- Helene
- Lagrange companion ahead of Dione
- Dione, rings and their shadow
- Ringside Dione
- Dione
- White streaks and craters
- Dione close-up
- Showing scratches and craters; a 23 km wide patch seen from 4.5 Mm away.
- Dione's bright cliffs cut craters
- Rhea
- Second largest, tidally locked, more heavilly cratered on leading face.
- Rhea
- Rhea up close
- as seen by Cassini from 620 km away
- Rhea's Great White Spot
- Rhea and the rings
- Southern Rhea
- Titan
- Saturn's largest moon (second largest in the Solar system, behind
Jupiter's Ganymede) has an atmosphere, so Cassini took Huygens to visit Titan
and get us some more detailed information. Most of the following are images
Cassini itself took, using radar to see through the atmosphere, during its many
fly-bys. Titan's surface temperature is about
93 K and its atmosphere is dominated by methane.
- Spinning
- Is it a cloud ? Is it a volcano ?
- Titan has an odd spot which stays in the same place …
- Cryovolcano
- Dome-shaped feature resembling volcano, may be with ice-CH4-NH3 slurry for lava
- Shore-line
- Radar image from Cassini; Titan appears to have hydrocarbon seas.
- Lake District
- Suspected methane lakes seen in radar images
- Spongy Hyperion
- Hyperion close-up
- Sponge Moon, caver's delight ? Tidal effects make its spin chaotic.
- Iapetus
- One side is so dark its discoverer, Cassini, noted that it was only
visible when on one side of Saturn.
- Messy Iapetus
- Vanishing Iapetus
- The dark side of Iapetus
- Close-up of Iapetus' equatorial ridge
- Phoebe
- Irregular dark surface, retrograde orbit, low density – suspect
Kuiper belt refugee, now in Saturn's orbit. Looks just like the Clangers' home
planet ;^)
- Uranic
Much remains to be seen of Uranus and its environs; but we know it also has rings.
- Miranda's rugged face
- Chevron, and Alonso. Miranda also has canyons
perhaps 12 miles
deep
– wow !
- Ariel: Valley World
- Dark Umbriel
- Titania's Trenches
- Titania
- Uranus' largest moon.
- Oberon
- with crater Hamlet in plain view
- Oberon: Impact World
- Neptunous
Neptune is so far away we can't see its moons very well; it has (at least) six,
plus a system or rings.
- Proteus
- So dark we didn't notice it until Voyager 2 visited; and almost big
enough for its gravity to make it spherical, but not quite.
- Triton
- Neptune's Largest Moon
- Triton's geysers
- Comets
Some of the dirty snow-balls that populate the outer reaches of the solar system
get disturbed into highly eccentric orbits that bring them sporadically into the
inner solar system; this exposes them to The Sun's heat, causing them to
partially evaporate, thereby releasing loose dust and debris, which reflect the
Sun's light and produce a spectacular bright appearance, often visible to the
naked eye from Earth. These transient visitors are known as comets (the word
comes from a latin word for hair, comes) and give
photographers an excuse to capture them against often beautiful
foregrounds.
- Comet Ikeya-Zhang
- tail wriggles
- Comet Holmes
- Late in 2007, as it was heading away from the sun, Comet
17P/Holmes surprised everyone by flaring up and growing to be bigger than the Sun. It made a fine sight for several
months.
- Comet Breaks Up
- Comet SWAN brightens and flares
- Comet, planetary
nebula and galaxy
- Fragment C of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3; passing almost directly in
front of the Ring Nebula (M57), and faint spiral galaxy IC 1296.
- Night sky with Hale-Bopp
- Hale-Bopp from Indian Cove in California's Joshua Tree National Forest.
Nice fore-ground rocks, sky full of stars plus double-tailed comet.
- Tempel 1 before
Deep Impact
- The Landscape on Comet Tempel 1 from close up, before the Impactor
dented it.
- Deep Impact on Comet Tempel 1 from
Hubble
- Hubble's view of Comet Tempel 1 being artificially damaged.
- Tempel 1 composite
- Comet McNaught over Catalonia
- January 2007 saw the brightest comet since 1965, providing photographers
with an excellent subject.
- STEREO's SECCHI instrument's first subject
- Comet McNaught also managed to arrive
just as some new equipment was deployed to study The Sun and things passing near
it.
- McNaught's tail
- After passing the sun, McNaught
showed a particularly splendid tail,
including striae
(i.e. stripes).
- The Outer Reaches
When first seen, Pluto was classified as a planet. Its apparent size had to be
revised downwards (it's actually smaller than several moons of other planets,
including our own) when it was discovered that its apparent diameter and the
amount of light apparently from it arose from its having a relatively large
moon, Charon. It's since emerged that plenty of other bodies are in orbits
similar to its (eccentric, tilted from the ecliptic and in a resonance with
Neptune's orbit), constituting the inner class of trans-Neptunian
objects
(TNOs). The orbits of these, in turn, overlap with those of a second population of
similar bodies in roughly circular orbits; this population matches fairly well
with what Edgeworth and Kuiper postulated to explain the origin of comets.
Beyond this (but again overlapping its orbits) are further bodies in elliptical
orbits, reaching far out towards the cold depths of inter-stellar space. Among
these three populations, folk have found assorted bodies of size comparable
with, and bigger than, Pluto. With Pluto thus revealed as merely a prominent
member of one of several populations of TNOs, it was downgraded from planet
status in 2006, just as Ceres had been when it turned out to be merely the
biggest of another population – the asteroids.
TNOs are generally dirty snow-balls; the comets, above, are ones that have been
dislodged into unusual orbits.
- Pluto's Charon-wards face
- Suspected extra moons for Pluto
- Pluto, Charon, Nix and Hydra
- Pluto, the frozen (minor)
planet, and its companions.
- 2001 KX76
- Comparing Pluto's size to other known Kuiper belt objects.
- Quaoar
- Another minor planet in the Kuiper belt.
- 2003 UB313, now known as Eris
- Twice as distant as Pluto – and bigger, thereby forcing the issue
of what criteria a body must satisfy to deserve to be deemed a planet. Once
that was resolved, in August of 2006, Pluto was a dwarf planet and the body
which had provoked its demotion was
given the name Eris (goddess of discord –
warmonger, the cause of conflict, the source of competitive rivalry – not
of
chaos
, as some prefer to think). Apparently she has a
moon, Dysnomia (goddess of lawlessness; perhaps those who identify Eris with
chaos should credit her with the virtue of disobedience). Eris was, before
being officially named, nick-named Zena, after a character (in the eponymous
television program) played by Lucy Lawless.
- New Horizons sets off
- With so much to learn about the outer reaches, a probe is now on its way
to study them from close-up. Launched in January 2006 and faster than any probe
before it, it'll still take until 2015 to reach Pluto.
- Views from home
Distant things seen alongside the veiwer's context.
- Mars lines up with Pollux and Castor
- Starry skies
- Distant lights against homely fore-grounds.
- Big Dipper Castle
- Horizon to horizon
- Moonlit mountain and stars
- Clouds near and far
- Antipodean sky
- With space debris burning up on re-entry in
the fore-ground.
- Star Trails Over Vienna
- A bit of digital trickery to turn star-trail arcs into full circles,
over a Viennese castle.
- The Milky Way
- It spans the sky, so the horizon is its context.
- Ove