The Hubble Space Telescope captures a snapshot of a collision between two galaxies 350 million light years away in the constellation Cetus, giving astronomers a ringside seat to a slow-motion merger that eventually will result in a single combined galaxy. Gravitational interactions are distorting the barred spirals, ripping away stars and dust.
For reasons not yet understood, Saturn seems to store energy in its atmosphere over decades before suddenly releasing it in massive lightning storms that affect the ringed planet’s atmosphere across enormous distances. The Great Northern Storm of 2010/11 circled Saturn like a snake eating its tail, persisting for months before dissipating.
The Hubble Space Telescope imaged a distant cluster of galaxies that was found by ESA’s Planck satellite, which detected distortions in the cosmic background radiation caused by the cluster’s gravity. Some five billion light years from Earth, the cluster’s members appear as a swarm of red-shifted galaxies, along with an arc of bluish light caused by gravitational lensing.
A composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a dramatic range of color in galaxy NGC 3344, a weakly barred spiral half the size of the Milky Way some 20 million light years away in the constellation Leo Minor. Hot young stars, seen in blue, populate the spiral arms along with glowing red clouds of gas and dust that provide the raw materials for new suns.
The Hubble Space Telescope captures a deep view of stars in the Milky Way’s central bulge, helping astronomers understand a dynamic environment where stars rich in heavier elements orbit the core faster than older stars that are deficient in such elements. The image is part of two on-going surveys to learn more about the galaxy’s structure and evolution.
The Curiosity Mars rover used a camera on the end of its robot arm to take a selfie on the slopes of Mount Sharp before moving on to begin exploring nearby clay-rich soils. The rover is slowly working its way up the lower slopes of the mountain, looking for changes that might indicate the transition from warmer, wetter eras to the dry, frigid environment seen today.
© 2019 Pole Star Publications Limited