Picture This – Page 37 – Astronomy Now

Jovian cloudscapes

2 March 2017 Astronomy Now

This close-up view of Jupiter from NASA’s Juno probe captures the turbulent region just west of the Great Red Spot in the South Equatorial Belt, with resolution better than any previous pictures from Earth or other spacecraft.

Saturn’s north pole

28 February 2017 Stephen Clark

The north pole of Saturn sits at the center of its own domain. Around it swirl the clouds, driven by the fast winds of Saturn. Beyond that orbits Saturn’s retinue of moons and the countless small particles that form the ring.

Star formation on filaments in RCW106

27 February 2017 Stephen Clark

Stars are bursting into life all over this image from ESA’s Herschel space observatory. It depicts the giant molecular cloud RCW106, a massive billow of gas and dust almost 12,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Norma, the Carpenter’s Square.

The Calabash clash

6 February 2017 Stephen Clark

The Calabash Nebula, pictured here — which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 — is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the Sun.

Celestial cat meets cosmic lobster

3 February 2017 Stephen Clark

Astronomers have for a long time studied the glowing, cosmic clouds of gas and dust catalogued as NGC 6334 and NGC 6357, this gigantic new image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope being only the most recent one.

Saturn’s shepherd moon Daphnis makes waves

19 January 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured the first close-up view of Daphnis, one of at least 62 moons found orbiting Saturn, plowing a path through the planet’s icy rings and raising waves in its wake.

A crescent Jupiter and the Great Red Spot

15 January 2017 Astronomy Now

This image of a crescent Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot was created by a citizen scientist (Roman Tkachenko) using data from Juno’s JunoCam instrument.

Your home planet, as seen from Mars

6 January 2017 Astronomy Now

From the most powerful telescope orbiting Mars comes a new view of Earth and its moon, showing continent-size detail on the planet and the relative size of the Moon.

Cassini takes a close up look at Saturn’s moon Pandora

27 December 2016 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured one of the highest-resolution views ever taken of Saturn’s moon Pandora.

Festive nebulae light up Milky Way Galaxy satellite

23 December 2016 Stephen Clark

The sheer observing power of the Hubble Space Telescope is rarely better illustrated than in an image such as this. This glowing pink nebula, named NGC 248, is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, just under 200,000 light-years away and yet can still be seen in great detail.