Picture This – Page 62 – Astronomy Now

Bright impact basin on Saturn’s icy moon Tethys

28 July 2015 Astronomy Now

In this NASA/ESA Cassini mission image of Saturn’s 660-mile-wide moon Tethys, the giant impact basin Odysseus stands out brightly from the rest of the illuminated icy crescent. Some 280 miles across, Odysseus is one of the largest impact craters on Saturn’s icy moons, and may have significantly altered the geologic history of Tethys.

“The Mirrored Night Sky” by Xiaohua Zhao

26 July 2015 Astronomy Now

The prestigious Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is an annual celebration of the most beautiful and spectacular visions of the cosmos by astrophotographers worldwide. Now in its seventh year, the 2015 competition received 2700 spectacular entries from over 60 countries and the winners will be announced 17 September.

Extended haze in Pluto’s atmosphere

25 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Backlit by the Sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 15. This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometres) from the dwarf planet.

Pluto Dazzles in False Colour

24 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Four images from the New Horizon’s probe’s LORRI camera have been combined with colour from the Ralph instrument to create this spectacular false colour image of Pluto.

Saturn’s moons pose for ‘mother and daughter’ portrait

23 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Dione and Tethys, two moons of Saturn, pose together for a mythological ‘mother and daughter’ portrait in this image from the Cassini mission.

Rosetta’s new view of Comet 67P

20 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is now less than a month from perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun occurring on 13 August. ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft captured this view of enhanced activity from the comet’s twin-lobed nucleus on 7 July.

Close-up of Charon’s ‘Mountain in a Moat’

17 July 2015 Astronomy Now

In a tantalising preview of what the surface of Pluto’s largest moon will look like in sharper future close-ups from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, this image from 1.5 hours before closest approach shows a depression with a peak in the middle.

Galaxy with a view

13 July 2015 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope’s high-resolution Advanced Camera for Surveys captures this detailed portrait of beautiful spiral galaxy LEDA 89996 in the southern constellation of Dorado in a view that measures just four-fifths of an arcminute wide.

A galaxy in bloom: new Hubble snap of ESO 381-12

9 July 2015 Astronomy Now

The ghostly shells of galaxy ESO 381-12 are captured here in a new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, set against a backdrop of distant galaxies. Some 270 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus, ESO 381-12 is categorised as a lenticular galaxy — a hybrid type that shares properties with both spiral and elliptical galaxies.

Picture This

Buried in the heart of a giant

2 July 2015 Astronomy Now

This is a young open cluster of stars known as NGC 2367, an infant stellar grouping that lies at the centre of an immense and ancient structure on the margins of the Milky Way, captured by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.