Space can truly be an exciting place to observe. We will provide you with the photos that are the living proof of this statement.
Vortex of stormy clouds on Saturn
This picture was taken by Cassini spacecraft that was located around 400 000 kilometers away of Saturn. It show us Saturn’s north pole and a vortex of clouds that swirls around it. This spacecraft is orbiting Saturn and its satellites since 2004. and was launched back in 1997. As you can see, the situation is far from calm, as it looks like this stormy weather is hitting the planet really hard. Cassini had footages like this in the past, but only in infrared wavelengths as Saturn orbits the Sun at a much slower pace than Earth does, so those images was taken in complete darkness unlike this one that was taken when some light already reached Saturn’s north pole.
Solar Flare
This is truly the magical moment which we may call “Solar storm in the making”. Magnetic fields are making it all possible, and not only that but this is a pretty common phenomenon. Solar Dynamics Observatory manages to catch this piece of art on a photo thanks to the extreme ultraviolet light. This exciting occurrence lasted for a whole day and it is called a prominence.
Tokyo from way up
Well, this is not the presentation of some faraway planet or a star, but the picture was taken from International Space Station, so it is clear why it belongs here. You have to admit that the image of Tokyo at night looks as if some spider made a lot of effort to construct a web like this. In the top left corner you might recognize Tokyo Bay.
Jupiter as it was seen from Death Valley
It is not an easy task to describe a photo like this one. The image is beautiful; it is as simple as that. Above Death Valley in California, Jupiter looks like a shooting star illuminating the sky in the process. The desert mesquite tree makes the photo even more awesome.
The massive galaxy and some plasma beams
What you see on the picture is the Hercules A that is so massive that it makes The Milky Way looks like a feeble excuse for a galaxy. Hercules A is surrounded with extraordinary plumes that exist thanks to a huge black hole that is located in the middle of the galaxy. These plumes are in fact magnetic fields, some plasma beams and subatomic particles. It was pretty complicated for humans to reveal their existence. It was done by combining forces of Hubble Space Telescope and Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array telescope, which is located in New Mexico. This is truly a faraway galaxy as it is around 2 billion light-years away from Earth.
Saturn’s icy rings
We’ve saved best for last, as this photo session was started with NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, so it is only natural to finish it in the same manner. Saturn’s rings, which are made of rock and ice, are truly the sight to be seen. Let’s face it, although we’ve seen a lot of photos that includes Saturn and its rings, it seems that we will never grow tired of them.
0 comments: