“This giant spiral galaxy, Messier 101 (M101), was photographed by the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT). UIT flew into orbit as part of the Astro 2 mission on-board the Space Shuttle Endeavour in March 1995. The image has been processed so that the colors (purple to white) represent an increasing intensity of ultraviolet light. Pictures of galaxies like this one show mainly clouds of gas containing newly formed stars many times more massive than the sun, which glow strongly in ultraviolet light. In contrast, visible light pictures of galaxies tend to be dominated by the yellow and red light of older stars. Ultraviolet light, invisible to the human eye, is blocked by ozone in the atmosphere so ultraviolet pictures of celestial objects must be taken from space."
Copyright: Public domain
“Do other planets have aurora? Terrestrial and spacecraft observations have found evidence for aurora on Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In the above false-color photograph, a good portion of an auroral ring was captured recently in optical light by the Galileo spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. Auroral rings encircle a planet's magnetic pole, and result from charged particles spiraling down magnetic field lines. Although the surroundings near Jupiter are much different than Earth, the auroral rings appear similar."
Copyright: Public domain
“Hale-Bopp may be the most photographed comet in history. Above, our photogenic giant flying snowball appeared last month as a backdrop to the "Cinque Torri" Mountains near Contina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Although the comet is still fairly bright, it is fading as it recedes from the Sun, and is now more easily visible from Earth's southern hemisphere. Having shed a few meters of ice and rock from its surface, Comet Hale-Bopp will coast to the outer Solar System, and return again in another 2400 years."
Copyright: Col Druscie Obs.ACC
“The star cataloged as NGC2264 IRS is normally hidden from the inquiring gaze of optical telescopes. It resides in the midst of the obscuring gas and dust of a nearby star forming region popularly known as the Cone Nebula. Imaged in penetrating infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope's newly operational NICMOS instrument, this young and massive star was found to be surrounded by six "baby" sun-like stars - all within less than a tenth of a light-year of their "big brother". The diffraction spikes and rings surrounding big brother are image artifacts. Astronomers believe that the high speed winds generated by the massive star compressed nearby material causing the formation of the smaller stars in a text book example of triggered star formation. The newly created suns appear to lie along an otherwise invisible boundary where the high speed gas has collided with the wall of a denser molecular cloud. NGC2264 IRS also seems to be the source of the outflow which created the striking cone shape of the optical nebula."
Copyright: Public domain
“Known for its spectacular images of Jupiter's moons, Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, the robot spacecraft Galileo has also aggressively explored the Jovian atmosphere. In December of 1995, Galileo's atmospheric probe descended into Jupiter's clouds and reported a surprising absence of water. It is now believed that the probe entered through one of Jupiter's dry spots, similar to the dark region in this image of the swirling Jovian cloud deck. The smallest features visible here are tens of miles in size. These dry regions appear to correspond to locations where winds converge creating downdrafts. The downdrafts generate local cloudless clearings through which Jupiter's deeper warmer layers can be glimpsed. Just as the dark areas are extremely dry, the surroundings are full of moisture. The contrast is analogous to the desert and tropics of Earth."
Copyright: Public domain
“Glowing gas clouds are streaming from the core of galaxy NGC4151 at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. A powerful tool, the Hubble Space Telescope's new STIS instrument, makes it possible to map out the cloud velocities - producing this false color "velocity map" for the central regions of NGC4151. The horizontal line is light from the intensely bright region near the galaxy nucleus. Emission at two wavelengths characteristic of Oxygen atoms in the gas clouds is visible along this line. Below the line the emission is displaced to the left, indicating motion toward us (blue shift); above the displacement is to the right indicating a receding motion (red shift). Where do the clouds come from? As evidence mounts, the widely accepted explanation for energetic nuclear activity in galaxies is based on material spiraling into a central black hole with over a million times the mass of our sun. The rotating disk of interstellar debris which develops is thought to blast out high velocity jets along the axis of the disk. Do all galaxies contain supermassive black holes?"
Copyright: Public domain
“What did our universe look like when it was young? To answer this, cosmologists run sophisticated computer programs tracking the locations of millions of particles. The above animated frame is the result of such a calculation and shows how our universe might have looked when it was just a fracton of its current age. The universe started out very smooth - matter and light are spread almost uniformly. As time progressed, gravity caused slight gatherings of mass to accrete so that ever greater conglomerations formed. Galaxies and long filaments formed - which are shown by the bright patches and streaks in the above frame. An IMAX movie including hundreds of these frames was nominated for an academy award."
Copyright: Public domain
“Robert H. Goddard, one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War Of The Worlds" and dreamed of spaceflight. By 1926 he had designed, built, and launched the world's first liquid fuel rocket. During his career he was ridiculed by the press for suggesting that rockets could be flown to the Moon, but he kept up his experiments in rocketry supported in part by the Smithsonian Institution and championed by Charles Lindbergh. Pictured above in 1937 in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, Goddard examines a nose cone and parachute from one of his test rockets. Widely recognized as a gifted experimenter and engineering genius, his rockets were many years ahead of their time. He died in 1945 holding over 200 patents in rocket technology. A liquid fuel rocket constructed on principles developed by Goddard landed humans on the Moon in 1969."
Copyright: Public domain
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