Planetary Picture of the Day
Week of April 04, 2022
A comet landscape, a colorful nebula, Saturn and Mars.
Monday, April 4, 2022
Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton, J. Toalá & D. Goldman
Crescent Nebula
A young massive star that began life around 25 times more massive than our own Sun is shedding shells of material and fast winds to create this dynamic scene captured by ESA's XMM-Newton.
The image shows the detailed structure of the Crescent Nebula that shed a shell of material as it expanded into a red giant some 200,000 years ago. Fast winds emitted more recently have now collided with that material, causing the gasses in the bubble to heat up and emit X-rays, seen as blue in the image.
Other features can also be seen, such as the green hue, generated by oxygen atoms, where the star's wind is interacting with the surrounding interstellar medium.
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA; J. Roger
Comet Landscape
This image shows a portion of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as viewed by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft on 22 September 2014, only one and a half months after the spacecraft had made its rendezvous with the comet. At the time, the spacecraft was 28.2 km from the comet center (around 26.2 km from the surface). Amateur astronomer Jacint Roger Perez, from Spain, selected and processed this view by combining three images taken in different wavelengths by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on Rosetta.
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Credit: Emirates Mars Mission / EXI / Jason Major
Mars from Hope
A view of Mars made from images captured with the EXI camera aboard the UAE's Hope Mars Mission on November 22, 2021, from a distance of about 20,100 kilometers. North on Mars here is to the upper left.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
View of an Alien Copper-Colored Ring World
Fifteen years ago, in early 2007, the Cassini spacecraft, part of the international NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, captured some never-before-seen views of the planet from perspectives high above and below the rings. The view is a mosaic of 27 images taken with Cassini's wide-angle camera.
Friday, April 8, 2022
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
Defrosting Dunes in Matara Crater
The defrosting patterns and aerodynamic shapes of high-latitude dunes make great pictures. This is the latest of a series of images to monitor gully activity in the late winter season. Matara is about 48 kilometers in diameter, located in Noachis Terra, an extensive southern landmass to the west of the Hellas impact basin. (Image is less than 1 km across).
