Robotic probes launched by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and
others are gathering information for us right now all across the solar
system. We currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Mercury,
Venus, Earth, Mars, and Saturn; several others on their way to smaller
bodies; and a few on their way out of the solar system entirely. On
Mars, a rover called Spirit has just been officially left for dead,
after two years of radio silence from it -- but its twin, Opportunity,
continues on its mission, now more than 2,500 days beyond its originally
planned 90-days. With all these eyes in the sky, I'd like to take the
opportunity to put together a photo album of our Solar system -- a set
of family portraits, of sorts -- as seen by our astronauts and
mechanical emissaries. [38 photos]
When a rather large-sized (M 3.6 class) flare occurred near the edge
of the Sun, it blew out a gorgeous, waving mass of erupting plasma that
swirled and twisted over a 90-minute period on February 24, 2011. This
event was captured in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA's Solar Dynamics
Observatory spacecraft . Some of the material blew out into space and
other portions fell back to the surface. (NASA/GSFC/SDO) #
A closeup of the solar surface. Part of the largest sunspot in Active
Region 10030 recorded on July 15, 2002, with the Swedish 1-m Solar
Telescope on La Palma. The width of the cells near the top of the image
are roughly 1,000 km. The central part of the sunspot ("the umbra")
looks dark because the strong magnetic fields there stop upwelling hot
gas from the solar interior. The thread-like structures surrounding the
umbra make up the penumbra. Dark cores are clearly visible in some of
the bright penumbral filaments that stick out into the umbra. (Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences) #
NASA's SOHO satellite watched as a fairly bright comet dove towards
the Sun in a white streak and was not seen again after its close
encounter on May 10-11, 2011. In this coronagraph the Sun (represented
by a white circle) is blocked by the red occulting disk so that the
faint structures in the Sun's corona can be discerned. Interestingly, a
coronal mass ejection blasted out to the right just as the comet is
approaching the Sun. Scientists, however, have yet to find a convincing
physical connection between sun-grazing comets and coronal mass
ejections. In fact, analysis of this CME using images from the Solar
Dynamics Observatory shows that the CME erupted before the comet came
close enough to the solar surface to interact with strong magnetic
fields. (NASA/SOHO) #
On Oct. 6, 2008, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft successfully completed
its second flyby of Mercury. The next day, the images taken during the
flyby encounter began to be received back on Earth. The spectacular
image shown here is one of the first to be returned and shows a WAC
image of the departing planet taken about 90 minutes after the
spacecraft's closest approach to Mercury. The bright crater just south
of the center of the image is Kuiper, identified on images from the
Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) #
MESSENGER views Mercury's south pole and terminator from an altitude
of 10,240 km (6363 miles). The surface temperature in the upper part of
this image, bathed in light from the nearby Sun, is about 700 Kelvin
(430 °C, 800 °F). In the lower, unlit portion, temperatures can quickly
drop drastically to 110 Kelvin (-163 °C, -261 °F) some parts of the
poles never receive sunlight and remain at 90 Kelvin (-183 °C. -297 °F).
(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie
Institution of Washington) #
A view of The second planet from the Sun, Venus, as seen on June 5,
2007 as NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew past. Thick clouds of sulfuric
acid obscures the planet's surface completely, reflecting some sunlight
back into space, while trapping heat below in a 460 °C (860 °F)
greenhouse. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) #
A recent view of the Apollo 14 landing site -- acquired January 25,
2011 by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Tracks made 40 years ago by
NASA astronauts on February 5 and 6, 1971, are still visible,
undisturbed. The descent stage of lunar module Antares in center, image
width is 1,500 meters (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) #
This detailed, photo-like view of Earth is based largely on
observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite. This image focuses on the massive
Pacific Ocean, part of the important water ecosystem that covers 75% of
our home planet. This image was featured as part of a story on water at NASA's Earth Observatory. (NASA/Robert Simmon and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, based on MODIS data)#
Snowfall across 30 U.S. States last February shows snow from the Great
Plains to New England under the cold and clear skies that followed. The
storms made for a nice snowy satellite-view panorama in this February 3,
2011 GOES-13 satellite image captured at (11:45 a.m. EST). (NOAA/NASA
GOES Project)#
South Georgia is an arc-shaped island that lies some 2,000 kilometers
(1,200 miles) east of the southern tip of South America. Along South
Georgia's east coast, Neumayer Glacier snakes toward the ocean. The
Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite
captured this natural-color image of the glacier on January 4, 2009.
(NASA EO-1 team)#
On to Mars next - this image shows a remarkable double crater with a
shared rim and North-South trending ejecta deposits. These two craters
must have formed simultaneously. Image acquired in February, 2011 by
NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), a camera on
board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). (NASA/JPL/University of
Arizona)#
HiRISE peers down on Mars Rover Opportunity as it sits perched on the
edge of Santa Maria crater (visible as dark dot at top left of crater).
Opportunity's tracks can be seen faintly across the center, leading to
the right. This image was taken on March 1, 2011, after Opportunity had
spent several days studying the area. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) #
An area of Mars' Holden Crater, one of four candidate landing sites for
Curiosity, acquired on January 4, 2011. NASA is still deciding on the
final landing area for the next rover, the Mars Science Laboratory,
named Curiosity, scheduled to launch on November 25, 2011 and land on
Mars on August 6, 2012. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)#
This March 31, 2011 image of Mars rover Spirit shows it in it's final
resting spot. Sunlight glints off its surface, as it sits stuck in loose
sand, trapped for two years now. Over a year ago, its radio stopped
functioning, and just last Wednesday, may 25th, NASA engineers sent
their final signal to Spirit, hoping for a response, and receiving none.
(NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) #
This image shows the first, unprocessed image obtained by NASA's Dawn
spacecraft of it's target, the giant asteroid Vesta. It was obtained by
Dawn's framing camera on May 3, 2011, from a distance of about 1.2
million kilometers (750,000 miles). Vesta is inside the white glow at
the center of the image. The giant asteroid reflects so much sunlight
that its size is dramatically exaggerated at this exposure. Vesta is 330
miles (530 kilometers) in diameter and the second most massive object
in the asteroid belt. But, in Dawn's early approach images, Vesta only
appears approximately five pixels across in size. This and other images
help Dawn fine tune navigation during its approach to Vesta, with
arrival expected on July 16, 2011. (NASA/JPL)#
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