The Best Space Photos Of The Month
As we welcome a new year, satellites are zooming through space, snapping incredible pictures of Earth, the solar system and outer space. Here are the highlights from December.
Like a cosmic bull's-eye, [moons of Saturn] Enceladus and Tethys line up almost perfectly for Cassini's cameras. Since the two moons are not only aligned, but also at relatively similar distances from Cassini, the apparent sizes in this image are a good approximation of the relative sizes of Enceladus (313 miles or 504 kilometers across) and Tethys (660 miles or 1,062 kilometers across).
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured a unique view of Earth from the spacecraft's vantage point in orbit around the moon.
This enhanced color mosaic combines some of the sharpest views of Pluto that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft obtained during its July 14 flyby. The pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features smaller than half a city block on Pluto's surface.
This stunning, false-colour image captured by Sentinel-2A on 15 August features southern Mongolia, bordered by China to the south and Russia to the north.
A special patch of sky can be found close to the Big Dipper, in the northern constellation of Ursa Major, also known as the Great Bear. Appearing to contain no stars and hardly any gas clouds from our Milky Way galaxy, this region is called the Lockman Hole.
The two lightsabre-like streams crossing the image are jets of energised gas, ejected from the poles of a young star. If the jets collide with the surrounding gas and dust they can clear vast spaces, and create curved shock waves, seen as knotted clumps called Herbig-Haro objects.
The spiral galaxy NGC 7252 has a superficial resemblance to an atomic nucleus surrounded by the loops of electronic orbits, and was informally dubbed the "Atoms for Peace" galaxy. These loops are well visible in a wider field of view image.
Previously: November, October, September, August. For more stuff from Digg, check out our Originals.
