The Week's Coolest Space Photos
Every day satellites are zooming through space, snapping incredible pictures of Earth, the solar system and outer space. Here are the highlights from this week.
Giant Exoplanets And Dusty Debris Disks (Header Image)
This artist's rendering shows a giant exoplanet causing small bodies to collide in a disk of dust.
A study in The Astronomical Journal finds that giant exoplanets with long-period orbits are more likely to be found around young stars that have a disk of dust and debris than those without disks.
Juno Observes Jupiter, Io And Europa
This color-enhanced image of Jupiter and two of its largest moons — Io and Europa — was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the gas giant planet.
A Ripple On Mars
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Rover (MRO) has observed two types of wind (aeolian) features in Proctor Crater: large, dark features that are sand dunes, made up of basaltic particles, and smaller, light-toned ripples that we call "TAR," or "transverse aeolian ridges." The origin of the TARs is a mystery.
The Tarantula Nebula
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows both the spindly, spidery filaments of gas that inspired the region's name, and the intriguing structure of stacked "bubbles" that forms the so-called Honeycomb Nebula (to the lower left).
Decoding A Dark Splotch
Geologists aren't quite sure what to make of the dark splotch in the middle of this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) — one of several similar dark splotches that extend east and west for over 100 kilometers.