The Week's Coolest Space Images
Naples At Night (Header Image)
Crew aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of the city lights of Naples and the Campania region of southern Italy. The Naples region is one of the brightest in the country; roughly three million people live in and around this metropolitan area.
All Aglow
Saturn's moon Enceladus drifts before the rings, which glow brightly in the sunlight. Beneath its icy exterior shell, Enceladus hides a global ocean of liquid water. Just visible at the moon's south pole (at bottom here) is the plume of water ice particles and other material that constantly spews from that ocean via fractures in the ice.
Kwanzaa Tholus On Ceres
What is a tholus? A tholus is a type of small mountain. These images show such a feature on dwarf planet Ceres called Kwanzaa Tholus.
The Broken Berg
In September 2017, a new iceberg calved from Pine Island Glacier — one of the main outlets where the West Antarctic Ice Sheet flows into the ocean. Just weeks later, the berg named B-44 shattered into more than 20 fragments. On December 15, 2017, the Landsat 8 Earth-orbitng [sic] satellite took this image of the broken berg.
The Sky Around π1 Gruis
This colourful image shows the sky around the bright pair of stars π1 Gruis (centre-right, very red) and π2 Gruis (centre-left, bluish-white).