The Week's Coolest Space Images
Obscuring The Brightest Star In The Sky (Header Image)
Dazzling stars like Sirius are both a blessing and a curse for astronomers. Their bright appearance provides plenty of light to study their properties, but also outshines other celestial sources that happen to lie in the same patch of sky. This is why Sirius has been masked in this picture taken by amateur astronomer Harald Kaiser on 10 January from Karlsruhe, a city in the southwest of Germany.
A Space Oddity
On Tuesday, Elon Musk launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit. Yes, an actual car launched at a speed of 18,000 mph and was cruising around Earth.
A Contrast Between Saturn's Two Moons
In this view, Saturn's icy moon Rhea passes in front of Titan as seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Some of the differences between the two large moons are readily apparent. While Rhea is a heavily-cratered, airless world, Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere is even thicker than Earth's.
Crater Tadpoles
This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows an impact crater looking amusingly like a tadpole because of the valley that was carved by water that used to fill it.
The TRAPPIST-1 Planets (Illustration)
This illustration shows the seven Earth-size planets of TRAPPIST-1, an exoplanet system about 40 light-years away, based on data current as of February 2018. The image shows the planets' relative sizes but does not represent their orbits to scale. The art highlights possibilities for how the surfaces of these intriguing worlds might look based on their newly calculated properties.
A Spotless Sun
The sun has had no sunspots for almost two weeks (as of Feb. 1, 2018) and just has a single, tiny one that appeared on Jan. 31, 2018… This spotless period is a prelude to the approaching period of solar minimum next year, when the sun's activity will be at the low end of its 11-year cycle.
Mars' Dark Streak
This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows streaks forming on slopes when dust cascades downhill. The dark streak is an area of less dust compared to the brighter and reddish surroundings. What triggers these avalanches is not known, but might be related to sudden warming of the surface.
Record-Breaking Image In The Kuiper Belt
These December 2017 false-color images of KBOs 2012 HZ84 (left) and 2012 HE85 are, for now, the farthest from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft. They're also the closest-ever images of Kuiper Belt objects.
Juno Completes Tenth Science Orbit Of Jupiter
This image of Jupiter's southern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed a close flyby of the gas giant planet on Dec. 16.
