The Week's Best 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.
Top image:
This illustration shows the final stages in the life of a supermassive star that fails to explode as a supernova, but instead implodes to form a black hole.
Jupiter's Southern Lights
The complexity and richness of Jupiter's "southern lights" (also known as auroras) are on display in this animation of false-color maps from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Auroras result when energetic electrons from the magnetosphere crash into the molecular hydrogen in the Jovian upper atmosphere.
The Sun's Magnetic Areas
Active regions are, by their nature, strong magnetic areas with north and south poles. The plasma consists of charged particles that stream along the magnetic field lines between these two regions. These connecting lines are clearly visible in this wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light.
Jupiter's Mysterious South Pole
Early science results from NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet's surface than previously thought.
The Changes In Saturn's Polar Hexagon
These natural color views from NASA's Cassini spacecraft compare the appearance of Saturn's north-polar region in June 2013 and April 2017.
In both views, Saturn's polar hexagon dominates the scene. The comparison shows how clearly the color of the region changed in the interval between the two views, which represents the latter half of Saturn's northern hemisphere spring.
For more great outer space photos, check out our selection of the best space photos from last week.
