The Week's Coolest Space Images
The Heart Of The Lagoon Nebula (Top Image)
At the center of this image is a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun that is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust. This mayhem is all happening at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 4,000 light-years away, visible in binoculars as merely a smudge of light with a bright core.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Spotted
The color-enhanced image is a combination of three separate images taken on April 1 between 3:09 am PDT (6:09 am EDT) and 3:24 am PDT (6:24 am EDT), as Juno performed its 12th close flyby of Jupiter.
Moon's Orientale Basin
The Moon's Orientale basin is a massive lunar crater, about the size of Texas. Here, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) terrain map combines with surface gravity measurements from the GRAIL mission. This data reveals structure in the lunar crust, beneath the surface, giving us a window on the geologic features of the Moon's interior.
The City Of Hyderabad, India
The Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over southern India to the capital of Telangana: Hyderabad. Home to almost seven million people and covering about 650 sq km, Hyderabad is one of the largest metropolitan areas in India. It lies on the banks of the Musi River, which can be seen running across the middle of the image.
Probing Mars
Searching for signs of ice on Mars is complex. To explore whether ice lurks beneath the surface of the Red Planet, ESA's Mars Express uses its radar to probe the interior.
The Launch Of CHESS 4 Mission
The Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph, or CHESS 4, was successfully launched on a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket at 12:47 p.m. EDT, April 16 (4:47 a.m. local, April 17) from the Kwajalein Atoll in The Republic of the Marshall Islands. The CHESS 4 mission will study the interstellar medium, the matter between stars.