A Trip Around Our Solar System
| May 27, 2011 | 0 |
Robotic probes launched by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and others are gathering information for us right now all across the solar system. We currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Saturn; several others on their way to smaller bodies; and a few on their way out of the solar system entirely. On Mars, a rover called Spirit has just been officially left for dead, after two years of radio silence from it -- but its twin, Opportunity, continues on its mission, now more than 2,500 days beyond its originally planned 90-days. With all these eyes in the sky, I'd like to take the opportunity to put together a photo album of our Solar system -- a set of family portraits, of sorts -- as seen by our astronauts and mechanical emissaries. [38 photos]
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NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite captures an image of the Earth's moon crossing in front of the Sun, on May 3, 2011. (NASA/GSFC/SDO) 
When a rather large-sized (M 3.6 class) flare occurred near the edge of the Sun, it blew out a gorgeous, waving mass of erupting plasma that swirled and twisted over a 90-minute period on February 24, 2011. This event was captured in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft . Some of the material blew out into space and other portions fell back to the surface. (NASA/GSFC/SDO) #
A closeup of the solar surface. Part of the largest sunspot in Active Region 10030 recorded on July 15, 2002, with the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope on La Palma. The width of the cells near the top of the image are roughly 1,000 km. The central part of the sunspot ("the umbra") looks dark because the strong magnetic fields there stop upwelling hot gas from the solar interior. The thread-like structures surrounding the umbra make up the penumbra. Dark cores are clearly visible in some of the bright penumbral filaments that stick out into the umbra. (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) #
NASA's SOHO satellite watched as a fairly bright comet dove towards the Sun in a white streak and was not seen again after its close encounter on May 10-11, 2011. In this coronagraph the Sun (represented by a white circle) is blocked by the red occulting disk so that the faint structures in the Sun's corona can be discerned. Interestingly, a coronal mass ejection blasted out to the right just as the comet is approaching the Sun. Scientists, however, have yet to find a convincing physical connection between sun-grazing comets and coronal mass ejections. In fact, analysis of this CME using images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows that the CME erupted before the comet came close enough to the solar surface to interact with strong magnetic fields. (NASA/SOHO) #
On Oct. 6, 2008, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft successfully completed its second flyby of Mercury. The next day, the images taken during the flyby encounter began to be received back on Earth. The spectacular image shown here is one of the first to be returned and shows a WAC image of the departing planet taken about 90 minutes after the spacecraft's closest approach to Mercury. The bright crater just south of the center of the image is Kuiper, identified on images from the Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) #
MESSENGER views Mercury's south pole and terminator from an altitude of 10,240 km (6363 miles). The surface temperature in the upper part of this image, bathed in light from the nearby Sun, is about 700 Kelvin (430 °C, 800 °F). In the lower, unlit portion, temperatures can quickly drop drastically to 110 Kelvin (-163 °C, -261 °F) some parts of the poles never receive sunlight and remain at 90 Kelvin (-183 °C. -297 °F). (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) #
A view of The second planet from the Sun, Venus, as seen on June 5, 2007 as NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew past. Thick clouds of sulfuric acid obscures the planet's surface completely, reflecting some sunlight back into space, while trapping heat below in a 460 °C (860 °F) greenhouse. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) #
A recent view of the Apollo 14 landing site -- acquired January 25, 2011 by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Tracks made 40 years ago by NASA astronauts on February 5 and 6, 1971, are still visible, undisturbed. The descent stage of lunar module Antares in center, image width is 1,500 meters (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) #
This detailed, photo-like view of Earth is based largely on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite. This image focuses on the massive Pacific Ocean, part of the important water ecosystem that covers 75% of our home planet. This image was featured as part of a story on water at NASA's Earth Observatory. (NASA/Robert Simmon and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, based on MODIS data)#
Snowfall across 30 U.S. States last February shows snow from the Great Plains to New England under the cold and clear skies that followed. The storms made for a nice snowy satellite-view panorama in this February 3, 2011 GOES-13 satellite image captured at (11:45 a.m. EST). (NOAA/NASA GOES Project)#
South Georgia is an arc-shaped island that lies some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) east of the southern tip of South America. Along South Georgia's east coast, Neumayer Glacier snakes toward the ocean. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image of the glacier on January 4, 2009. (NASA EO-1 team)#
On to Mars next - this image shows a remarkable double crater with a shared rim and North-South trending ejecta deposits. These two craters must have formed simultaneously. Image acquired in February, 2011 by NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), a camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)#
HiRISE peers down on Mars Rover Opportunity as it sits perched on the edge of Santa Maria crater (visible as dark dot at top left of crater). Opportunity's tracks can be seen faintly across the center, leading to the right. This image was taken on March 1, 2011, after Opportunity had spent several days studying the area. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) #
An area of Mars' Holden Crater, one of four candidate landing sites for Curiosity, acquired on January 4, 2011. NASA is still deciding on the final landing area for the next rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, named Curiosity, scheduled to launch on November 25, 2011 and land on Mars on August 6, 2012. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)#
This March 31, 2011 image of Mars rover Spirit shows it in it's final resting spot. Sunlight glints off its surface, as it sits stuck in loose sand, trapped for two years now. Over a year ago, its radio stopped functioning, and just last Wednesday, may 25th, NASA engineers sent their final signal to Spirit, hoping for a response, and receiving none. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) #
This image shows the first, unprocessed image obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft of it's target, the giant asteroid Vesta. It was obtained by Dawn's framing camera on May 3, 2011, from a distance of about 1.2 million kilometers (750,000 miles). Vesta is inside the white glow at the center of the image. The giant asteroid reflects so much sunlight that its size is dramatically exaggerated at this exposure. Vesta is 330 miles (530 kilometers) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. But, in Dawn's early approach images, Vesta only appears approximately five pixels across in size. This and other images help Dawn fine tune navigation during its approach to Vesta, with arrival expected on July 16, 2011. (NASA/JPL)#
