Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Images like this high-resolution beauty from NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite will help us monitor our changing Earth.

Africa figures prominently in this image. You can zip from the central Sahara, across the Red Sea and to the foothills of the Himalayas in the image, exploring storm systems along the way. This ‘Blue Marble’ image of Earth is a composite of many swaths taken by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite instrument (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP. The satellite was renamed Suomi NPP January 24, 2012 in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi of the Univesity of Wisconsin. The swaths are visible as the regularly spaced vertical areas of gray across the image. These are the brighter eastward edges of the images. The lightening is caused by sunglint from the ocean. The same sun reflection is seen by astronauts from aboard the ISS. Edge brightening, common in satellite images of Earth, has been removed.

Download this image at NASA Goddard’s Flickr site. The original is a hefty 11000x11000 pixels. Thankfully, there are smaller sizes available. Our beautiful planet is worth the look.

Send as an ECard

Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Images like this high-resolution beauty from NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite will help us monitor our changing Earth.

Dive across the Western Hemisphere from western California to the Yucatan Peninsula. This ‘Blue Marble’ image of Earth is a composite of many swaths taken by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite instrument (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP. The satellite was renamed Suomi NPP January 24, 2012 in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi of the Univesity of Wisconsin.

You can download this to update the background of your mobile device at NASA Goddard’s Flickr site. The original used to make this zoom is a bandwidth-bending 8000x8000 pixels. Thankfully, there are smaller sizes available.

Send as an ECard

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

I just had to share this latest 3D image of Tharsis Tholis from ESA’s Mars Express.

On Earth Tharsis Tholus would be a giant. It towers 8 km above the surrounding terrain, with a base stretching over 155 x 125 km. But on Mars, it is just an average-sized volcano. What is unusual about this volcano is its battered condition. It is thought the volcano emptied its magma chamber during eruptions. This left the ceiling unsupported and it collapsed, dropping as much as 2.7 km. Stereoscopic glasses (red/blue) are required to see the 3D effect.

Credit: ESO/Oleg Maliy

Something about this image of the spiral galaxy Messier 96 from the European Southern Observatory has me awestruck.

Explore the glowing core, delicate swirls and dark dust lanes of this off-center galaxy. What stories do you see? Leave a note below.

The spiral arms and core of Messier 96, also known as NGC 3368, are not distributed evenly. The spiral galaxy is about the size of the Milky Way and spans about 100,000 light-years. The warped arms are probably caused by gravity interactions with other galaxies. Other signs of past galactic encounters are the long and looping spiral arms of young blue stars. Gas and dust within the spiral arms gets pushed and pulled like taffy. As nebula get smashed together, new stars can form.

A number of background galaxies peep through the dusty disk of M96. My favorite is the reddish edge-on spiral galaxy above and to the left of M96’s core. The reddish color is due to the thick dust in the spiral arm. We see this effect on Earth as the sun sets. Thick atmosphere and dust scatter the light letting the reddish part of the spectrum through.

Messier 96 is the largest galaxy in the Leo 1 group of galaxies. This group is one of the closest galaxy clusters to our Milky Way Galaxy. It is found about 35 million light-years away toward the constellation Leo, the Lion.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Gravity sculpts time and space into an arc in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a deep view of the universe.

Explore this image of LRG-4–606. What stories or patterns do you see? Leave a note below.

LRG stands for Luminous Red Galaxy. Scientists gave it this name because of the large cluster of bright red galaxies found in this image. Most of the galaxies are giant elliptical galaxies with huge numbers of old stars. As you explore the image look for the numerous faraway galaxies. Each of these huge galaxies are made up of billions of stars; stars just like our Sun, smaller stars and giant stars. There are hundreds of billions of stars in this image. The bright star on the right side of the image is found within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The rays shooting from the star are created by the lenses and mirrors of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The most dramatic part of this image is to the left. Look for the arc of light. The red elliptical galaxy is so massive and with such strong gravity that it bends the light of galaxies behind it. Astronomers call this gravitational lensing. The elliptical galaxy curves and sculpts the fabric of space and time. Gravity is bending and brightening the light from the blue background galaxies. The special alignment of the far-off galaxy and the elliptical galaxy make for a near-perfect half-circle of light. If you look closer, other smaller arcs can be seen. Each of these arcs is another galaxy on the far side of the red elliptical galaxy.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

A odd-shaped whorl of gas and dust surround a star that has reached the end of its life.

Explore IRAS 22036+5306 in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. What stories do you see? Leave a note below.

IRAS 22036+5306 is transitioning from an old star to planetary nebula. First it becomes a protoplanetary nebula. Hidden in the thick veil of dust is a hot central star. It has burned all of it hydrogen fuel and has puffed off its outer layers in a torus around the star. This star spits jets of material from the north and south poles. This bubble of gas and dust will expand. For now, light from the dense and hot central star reflects off of the expanding cloud. Eventually, strong stellar winds will cause the bubble to expand. Searing radiation from the dead star will excite atoms within the cloud and it will begin to glow with vivid colors. At this stage in its life it will transform into a planetary nebula. In another four billion years our Sun will enter this phase of its life so scientists are working hard to understand the process.

IRAS 22036+5306 is found about 6,500 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Cepheus, the King.

Astronomers have caught only a few hundred stars in this stage of their lives.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

A tiny sliver of sky holds thousands of galaxies in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the tiny slice of the Universe called the Extended Groth Strip. How many galaxies can you count?

The area of the image covers a tiny piece of the sky; about the size of a finger held out at arms’ length. This part of the sky contains about 50,000 galaxies. Some galaxies, such as the one in the center show graceful spiral arms. Some edge-on galaxies are seen along with fuzzy elliptical galaxies. Other galaxies in this image have odd shapes.

The Strip is named after Princeton astronomer Edward Groth. It is a picture of a rectangular area of the sky in the constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear, or Big Dipper. The farthest galaxies in the image are eight billion years old; twice as old as our solar system. Looking deep into the Universe allows astronomers a chance to see how galaxies evolve over time.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

A sun in the constellation of Orion shines across the reflection nebula in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the billowing waves of dust and soft shades of color in this image. What stories or patterns does your imagination see? Leave a note below.

NGC 2023 is a vast nebula near the more well-known Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula. The nebula reflects the bright starlight from a massive hot, blue star. We see its bright light in the upper left part of the image shining across Hubble’s optics. To the right side of the image, zoom into the greenish clump of gas and dust. Astronomers think this is the signature of a new star being formed. They call these unusual regions Herbig-Haro objects. Gas is shot out at high-speed from newly formed stars. When the gas slams into the colder nebula surrounding the stars, it heats up and glows.

It would take nearly four years to cross NGC 2023 in a spaceship zipping along at six trillion miles per year or the speed of light. If we flew off toward the constellation of Orion, the Hunter, in our lightspeed traveling ship, we would reach the nebula in about 1,500 years.

Credit: NASA/ESA

A dwarf irregular galaxy blows galactic bubbles in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the arcs of pink glowing gas in this image. What stories or pictures does your imagination see? Leave a note below.

Holmberg II is an irregular dwarf galaxy that is only about 11 million light-years from Earth. It is part of the M81 Galaxy Group. Cosmically speaking, this galaxy is pretty close and offers astronomers a great peek at how stars form. Huge bubbles of glowing hydrogen gas dominate this small galaxy. We see similar glowing star clouds in our galaxy, such as the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation or the Orion Nebula. Nebulae like these are rich in material needed for creating new stars. Usually the first stars to form from these clouds of gas and dust are huge, massive stars. These stars are much larger than our Sun and live short lives. They burn through their supply of hydrogen fuel in just a few million years. After they exhaust their fuel, the huge stars collapse on themselves. This collapse causes the star to burn much hotter and the star explodes as a supernova. Supernovae are violent explosions that give off so much energy that they can outshine an entire galaxy for short periods of time. The huge bubbles in Holmberg II; the largest is more than 5,500 light-years across, are really cavities blown out by shockwaves from supernova explosions. The shockwaves will push more gas and dust together where new stars can be created.

As you explore the starfields of Holmberg II look for the many far-away galaxies in the background. Like Holmberg II and our own Milky Way Galaxy, these galaxies also are home to huge clouds of gas that create new stars.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Tuning forks on tuning forks cross Mars in this image from HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Explore the snaking dunes in this image. What stories or pictures does your imagination make in the shifting sands of Mars? Leave a note below.

Wind is a main force on Mars stirring up dust devils and sometimes global dust storms. Typically, wind on Mars creates fascinating dune fields. Many types of dunes are seen in this image from the mid latitudes of Mars. The long ridges of sand are called linear dunes. On Earth, these dunes can extend for more than a hundred kilometers. They form when the wind blows from two directions. In this image, the wind seems to blow from bottom to top and from the side. As time passes, these dunes will move slowly along the surface acting like a snake as they move. Some dunes merge to form Y-shaped dunes; the tuning forks we see in the image.

As you zoom into the dunes, look for star-shaped dunes, crescent-shaped dunes and smaller ripples on the larger dunes. In the lower left-hand corner of the image, look for a crater that is nearly filled with sand and dunes.

Launched with MRO in 2005, HiRISE is one of six instruments aboard the spacecraft orbiting Mars. HiRISE’s cameras can see objects on the surface as small as a beach ball. The camera also offers scientists stereo views of the surface.