#PPOD: This view of Comet Halley's nucleus was obtained by the Halley Multicolor Camera (HMC) on board the Giotto spacecraft as it passed within 600 km of the comet nucleus on 13 March 1986. Credit: ESA/MPAe Lindau
#PPOD: To mark 20 years of ESA’s Mars Express, the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) team produced a global colour mosaic: Mars as never seen before. The mosaic reveals the planet’s surface colour and composition in spectacular detail. Darker grey-toned areas of Mars represent grey-black basaltic sands of volcanic origin; lighter patches show clay and sulphate minerals; and the large scar across the planet's face is Valles Marineris. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/G. Michael
#PPOD: The spectacular aurora borealis, or the “northern lights,” over Canada is sighted from the space station near the highest point of its orbital path. The station’s main solar arrays are seen in the left foreground. Credit: NASA
#PPOD: Amazing new images of Jupiter's moon Io have come down from NASA's Juno spacecraft! This one shows the volcanic world from only 2,800 kilometers away, which is the closest look we’ve gotten of Io in over 20 years of missions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
#PPOD: What better way to finish out the week than with this new image of Uranus taken by the JWST? Taken with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the picture shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The planet’s seasonal north polar cap gleams in a bright white, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity resolves Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings, including the Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
#PPOD: This is Iceland erupting! This image, taken from the air on 19 December, is nothing short of Hadean. The new eruption fissure is about four kilometers long, painting the frosted ground with the planet’s latest coat of magmatic paint. Credit: Icelandic Coast Guard
The Earth is seen beyond the limb of the Moon, taken from the Command Module of Apollo 17 on December 16, 1972. (From original NASA image # AS17-152-23274).
#PPOD: The HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this striking image of dunes near Nili Patera on #Mars. They have an elongated crescent form and are called “barchan dunes.” They are formed by the continuous action of the wind, blowing in the same direction, giving this particular shape. The orientation of these dunes tells us that the prevailing wind blows from the right to the left (east to west). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona; Susan Conway
#PPOD: Callisto as seen by the Galileo spacecraft on November 5, 1997. Callisto is Jupiter’s second-largest moon and the third-largest moon in our solar system. It’s about the same size as Mercury. Data from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s revealed Callisto may have a secret: a salty ocean beneath its surface. That finding put the once seemingly dead moon on the list of worlds that could possibly harbor life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ @tedstryk
Distracted with #AGU23 this week and almost forgot a wallpaper post! This golden ribbon is a symbol of one of Earth's earliest civilizations. Enjoy the Nile River as seen from the ISS. Evidence of technosignatures!
#PPOD: It's stars versus dust in the Carina Nebula and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing the dusty stellar nurseries in which they formed. About 7,500 ly distant, the featured image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and highlights an interior region of Carina known as HH1066 which spans nearly a light-year. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA); Franco Meconi (Terraza al Cosmos)
#PPOD: The remnant of supernova 1987A that occurred about 168,000 light-years away from Earth. The light from this supernova first reached us on February 23, 1987, with its brightness peaking in May of the same year. The image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Credit: NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colorado, Boulder), and P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
#PPOD: Pwyll crater is one of the few visible craters on Jupiter's moon Europa. This view was captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on Dec. 9, 1996, and processed by K. McGill and Jason Major. The central crater is about 25 km across. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/K. McGill and J. Major
#PPOD: On March 1, 2023, NASA’s Juno mission completed its 49th close flyby of Jupiter. As the spacecraft flew low over the giant planet’s cloud tops, its JunoCam instrument captured this look at bands of high-altitude haze forming above cyclones in an area known as Jet N7. Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson processed a raw image from the JunoCam instrument, enhancing the contrast and sharpness. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing: Björn Jónsson
#PPOD: This unusual view of the horizon of Mars was captured by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter using its THEMIS camera, in an operation that took engineers three months to plan. It’s taken from about 250 miles above the Martian surface – about the same altitude at which the International Space Station orbits Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
#PPOD: Aristarchus Crater lies in the northwest part of the Moon's near side. It is considered the brightest of the large formations on the lunar surface, with an albedo nearly double that of most lunar features. The feature is bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye and displays unusually bright features when viewed through a large telescope. The 40-km-wide crater is deeper than the Grand Canyon at 2.7 km deep! Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
#PPOD: Venus' nightside was photographed in the infrared and processed in false color for studying the atmosphere, as shown in this image captured by JAXA's AKATSUKI spacecraft back in September 2016. On the nightside, the spacecraft observed infrared light coming from the lower atmosphere through clouds. The shadow of the clouds can also be seen in the image. Here, bright and dark are reversed to show clouds in whitish color. Credit: JAXA/ISAS/DARTS
#PPOD: Taken by NASA's Curiosity rover with its Mastcam on sol 3386, 13 February 2022, as the rover was on its way up to Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. Blackcraig Butte is just one of several sedimentary structures imaged by the rover on its climb toward the Greenheugh Pediment. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS / @andrealuck
#PPOD: This 3D image of Ryugu was put together by Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist and guitarist for the British rock band Queen. The top and bottom are inverted compared to how we usually show the asteroid, and this photo has Ryugu’s south pole at the image top. The Otohime Saxum, which is a large boulder, is clearly visible.
Credit: JAXA, Univ of Tokyo, Kochi Univ, Rikkyo Univ, Nagoya Univ, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji Univ, Univ of Aizu, AIST; Claudia Manzoni, Brian May
#PPOD: The sun's first rays begin illuminating Earth's atmosphere in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the central United States. At far left, the city lights of Chicago, Illinois, are outlined by Lake Michigan. At far right, the city lights of the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area shine through the clouds. Credit: NASA / Jasmin Moghbeli
#PPOD: Pluto's approximately 50-km wide moon Nix was imaged by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. The red area is likely a region of tholin deposition and/or formation. Tholins are abiotic complex organic solids possibly produced when ultraviolet light from the faraway Sun breaks down molecules of methane that escape Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/J. Major
#PPOD: A possible place to look for life beyond Earth, the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa was imaged by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on December 16, 1997. This version is made from monochrome raw image data with color synthesized to approximate natural colors. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/J. Major
#PPOD: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this nadir (downward-looking) photograph of Parinacota and Pomerape, twin volcanoes in the Andes Mountains. The volcanoes compose the Nevados de Payachata volcanic group and form part of the border between Chile and Bolivia. Illuminated by early evening sunlight, the snow- and glacier-capped peaks cast long, distinct shadows. Credit: NASA
#PPOD: On June 25, NASA’s #JWST turned to famed ringed world #Saturn for its first near-infrared observations of the planet. The initial imagery from JWST's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) is already fascinating researchers. Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Andrea Luck
#PPOD: This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a hydrocarbon lake on Saturn's moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon's northern hemisphere. Credit: NASA/JPL/University Of Arizona/DLR