The Regolith of Asteroid Eros Credit: NEAR Project, JHU APL, NASA Explanation: From fifty kilometers above asteroid Eros, the surface inside one of its largest craters appears covered with an unusual substance: regolith. The thickness and composition of the surface dust that is regolith remains a topic of much research. Much of the regolith on 433 Eros was probably created by numerous small impacts during its long history. In this representative-color view taken by the robot spacecraft NEAR-SHOEMAKER that orbited Eros in 2000 and 2001, brown areas indicate regolith that has been chemically altered by exposure to the solar wind during micrometeorite impacts. White areas are thought to have undergone relatively less exposure. The boulders visible inside the crater appear brown, indicating either that they are old enough to have a surface itself tanned by the solar wind, or that they have somehow become covered with some dark surface dust. This July, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will orbit giant main belt asteroid Vesta.
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The Regolith of Asteroid Eros 
Credit: NEAR Project, JHU APL, NASA

Explanation: From fifty kilometers above asteroid Eros, the surface inside one of its largest craters appears covered with an unusual substance: regolith. The thickness and composition of the surface dust that is regolith remains a topic of much research. Much of the regolith on 433 Eros was probably created by numerous small impacts during its long history. In this representative-color view taken by the robot spacecraft NEAR-SHOEMAKER that orbited Eros in 2000 and 2001, brown areas indicate regolith that has been chemically altered by exposure to the solar wind during micrometeorite impacts. White areas are thought to have undergone relatively less exposure. The boulders visible inside the crater appear brown, indicating either that they are old enough to have a surface itself tanned by the solar wind, or that they have somehow become covered with some dark surface dust. This July, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will orbit giant main belt asteroid Vesta.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

Mercury’s Surface in Exaggerated Color Credit: NASA/JHU APL/CIW Explanation: The robotic MESSENGER spacecraft recently completed over 100 orbits of Mercury. Messenger’s cameras have recorded detailed pictures utilizing eight different colors across visible and near infrared light, exploring the surface composition and looking for clues to the history and evolution of the solar system’s innermost planet. This sharp image combines three of the MESSENGER wide angle camera’s colors, but in exaggerated fashion. Otherwise, to the unaided human eye, Mercury’s surface colors would appear comparatively muted. The image is about 1,000 kilometers across and features as small as a single kilometer are discernible at the original resolution. Today, the Messenger project will release new images and science findings from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.
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Mercury’s Surface in Exaggerated Color 
Credit: NASA/JHU APL/CIW

Explanation: The robotic MESSENGER spacecraft recently completed over 100 orbits of Mercury. Messenger’s cameras have recorded detailed pictures utilizing eight different colors across visible and near infrared light, exploring the surface composition and looking for clues to the history and evolution of the solar system’s innermost planet. This sharp image combines three of the MESSENGER wide angle camera’s colors, but in exaggerated fashion. Otherwise, to the unaided human eye, Mercury’s surface colors would appear comparatively muted. The image is about 1,000 kilometers across and features as small as a single kilometer are discernible at the original resolution. Today, the Messenger project will release new images and science findings from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

The Universe Nearby Credit: 2MASS, T. H. Jarrett, J. Carpenter, & R. Hurt Explanation: What does the universe nearby look like? This plot shows nearly 50,000 galaxies in the nearby universe detected by the Two Micron All Sky Survey(2MASS) in infrared light. The resulting image is an incredible tapestry of galaxies that provides limits on how the universe formed and evolved. The dark band across the image center is blocked by dust in the plane of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Away from the Galactic plane, however, each dot represents a galaxy, color coded to indicate distance. Bluer dots represent the nearer galaxies in the 2MASS survey, while redder dots indicating the more distant survey galaxies that lie at aredshift near 0.1. Named structures are annotated around the edges. Many galaxies are gravitationally bound together to form clusters, which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters, which in turn are sometimes seen to align over even larger scale structures.
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The Universe Nearby 
Credit: 2MASS, T. H. Jarrett, J. Carpenter, & R. Hurt

Explanation: What does the universe nearby look like? This plot shows nearly 50,000 galaxies in the nearby universe detected by the Two Micron All Sky Survey(2MASS) in infrared light. The resulting image is an incredible tapestry of galaxies that provides limits on how the universe formed and evolved. The dark band across the image center is blocked by dust in the plane of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Away from the Galactic plane, however, each dot represents a galaxy, color coded to indicate distance. Bluer dots represent the nearer galaxies in the 2MASS survey, while redder dots indicating the more distant survey galaxies that lie at aredshift near 0.1. Named structures are annotated around the edges. Many galaxies are gravitationally bound together to form clusters, which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters, which in turn are sometimes seen to align over even larger scale structures.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

M64: The Sleeping Beauty Galaxy Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), S. Smartt (IoA) & D. Richstone (U. Michigan) et al. Explanation: The Sleeping Beauty galaxy may appear peaceful at first sight but it is actually tossing and turning. In an unexpected twist, recent observations have shown that the gas in the outer regions of this photogenic spiral is rotating in the opposite direction from all of the stars! Collisions between gas in the inner and outer regions are creating many hot blue stars and pink emission nebula. The above image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2001 and released in 2004. The fascinating internal motions of M64, also cataloged as NGC 4826, are thought to be the result of a collision between a small galaxy and a large galaxy where the resultant mix has not yet settled down.
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M64: The Sleeping Beauty Galaxy 
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), S. Smartt (IoA) & D. Richstone (U. Michigan) et al.

Explanation: The Sleeping Beauty galaxy may appear peaceful at first sight but it is actually tossing and turning. In an unexpected twist, recent observations have shown that the gas in the outer regions of this photogenic spiral is rotating in the opposite direction from all of the stars! Collisions between gas in the inner and outer regions are creating many hot blue stars and pink emission nebula. The above image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2001 and released in 2004. The fascinating internal motions of M64, also cataloged as NGC 4826, are thought to be the result of a collision between a small galaxy and a large galaxy where the resultant mix has not yet settled down.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

The Sun Unleashed NASA / Goddard / SDO AIA Team Explanation: On June 7, the Sun unleashed only a medium sized solar flare as rotation carried active regions of sunpots toward the solar limb. But that flare was followed by an astounding gush of magnetized plasma seen erupting at the Sun’s edge in this extreme ultraviolet image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.Spectacular movies of the event follow the darker, cooler plasma over a period of hours as it rains down across a broad area of the Sun’s surface, arcing along otherwise invisible magnetic field lines. An associated coronal mass ejection, a massive cloud of high energy particles, was blasted in the general direction of the Earth and may have already triggered auroral activity after a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetosphere.
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The Sun Unleashed 
NASA / Goddard / SDO AIA Team

Explanation: On June 7, the Sun unleashed only a medium sized solar flare as rotation carried active regions of sunpots toward the solar limb. But that flare was followed by an astounding gush of magnetized plasma seen erupting at the Sun’s edge in this extreme ultraviolet image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.Spectacular movies of the event follow the darker, cooler plasma over a period of hours as it rains down across a broad area of the Sun’s surface, arcing along otherwise invisible magnetic field lines. An associated coronal mass ejection, a massive cloud of high energy particles, was blasted in the general direction of the Earth and may have already triggered auroral activity after a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetosphere.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

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