Stargazing with NASA: Images of Mars’ snowy dunes to dwarf galaxy

Time & Us
Last Updated: August 27, 2017 at 3:05 am

New delhi: A corner of NASA’s website is called ‘photo of the day’. Here images captured by the space agency’s telescopes and spacecraft captured are featured: from hurricanes to solar eclipse. Here is a selection of NASA’s photos. On August 25, 2017, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer photographed Hurricane Harvey from the cupola module aboard the International Space Station as it intensified on its way toward the Texas coast. The Expedition 52 crew on the station has been tracking this storm for the past two days and capturing Earth observation photographs and videos. As millions of people across the United States experienced a total eclipse as the umbra, or moon’s shadow passed over them, only six people witnessed the umbra from space. The space station crossed the path of the eclipse three times as it orbited above the continental United States at an altitude of 250 miles. This composite image shows the progression of a partial solar eclipse over Ross Lake, in Northern Cascades National Park, Washington on Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. This striking Jovian vista was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The NGC 5949 dwarf galaxy is at a distance of around 44 million light years from Earth–that’s near, according to astronomners. Its called a dwarf due to its relatively small number of constituent stars. Despite its small proportions, NGC 5949’s proximity has meant that its light can be picked up by fairly small telescopes. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of solar evaporation ponds outside the city of Moab, Utah. There are 23 colorful ponds spread across 400 acres. They are part of a large operation to mine potassium chloride—more commonly referred to as muriate of potash —from ore buried underground. From his vantage point aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik pointed his camera toward the rising Moon and captured this beautiful image on August 3, 2017. “Gorgeous moon rise! Such great detail when seen from space. Next full moon marks #Eclipse2017. We’ll be watching from @Space_Station,” Bresnik wrote.

On July 5, 2017, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory watched an active region — an area of intense and complex magnetic fields — rotate into view on the Sun. This image shows a blended view of the sunspot in visible and extreme ultraviolet light, revealing bright coils arcing over the active region –particles spiraling along magnetic field lines. NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik looks through the hatch of the International Space Station’s Bigelow Expandable Aerospace Module (BEAM) on July 31, 2017. The BEAM is an experimental expandable module just over halfway into its planned two-year demonstration on the space station.