NASA·每日一图

The galaxy known as NGC 5907 stretches wide across this image. Appearing as an elongated line of stars and dark dust, the galaxy is categorized as a spiral galaxy just like our own Milky Way. In this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, we don’t see the beautiful spiral arms because we are viewing it edge-on, like looking at the rim of a plate. It is for this reason that NGC 5907 is also known as the Knife Edge galaxy. The Knife Edge galaxy is about 50 million light-years from Earth, lying in the northern constellation of Draco. Although not visible in this image, ghostly streams of stars on large arching loops extend into space, circling around the galaxy; they are believed to…

As nuclear fusion engines, most stars live placid lives for hundreds of millions to billions of years. But near the end of their lives they can turn into crazy whirligigs, puffing off shells and jets of hot gas. In this image NGC 7027 resembles a jewel bug, an insect with a brilliantly colorful metallic shell. Recently, NGC 7027’s central star was identified in a new wavelength of light — near-ultraviolet — for the first time by using Hubble’s unique capabilities. The near-ultraviolet observations will help reveal how much dust obscures the star and how hot the star really is. This object is a visibly diffuse region of gas and dust that may be the result of ejections by closely orbiting binary stars that were first…

NASA astronauts (from top) Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken work on U.S. spacesuits inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock. The two are slated to conduct spacewalks on Friday, June 26, and Wednesday, July 1, to begin the replacement of batteries for one of the power channels on the orbiting laboratory. The spacewalking astronauts will replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for one of two power channels on the far starboard truss (S6 Truss) of the station with new lithium-ion batteries that arrived to the station on a Japanese cargo ship last month. The battery replacement work is the culmination of power upgrade spacewalks that began in January 2017. Image Credit: NASA 美国国家航空航天局的宇航员（顶部）克里斯·卡西迪（Chris Cassidy）和罗伯特·贝肯（Robert Behnken）在国际空间站的探索气舱内研究美国宇航服。他们两人将于6月26日(周五)和7月1日(周三)进行太空行走，以开始为轨道实验室中的一个电源通道更换电池。 太空行走的宇航员将用新的锂离子电池替换空间站远右板桁架(S6桁架)上两个动力通道中的一个老化的镍氢电池，这些电池是上个月由一艘日本货船运至空间站的。更换电池的工作是2017年1月开始的太空行走中能源升级的高潮。 影像来源：NASA

Pilots Troy Asher and Stu Broce walk out of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center’s (AFRC) hangar in Palmdale, California, toward the flight line. In addition to aeronautics research, Flight Operations personnel support such missions as the Mars Perseverance Rover, slated to launch in July 2020. Armstrong’s Building 703 in Palmdale opened in 2007 at the former Rockwell International/North American Aircraft production facility in Palmdale. The Los Angeles World Airports Board of Airport Commissioners endorsed a 20-year lease agreement with NASA for use of a large hangar and surrounding acreage at the facility adjacent to U.S. Air Force Plant 42. Specialized science platform aircraft, such as the DC-8 flying laboratory, high-altitude research aircraft ER-2s, C-20A, Gulfstream III and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, are based…

This artist’s concept shows an astronaut on Mars, as viewed through the window of a spacecraft. NASA is returning astronauts to the Moon and will test technology there that will be useful for sending the first astronauts to the Red Planet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 这幅艺术家的概念图展示了透过宇宙飞船的窗户看到的火星上的宇航员。美国国家航空航天局(NASA)正在将宇航员送回月球，并将在那里测试用于将第一批宇航员送往红色星球的技术。 影像来源：NASA/JPL-Caltech

Seen here in incredible detail, thanks to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the starburst galaxy formally known as PLCK G045.1+61.1. The galaxy, which appears as multiple reddish dots near the center of the image, is being gravitationally lensed by a cluster of closer galaxies, also seen in the image. Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us, creating stretched, magnified and sometimes multiple images of the lensed object. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. From 2009 to 2013, the European Space Agency’s Planck space observatory captured…

One of an artist’s most fundamental characteristics is a capacity to bridge the gap between imagination and illustration and bring even the most abstruse and metaphysical concepts to life. Scientists and engineers understand this process all too well as they strive to coax into existence new theories, experiments and technologies. A striking example of that process is the artist Barron Storey’s attempt in the late 1980s to bring the ideas of the Gravity Probe B team at Stanford University to the public. Learn more. Launched on April 20, 2004, Gravity Probe B (GP-B) was a collaboration between Stanford University and NASA designed to test two previously untested aspects of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity (geodetic and frame-dragging effects) by observing the precession of four…

Looking deep into the universe, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope catches a passing glimpse of the numerous arm-like structures that sweep around this barred spiral galaxy, known as NGC 2608. Appearing as a slightly stretched, smaller version of our Milky Way, the peppered blue and red spiral arms are anchored together by the prominent horizontal central bar of the galaxy. In Hubble photos like this, bright foreground stars in the Milky Way will sometimes appear as pinpoints of light with prominent light flares known as diffraction spikes, an effect of the telescope optics. A star with these features is seen in the lower right corner of the image, and another can be spotted just above the pale center of the galaxy. The majority of the…