保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
“超松软”（Super-Puffs）听起来像一种新推出的早餐麦片，但实际上这是一种独特而罕见的年轻系外行星（exoplanets）的绰号。它们的密度跟棉花糖一样，我们的太阳系中并没有这种行星。 这张图描绘了类太阳恒星开普勒51和NASA开普勒太空望远镜在2012至2014年间发现的三颗巨行星。这些行星大约都与木星大小相当，但质量要比木星小的多。根据哈勃太空望远镜的最新观测，它们的密度极低，更像是泡沫聚苯乙烯，而不是岩石或水。这些行星很可能在远离恒星的地方形成，之后再向内迁移到现在的位置。如今它们膨胀的氢/氦大气正慢慢渗入太空，最终可能会留下体积更小的行星。如果我们沿着银河系的猎户座螺旋臂从开普勒51（约2600光年的距离）望向太阳，就会看到这张图所展示的星空。但我们的太阳太微弱，在模拟裸眼视图中无法看到。 Cr...
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows IC 2051, a galaxy in the southern constellation of Mensa (the Table Mountain) lying about 85 million light-years away. It is a spiral galaxy, as evidenced by its characteristic whirling, pinwheeling arms, and it has a bar of stars slicing through its center. This galaxy was observed for a Hubble study...
NGC 3175 is located around 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (the Air Pump). The galaxy can be seen slicing across the frame in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with its mix of bright patches of glowing gas, dark lanes of dust, bright core, and whirling, pinwheeling arms coming together to paint a beautiful celest...
Within the tempestuous Carina Nebula lies “Mystic Mountain.” This three-light-year-tall cosmic pinnacle, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 in 2010, is made up primarily of dust and gas, and exhibits signs of intense star-forming activity. The colors in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitroge...
For this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful eye toward an emission-line galaxy called NGC 3749. When astronomers explore the contents and constituent parts of a galaxy somewhere in the universe, they use various techniques and tools. One of these is to spread out the incoming light from that galaxy into a spectrum and explore its ...
左边是1979年3月2日由旅行者1号飞船从290万公里(180万英里)外拍摄的木卫二。下一幅是1979年7月9日旅行者2号飞船近距离接触木卫二时拍摄的彩色图像。右边是木卫二的图像，是由伽利略号飞船在20世纪90年代末拍摄的。 来源：NASA/JPL 40年前，旅行者号宇宙飞船拍摄了木卫二的第一张特写照片，木卫二是木星的79颗卫星之一。这些发现的带褐色的裂缝切割了木卫二表面的冰层，这让木卫二看起来像一个布满血管的眼球。自那以后的几十年里，前往外太阳系的任务已经积累了足够多的关于木卫二的额外信息，使它成为美国国家航空航天局(NASA)搜寻生命的高优先目标。 这颗卫星之所以如此诱人，是因为它可能拥有生命所需的所有要素。科学家有证据表明，其中一种成分——液态水——存在于冰冷的地表之下，有时可能会以巨大的间歇泉形式喷发到...
The universe is simply so vast that it can be difficult to maintain a sense of scale. Many galaxies we see through telescopes such as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the source of this beautiful image, look relatively similar: spiraling arms, a glowing center, and a mixture of bright specks of star formation and dark ripples of cosmic dust weaving throu...
2019 November 6 21st Century M101 Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, JPL – Caltech, STScI Explanation: One of the last entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog, big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. M101 was ...
在这张由哈勃太空望远镜拍摄的图像中，充斥在星系之间的是一些神秘的蓝光弧。这些实际上是星团后面遥远星系的扭曲图像。所有正常物质和暗物质聚集在星系团内部，它们共同的引力扭曲了时空，影响了穿过星系团向地球传播的光。 版权：美国国家航空航天局（NASA），欧洲航天局（ESA），J. Lotz和HFF团队（STScI） 暗物质的真正性质是宇宙中最大的谜团之一。科学家们正试图确定暗物质到底是由什么组成的，以便能够对其进行直接探测，但我们目前的认识有很多差距，很难知道我们究竟在寻找什么。宽视场红外巡天望远镜（Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope，WFIRST）探测宇宙大范围区域的能力将通过探索普通物质和暗物质在空间和时间上的结构及分布来帮助我们弄清楚暗物质是由什么组成的。 为什么暗物质是一...
The galaxy pictured in this Hubble image has an especially evocative name: the Medusa merger. Often referred to by its somewhat drier New General Catalogue designation of NGC 4194, this was not always one entity, but two. An early galaxy consumed a smaller gas-rich system, throwing out streams of stars and dust into space. These streams, seen rising from the...