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Jupiter’s volcanically active moon Io casts its shadow on the planet in this dramatic image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. As with solar eclipses on the Earth, within the dark circle racing across Jupiter’s cloud tops one would witness a full solar eclipse as Io passes in front of the Sun. Such events occur frequently on Jupiter because it is a large planet with many moons. In addition, unlike most other planets in our solar system, Jupiter’s axis is not highly tilted relative to its orbit, so the Sun never strays far from Jupiter’s equatorial plane (+/- 3 degrees). This means Jupiter’s moons regularly cast their shadows on the planet throughout its year. Juno’s close proximity to Jupiter provides an exceptional fish-eye view, showing a small…

In this image from June 2002, astronaut Franklin R. Chang-Diaz works with a grapple fixture during a spacewalk on the STS-111 mission to perform work on the International Space Station. The first spacewalk of the mission began with the installation of a power and data grapple fixture (PDGF) for the station’s robotic arm on the complex’s P6 truss. The fixture will allow the robotic arm to grip the P6 truss for future station assembly operations. Astronauts Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin (with French space agency, CNES) went on to install the new fixture about halfway up the P6 truss, the vertical structure that currently supports the station’s set of large U.S. solar arrays. Chang-Diaz is Hispanic of Costa Rican descent. He is also a veteran of…

This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020, was captured when the planet was 406 million miles from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet’s turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of the famous Great Red Spot region gearing up to change color – again. A unique and exciting detail of Hubble’s snapshot appears at mid-northern latitudes as a bright, white, stretched-out storm traveling around the planet at 350 miles per hour (560 kilometers per hour). This single plume erupted on Aug. 18, 2020 – and ground-based observers have discovered two more that appeared later at the same latitude. While it’s common for storms to…

NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of the United States on Sep. 15, 2020, showing the fires in the West, the smoke from those fires drifting over the country, several hurricanes converging from different angles, and Hurricane Sally making landfall. Red points in the west note areas that are significantly higher in temperature than the areas around it and are indicative of fires. These points are most pronounced up and down the West Coast, but dot the country from coast-to-coast as well. In addition, in this image are captured four hurricanes/tropical storms in both the East and the West. On the left hand side is Karina which is moving away from the Baja California area. Hurricane Sally, seen in the middle of the image,…

During her first mission to space and to the International Space Station, Kate Rubins became the first person to sequence DNA in space. During her upcoming mission, Rubins will work on a cardiovascular experiment that builds on an investigation she completed during her first space mission and conduct research using the space station’s Cold Atom Lab. She’ll also be aboard the station for the arrival of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission and Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2. Rubins’ launch is planned for Oct. 14 aboard the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with her Expedition 63/64 crewmates, Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov. On Nov. 2, Rubins will celebrate with her crewmates the 20th anniversary of continuous human habitation of the space station…

Many colorful stars are packed close together in this image of the globular cluster NGC 1805, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This tight grouping of thousands of stars is located near the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. The stars orbit closely to one another, like bees swarming around a hive. In the dense center of one of these clusters, stars are 100 to 1,000 times closer together than the nearest stars are to our Sun, making planetary systems around them unlikely. The striking difference in star colors is illustrated beautifully in this image, which combines different types of light: blue stars, shining brightest in near-ultraviolet light, and red stars, illuminated in red and near-infrared….