A bright spot at the center is surrounded by many concentric rings. The rings are nearly — but not exactly — circular in appearance. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.
中心的亮点被许多同心环包围。这些环的外观几乎是圆形的，但并不完全是。 有关更多详细信息，请参阅说明。
2023年7月12日 Rings and Bar of Spiral Galaxy NGC 1398 Image Credit: Mark Hanson; Data: Mike Selby Explanation: Why do some spiral galaxies have a ring around the center? Spiral galaxy NGC 1398 not only has a ring of pearly stars, gas and dust around its center, but a bar of stars and gas across its center, and spiral arms that appear like ribbons farther out. The featured deep image from Observatorio El Sauce in Chile shows the grand spiral galaxy in impressive detail. NGC 1398 lies about 65 million light years distant, meaning the light we see today left this galaxy when dinosaurs were disappearing from the Earth. The photogenic galaxy is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Furnace (Fornax). The…
2022年7月20日 Jupiter and Ring in Infrared from Webb Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt Explanation: Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter’s main ring was discovered in 1979 by NASA’s passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then a mystery. Data from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, however, confirmed the hypothesis that this ring was created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons. As a small meteoroid strikes tiny Metis, for example, it will bore into the moon, vaporize, and explode dirt and dust off into a Jovian orbit. The featured image of Jupiter in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope shows not only Jupiter and its clouds, but this ring as well….
2022年3月30日 Animation: Odd Radio Circles Credits: Illustration: Sam Moorfield; Data: CSIRO, HST (HUDF), ESA, NASA; Image: J. English (U. Manitoba), EMU, MeerKAT, DES (CTIO); Text: Jayanne English Explanation: What do you call a cosmic puzzle that no one expected to see? In this case, Odd Radio Circles, aka ORCs. ORC-1 typifies the enigmatic five objects, only visible at radio frequencies, that were serendipitously discovered in 2019 using the new Australian SKA Pathfinder radio array. The final image in the featured video uses 2021 data from the South African MeerKAT array to reveal more detail. The radio data, assigned turquoise colors, are combined with a Dark Energy Survey optical/IR map. The animated artist’s illustration explores just one idea about the ORCs’ origins. If two supermassive black…
2021年9月19日 Rings and Seasons of Saturn Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach/SEN Explanation: On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth, Wednesday marks an equinox, the time when the Earth’s equator tilts directly toward the Sun. Since Saturn’s grand rings orbit along the planet’s equator, these rings appear most prominent — from the direction of the Sun — when the spin axis of Saturn points toward the Sun. Conversely, when Saturn’s spin axis points to the side, an equinox occurs and the edge-on rings are hard to see from not only the Sun — but Earth. In the featured montage, images of Saturn between the years of 2004 and 2015 have been superposed to show the giant planet passing from southern summer toward…
2021年9月11日 Saturn at Night Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Mindaugas Macijauskas Explanation: Still bright in planet Earth’s night skies, good telescopic views of Saturn and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties. But this stunning view of Saturn’s rings and night side just isn’t possible from telescopes closer to the Sun than the outer planet. They can only bring Saturn’s day into view. In fact, this image of Saturn’s slender sunlit crescent with night’s shadow cast across its broad and complex ring system was captured by the Cassini spacecraft. A robot spacecraft from planet Earth, Cassini called Saturn orbit home for 13 years before it was directed to dive into the atmosphere of the gas giant on September 15,…
