High Resolution Pictures

MESSENGER Spacecraft 

MESSENGER (whose backronym is Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, and which is a reference to the Roman mythological messenger, Mercury) was a NASA robotic spacecraft that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015. The spacecraft was launched aboard a Delta II rocket in August 2004 to study Mercury’s chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field.

The instruments carried by MESSENGER were used on a complex series of flybys – the spacecraft flew by Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury itself three times, allowing it to decelerate relative to Mercury using minimal fuel. During its first flyby of Mercury in January 2008, MESSENGER became the second mission after Mariner 10’s 1975 flyby to reach Mercury.

MESSENGER entered orbit around Mercury on March 18, 2011, becoming the first spacecraft to do so. It successfully completed its primary mission in 2012. Following two mission extensions, the MESSENGER spacecraft used the last of its maneuvering propellant and deorbited as planned, impacting the surface of Mercury on April 30, 2015

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Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Picture of the Day 2 - January 3, 2019

A heavily cratered ice-world. This one is to make up for the missed picture of the day yesterday.

Space Engine System ID: RS 5613-489-8-16684327-414 5 to visit the planet in Space Engine

Solar System 10 Things: Looking Back at Pluto

In July 2015, we saw Pluto up close for the first time and—after three years of intense study—the surprises keep coming. “It’s clear,” says Jeffery Moore, New Horizons’ geology team lead, “Pluto is one of the most amazing and complex objects in our solar system.”

1. An Improving View

These are combined observations of Pluto over the course of several decades. The first frame is a digital zoom-in on Pluto as it appeared upon its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. More frames show of Pluto as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The final sequence zooms in to a close-up frame of Pluto taken by our New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015.

2. The Heart

Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors are enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. The image resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers). Zoom in on the full resolution image on a larger screen to fully appreciate the complexity of Pluto’s surface features.

3. The Smiles

July 14, 2015: New Horizons team members Cristina Dalle Ore, Alissa Earle and Rick Binzel react to seeing the spacecraft’s last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach.

4. Majestic Mountains

Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide.

5. Icy Dunes

Found near the mountains that encircle Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia plain, newly discovered ridges appear to have formed out of particles of methane ice as small as grains of sand, arranged into dunes by wind from the nearby mountains.

6. Glacial Plains

The vast nitrogen ice plains of Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia – the western half of Pluto’s “heart”—continue to give up secrets. Scientists processed images of Sputnik Planitia to bring out intricate, never-before-seen patterns in the surface textures of these glacial plains.

7. Colorful and Violent Charon

High resolution images of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, show a surprisingly complex and violent history. Scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they found a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.

8. Ice Volcanoes

One of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft. This feature, known as Wright Mons, was informally named by the New Horizons team in honor of the Wright brothers. At about 90 miles (150 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) high, this feature is enormous. If it is in fact an ice volcano, as suspected, it would be the largest such feature discovered in the outer solar system.

9. Blue Rays

Pluto’s receding crescent as seen by New Horizons at a distance of 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers). Scientists believe the spectacular blue haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere. These hydrocarbons accumulate into small haze particles, which scatter blue sunlight—the same process that can make haze appear bluish on Earth.

10. Encore

On Jan. 1, 2019, New Horizons will fly past a small Kuiper Belt Object named MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule)—a billion miles (1.5 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto and more than four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. It will be the most distant encounter of an object in history—so far—and the second time New Horizons has revealed never-before-seen landscapes.

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Stormy Night

Picture of the Day - October 20, 2018

Cyclonic storm system dimly lit by a distant sun. Instead of being made of water, this storm and its clouds are made up of dust particles. The planet is a Mars-Like world with a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and covered in red-colored iron oxide dust

Picture of the day - November 15, 2018

Large gas giant orbiting a pair of binary suns within a large nebula.

Vernier System - Post 3 (4th Planet)

The system’s 4th plant. This planet is a super-Earth orbiting the two suns at an average distance of 3.79 AU. At 4.66 Earth masses and a radius of 1.71 Earth’s the planet is quite large and massive compared to Earth. It has a hydrocarbon rich atmosphere and an average surface temperature of 187 K or -122 °F. 3 large satellites orbit the planet. The surface show evidence of numerous large impact events.

The plant’s large moons orbit close to the planet and are capable of producing double eclipses, a phenomenon only possible in star systems with more than 1 sun.

High Resolution Pictures

Picture 1 - Large battered world.

Picture 2 - Inner-most satellite occulting the planet.

Picture 3 - Large canyon

Picture 4 - Canyon close-up

Picture 5 - Double Eclipse

Picture 6 - Lunar shadow

Picture of the Day - January 26, 2019

Barren and battered worlds.

R136a1 System

A visit to a more familiar system in the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy. The program depicts a large gas orbiting the star at a distance of 738.59 AU along with several large moons.

R136a1 is believed to be the most massive known star with a mass 315 times that of our sun. The star shines with a luminosity of 8.7 million suns. The gas giant even at its extreme orbital distance of 738.59 AU, still receives more solar radiation than Earth.

High Resolution Images

Bright Blue Sun

Inner Dwarf Planet from a moon

Outer moon.

Approaching eclipse

Double moons

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Pictures of the Day - February 9, 2019

Mars-like desert world.