Prior to 1997 Images

Prior to 1997 Spacepics: Please note that images are chronicled by date - most recent listed first.

This image of our galaxy, the Milky Way, was taken with NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)'s Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE), one of three COBE scientific instruments.

This ultraviolet image of the giant spiral galaxy Messier l01 (M101) was obtained by the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope during the Astro-2 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

This arc of hot stars in the star-forming region N 51 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was photographed by NASA's Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) during the Astro-2 mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour, March 2-18, 1995. The LMC is about 160,000 light- years from the Earth, and appears in the constellation Dorado, which is visible from the Earth's southern hemisphere.

The globular cluster NGC 6752, in the southern constellation of Pavo, as seen in ultraviolet light at a wavelength of 1620 Angstroms with the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT). The photograph was obtained on March 13, 1995, during the Astro-2 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

This is a mosaic of four ultraviolet photographs of the Small Magellanic Cloud obtained on both the Astro-1 mission (December 1990) and the Astro-2 mission (March 1995).

A remarkable giant ring of hot young stars appears in the ultraviolet image (top) of the spiral galaxy Messier 94 (M94, also called NGC 4736), as photographed by the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on March 12, 1995, during the Astro-2 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

In red light (bottom), M94 shows three distinct zones: an extremely bright central bulge, composed mostly of old, cool stars; the main disk showing many short spiral arms; and an extensive, faint outer ring. The image made with a 36-inch (0.9 meter) telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

This color picture, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera-2, is a composite of three images taken at different wavelengths. (red, hydrogen-alpha; blue, neutral oxygen, 6300 angstroms; green, ionized nitrogen, 6584 angstroms). The image was taken on September 18, 1994. The "Cat's Eye Nebula", one of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen is 3,000 light years away in the northern constellation Draco.

These NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of gaseous jets from three newly forming stars show a new level of detail in the star formation process, and are helping to solve decade-old questions about the secrets of star birth. Jets are a common "exhaust product" of the dynamics of star formation. They are blasted away from a disk of gas and dust falling onto an embryonic star.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope resolves eight impact sites on Jupiter from the collisions of the fragmented comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9. This image was taken on July 22, 1994, shortly before the last comet fragment plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere. The impact sites appear as dark "smudges" lined up in Jupiter's southern hemisphere. The smudges are chemical debris cooked in the tremendous fireballs produced by each impact. The dark material was ejected high above the bright multicolored cloud tops. This material is now caught in the weak winds of Jupiter's upper atmosphere and will likely be dispersed in a band around the planet.

Scientists have long known that light is bent by powerful gravitational fields. One such example of light bending is the multiple image effect produced by gravity lens G2237 + 0305. Known as the "Einstein Cross," the image of this gravity lens was captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope using the Faint Object Camera built by the European Space Agency.

A microwave map of the whole sky made from two years of data taken by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) instrument.

Observations using NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite show that most active galaxies contain cold gas that obscures the view to the central engine that powers them, according to scientists at the Center for EUVE Astrophysics. Active galaxies emit unusually large amounts of energy from a very compact central source, thought to be a black hole.

This image taken by NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) shows two sources of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation. The fainter image to the right is a star known only by its catalogue number HR 6094. The brighter image to the left is it companion star WD1620-391.

Seen here between the Atlas-2 payload and the space shuttle aft firewall is the Goddard Space Flight Center's Spartan 201, flown aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in April 1993. The Spartan 201 satelite was released from the cargo bay into a free-flying orbit, retrieved later and returned to Earth. In the background is an oblique view south of Korea.

This image is the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory deployment in April, 1991.

Complete Northern Auroral Oval

NASA Photo Release

Dayside and Nightside Aurora

NASA Photo Release

First Global X-Ray of the Earth's Aurora

NASA Photo Release

Daylit and Nightside Aurora

NASA Photo Release

New Findings on the Not-So-"Quiet" Sun

"Plumes" of outward flowing, hot gasin the Sun's atmosphere may be one source of the solar "wind" of charged particles. These images, taken March 7, 1996, by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), show (top) magnetic fields on the sun's surface near the south solar pole; (middle) an ultraviolet image of the 1 million degree plumes from the same region; and (bottom) an ultraviolet image of the "quiet" solar atmosphere closer to the surface. The top image was taken by the Michelson-Doppler Imager/Solar Oscillations Investigation instrument. The center and bottom images were taken by the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT). These images represent the first opportunity scientists have had to see the detailed development over time of the plume structures in which the solar wind is accelerated, at least at the solar poles. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. The spacecraft was launched by NASA Dec. 2, 1995 from Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida. Science operations for the SOHO spacecraft are being conducted by a NASA-ESA team from the Experiment Operations Facility at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Md.

A NEW LOOK AT THE SUN

This image of 1.5-million degree Celsiusgas in the Sun's thin, outer atmosphere (corona) was taken March 13, 1996 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structures. Because of the high quality instrument, we can see more suttle and detail magnetic features than ever before. This image is the first time we have been able to get such images except during five-minute rocket flights. Because of SOHO's view of the Sun, science researchers have been able to make movies that show the dynamic every changing nature of the "quiet Sun." SOHO is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. The spacecraft was launched by NASA Dec. 2, 1996 from Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida. Science operations for the SOHO spacecraft are being conducted by a NASA-ESA team from the Experiment Operations Facility at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Md. The spacecraft is presently in a halo orbit around a point known as the "L1 Lagrangian point" approximately 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, where gravitational forces of the Earth and Sun balance one another.

Swirling Galaxy Parents Generations of Stars in Its Center

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a view of several star generations in the central region of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), a spiral region 23 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute have issued a press release explaining the study. Copies of relevant pictures can be obtained from the Institute's archives.

Hubble Captures Collision of Gases Near Dying Star

This colorful image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the collision of two gases near a dying star. Astronomers have dubbed the tadpole-like objects in the upper right-hand corner "cometary knots" because their glowing heads and gossamer tails resemble comets. Although astronomers have seen gaseous knots through ground-based telescopes, they have never seen so many in a single nebula.

Hubble captured thousands of these knots from a doomed star in the Helix nebula, the closest planetary nebula to Earth at 450 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Each gaseous head is at least twice the size of our solar system; each tail stretches 100 billion miles, about 1,000 times the Earth's distance to the Sun. The most visible gaseous fragments lie along the inner edge of the star' s ring, trillions of miles from the star at its center. The comet-like tails form a radial pattern around the star like the spokes on a wagon wheel. Astronomers have seen the spoke pattern using ground-based telescopes, but Hubble reveals for the first time the sources of these objects.

Hubble Probes Inner Region of Comet Hyakutake

These are NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of comet Hyakutake (designated C/1996 B2), taken at 8:30 P.M.. EST on Monday, March 25 when the comet passed at a distance of only 9.3 million miles from Earth.

Unlike most of the published images of Hyakutake, these Hubble images focus on a very small region near the heart of the comet, the icy, solid nucleus. The Hubble images provide an exceptionally clear view of the near-nucleus region of comet Hyakutake.

The images were image was taken through a red filter with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (in WF mode). The sunward and tailward directions are at approximately the 4 o'clock and 11 o'clock positions, respectively. Celestial North and East are at approximately the 5:30 and 8:30 positions, respectively.

First X-Ray Image of a Comet

A team of U.S. and German astrophysicists have made the first ever detection of X-rays coming from a comet.

The discovery of a strong radiation signal -- about100 times brighter than even the most optimistic predictions -- was made March 27, 1996, during observations of comet Hyakutake using Germany's orbiting ROSAT satellite.

The Surface of Pluto

The never-before-seen surface of the distant planet Pluto is resolved in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope pictures, taken with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Faint Object Camera (FOC) aboard Hubble.

Discovered in 1930, Pluto has always appeared as nothing more than a dot of light in even the largest earth-based telescopes because Pluto's disk is much smaller than can be resolved from beneath the Earth's turbulent atmosphere. Pluto is 2/3 the size of Earth's Moon but 1,200 times farther away. Viewing surface detail is as difficult as trying to read the printing on a golf ball located thirty-three miles away!

Hubble imaged nearly the entire surface of Pluto, as it rotated through its 6.4-day period, in late June and early July 1994. These images, which were made in blue light, show that Pluto is an unusually complex object, with more large-scale contrast than any planet, except Earth.

Pluto itself probably shows even more contrast and perhaps sharper boundaries between light and dark areas than is shown here, but Hubble's resolution (just like early telescopic views of Mars) tends to blur edges and blend together small features sitting inside larger ones.

The two smaller inset pictures at the top are actual images from Hubble. North is up. Each square pixel (picture element) is more than 100 miles across. At this resolution, Hubble discerns roughly 12 major "regions" where the surface is either bright or dark.

The Larger images (bottom) are from a global map constructed through computer image processing performed on the Hubble data. The tile pattern is an artifact of the image enhancement technique.

Opposite hemispheres of Pluto are seen in these two views. Some of the variations across Pluto's surface may be caused by topographic features such as basins, or fresh impact craters. However, most of the surface features unveiled by Hubble, including the prominent northern polar cap, are likely produced by the complex distribution of frosts that migrate across Pluto's surface with its orbital and seasonal cycles and chemical byproducts deposited out of Pluto's nitrogen-methane atmosphere.

The picture was taken in blue light when Pluto was at a distance of 3 billion miles from Earth.

Credit: Alan Stem (Southwest Research Institute), Marc Buie (Lowell Observatory), NASA and ESA

OAST FLYER

Deployment The Goddard managed OAST-FLYER is the seventh SPARTAN carrier. Prior to deployment and while still attached to the Spartan Flight Servicing Structure (SFSS) via the Release/Engage Mechanism (REM), a crewmember activated, updated, and check out the OAST-FLYER through the use of the PGSC/BIA interface. After checkout, the OAST-FLYER was grappled, and released from the REM, and then deployed by the Remote Manipulator System (RMS). The OAST-FLYER operated in the free-flyer mode for approximately 50 hours. All science and housekeeping was recorded onboard the deploy hardware. After completion of detached operations, the OAST-FLYER was retrieved and reberthed in the orbiter.

A video of the deployment of the OAST-FLYER payload by the orbiter robotic arm.

HOURGLASS NEBULA AROUND A DYING STAR

This is an image of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This Hubble image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. This picture has been composed from three separate images taken in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly-ionized oxygen (blue). The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter which accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. In previous ground-based images, MyCn18 appears to be a pair of large outer rings with a smaller central one, but the fine details cannot be seen.

According to one theory for the formation of planetary nebulae, the hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud which is more dense near its equator than near its poles. What appears as a bright elliptical ring in the center, and at first sight might be mistaken for an equatorially dense region, is seen on closer inspection to be a potato shaped structure with a symmetry axis dramatically different from that of the larger hourglass. The hot star which has been thought to eject and illuminate the nebula, and therefore expected to lie at its center of symmetry, is clearly off center. Hence MyCn18, as revealed by Hubble, does not fulfill some crucial theoretical expectations.

Planetary Nebula NGC 7027

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of planetary nebula NGC 7027 shows remarkable new details of the process by which a star like the Sun dies.

The nebula is a record of the star's final death throes. Initially the ejection of the star's outer layers, when it was at its red giant stage of evolution, occurred at a low rate and was spherical. The Hubble photo reveals that the initial ejections occurred episodically to produce the concentric shells. This culminated in a vigorous ejection of all of the remaining outer layers, which produced the bright inner regions. At this later stage the ejection was non-spherical, and dense clouds of dust condensed from the ejected material.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is launched

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was launched atop an Atlas IIAS expendable launch vehicle at 3:08 a.m. EST, December 2, 1995 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Liftoff from Launch Complex 36B on Cape Canaveral Air Station marked the 10th Atlas launch from the Eastern Range for 1995. SOHO is a cooperative effort involving NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) within the framework of the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP). During its two-year mission, the SOHO spacecraft will gather data on the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind. SOHO was built by Matra Marconi under contract ESA. Lockheed Martin Astronautics built the Atlas IIAS while Lockheed Research Center, provided the launch services. Kennedy Space Center is responsible for government technical oversight of launch vehicle preparations and the launch day countdown activities. ESA has overall mission responsibility for the SOHO project, while NASA is responsible for collection and dissemination of SOHO science data through the Science Operations Center at Goddard Space Flight Center.

PILLARS OF CREATION IN A STAR-FORMING REGION

(Gas Pillars in M16 - Eagle Nebula) The picture was taken on April 1, 1995 with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The color image is constructed from three separate images taken in the light of emission from different types of atoms. Red shows emission from singly-ionized sulfur atoms. Green shows emission from hydrogen. Blue shows light emitted by doubly- ionized oxygen atoms.

STELLAR "EGGS" EMERGE FROM MOLECULAR CLOUD

(Star-Birth Clouds in M16) The picture was taken on April 1, 1995 with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The color image is constructed from three separate images taken in the light of emission from different types of atoms. Red shows emission from singly-ionized sulfur atoms. Green shows emission from hydrogen. Blue shows light emitted by doubly- ionized oxygen atoms.