Moment of Wonder: Pluto up close

NASA’s New Horizons mission just keeps on giving.

The agency last week released photos — including the one above — that give the closest view available of Pluto’s glaciers, mountains and craters. Most of the craters shown above lie in the 155-mile-wide Burney Basin, named after Venetia Burney, the English schoolgirl who first proposed the name “Pluto” when it was discovered in 1930.

Check out the layering in the interior walls of craters such as the large one in the center. Such layers usually signify an important change in surface composition or a major geological event.

If you want to see a larger swath of Pluto’s surface, check out this mosaic of images NASA created to show a strip 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide trending from its horizon across the al-Idrisi Mountains and onto the shoreline of Sputnik Planum. Posting it here would really do the image no justice.

Moments of Wonder: Enceladus and Dione

 

NASA's shot of Enceladus and Dione

NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn continues to amaze. Check out this shot of its contrasting moons, Enceladus and Dione.

The surface of the brighter, smaller Enceladus receives a constant rain of ice grains from its south polar jets. Its surface, therefore, is white like fallen snow, while  bright, Dione’s older surface appears to have darkened as it gathered dust and radiation damage in a process scientists call “space weathering.”

Sixty-two moons orbit Saturn. Only 53 of them are named.

Check out out NASA’s Cassini page for more information on the mission and a bevy of breathtaking photos.

 

Moment of Wonder: Staring at the Sun

NASA has uploaded its first batch of ultra-high definition videos, including a beautiful and hellish close-up video of the sun’s surface.

The video was assembled from data collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which orbits Sol and captures images across 10 wavelengths of invisible ultraviolet light. Each wavelength represents a different temperature of solar material.

The images allow NASA scientists to examine solar activity, such as solar flares and streams of electrified plasma called coronal loops. For lay folks like myself, they provide one mind-bending light show.