European Association for Astronomy Education

Source: ESA News

Series of images tracking the development of Saturn’s giant storm.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

The heat-seeking capabilities of the international Cassini spacecraft and two ground-based telescopes have provided the first look at the aftermath of Saturn’s ‘Great Springtime Storm’. Concealed from the naked eye, a giant oval vortex is persisting long after the visible effects of the storm subsided. (read more)

Source: ESO Photo Release eso1242

VISTA gigapixel mosaic of the central parts of the Milky Way.
Image credits:ESO/VVV Consortium
Acknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo, Martin Kornmesser

 Using a whopping nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has created a catalogue of more than 84 million stars in the central parts of the Milky Way. This gigantic dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies and is a major step forward for the understanding of our home galaxy. The image gives viewers an incredible, zoomable view of the central part of our galaxy. It is so large that, if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 metres long and 7 metres tall. (read more)

Source: ESA

Valles Marineris.
Image credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Earth’s Grand Canyon inspires awe for anyone who casts eyes upon the vast river-cut valley, but it would seem nothing more than a scratch next to the cavernous scar of Valles Marineris that marks the face of Mars.

Stretching over 4000 km long and 200 km wide, and with a dizzying depth of 10 km, it is some ten times longer and five times deeper than Earth’s Grand Canyon, a size that earns it the status of the largest canyon in the Solar System.

Seen here in new light and online for the first time, this bird’s-eye view of Valles Marineris was created from data captured during 20 individual orbits of ESA’s Mars Express. It is presented in near-true colour and with four times vertical exaggeration.(read more)

Source: ESA News

Supernova remnant SNR1987A  in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Image credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA.

The first direct detection of radioactive titanium associated with supernova remnant 1987A has been made by ESA’s Integral space observatory. The radioactive decay has likely been powering the glowing remnant around the exploded star for the last 20 years.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1215

Hubble image of MACS J0717 with mass overlay.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, Harald Ebeling (University of Hawaii at Manoa) & Jean-Paul Kneib (LAM)

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have studied a giant filament of dark matter in 3D for the first time. Extending 60 million light-years from one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, the filament is part of the cosmic web that constitutes the large-scale structure of the Universe, and is a leftover of the very first moments after the Big Bang. If the high mass measured for the filament is representative of the rest of the Universe, then these structures may contain more than half of all the mass in the Universe. (read more)

Source: ESA/Huygens

ESA's Huygens image of Titan's surface on 14 January 2005.
Image credits: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

ESA’s Huygens probe bounced, slid and wobbled its way to rest in the 10 seconds after touching down on Saturn’s moon, Titan, in January 2005, a new analysis reveals. The findings provide novel insight into the nature of the moon’s surface. (read more)

Source: ESA Space Science

Venus cloud tops.
Image credits: ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

Clouds regularly punctuate Earth’s blue sky, but on Venus the clouds never part, for the planet is wrapped entirely in a 20 km-thick veil of carbon dioxide and sulphuric dioxide haze.

This view shows the cloud tops of Venus as seen in ultraviolet light by the Venus Express spacecraft on 8 December 2011, from a distance of about 30 000 km. (read more)

Source: ESA

The galaxy NGC4183.
Image credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided us with another outstanding image of a nearby galaxy. This week, we highlight the galaxy NGC 4183, seen here with a beautiful backdrop of distant galaxies and nearby stars.

Located about 55 million light-years from the Sun and spanning about
80 000 light-years, NGC 4183 is a little smaller than the Milky Way. This galaxy, which belongs to the Ursa Major Group, lies in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs).

NGC 4183 is a spiral galaxy with a faint core and an open spiral structure. Unfortunately, this galaxy is viewed edge-on from Earth, and we cannot fully appreciate its spiral arms. But we can admire its galactic disc. (read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1213

Hubble image of Arp 11.
Image credits: NASA/ESA

Two very different galaxies feature in this family portrait taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, together forming a peculiar galaxy pair called Arp 116. The image shows the dramatic differences in size, structure and colour between spiral and elliptical galaxies.(read more)

Source: ESA

Gale crater - 154 km wide.
Image credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum).

Much like a treasure map branded with an ‘X’ to mark the site of buried bounty, NASA’s rover Curiosity will be targeting its very own ‘X’ inside Gale Crater, to seek out the signs of past water – and maybe even life – on the Red Planet. (read more)

Source: ESA

Mars Express supports MSL .
Image credits: ESA.

Source: ESA

The Sun's idea. Image taken with SOHO’s LASCO 3.
Image credits: SOHO/LASCO (ESA & NASA).

A light bulb-shaped eruption leaps from the Sun and blasts into space in this archival image from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO. (read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1212

A team of astronomers using the HST has discovered a fifth moon orbiting Pluto.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)

A team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a fifth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. (read more)

Source: ESA

Caenorhabditis elegans, a transparent nematode worm.
Image credits: Creative Commons ShareAlike license–B. Goldstein.

Astronauts return to Earth weakened and unsteady after weightlessness and radiation in space take their toll on the human body. New research now shows that the humble nematode worm adapts much better to spaceflight.(read  more)

Source: ESA/Hubble

500 000 light-years from Earth, Leo IV is one of more than a dozen ultra-faint dwarf galaxies found lurking around our Milky Way galaxy.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, and T. Brown (STScI)

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the smallest and faintest galaxies in our cosmic neighbourhood. These galaxies are fossils of the early Universe: they have barely changed for 13 billion years. The discovery could help explain the so-called “missing satellite” problem, where only a handful of satellite galaxies have been found around the Milky Way, against the thousands that are predicted by theories. (read more)

Source: ESA

The Vela C region, part of the Vela complex, by ESA’s Herschel space observatory.
Image credits: ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortia, T. Hill, F. Motte, Laboratoire AIM
Paris-Saclay, CEA/IRFU – CNRS/INSU – Uni. Paris Diderot, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium

A beautiful blue butterfly flutters towards a nest of warm dust and gas, above an intricate network of cool filaments in this image of the Vela C region by ESA’s Herschel space observatory.(read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Photo Release heic1210

Hubble image of Herbig-Haro object HH 11.
Image credits: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage team (STScI/AURA).

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of Herbig-Haro 110, a geyser of hot gas flowing from a newborn star.(read more)

Source: ESA

Image credits: ESA - C. Carreau.

The violent behaviour of a young Sun-like star spinning at high speed and spewing out super-hot plasma has been revealed thanks to the combined X-ray vision of three space telescopes, including ESA’s XMM-Newton. (read more)

Source: ESA

Credits: N. Reul, IFREMER/CATDS.

Over a dozen radio signals that have hindered data collection on ESA’s SMOS water mission have been switched off. The effort also benefits satellites such as NASA’s Aquarius mission, which measures ocean salinity at the same frequency. (read more)

Source: ESA/Hubble Science Release heic1209

Stellar flare hits HD 189733b (artist's impression) .
Image credits: NASA, ESA, L. Calçada

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have seen dramatic changes in the upper atmosphere of a faraway planet. Just after a violent flare on its parent star bathed it in intense X-ray radiation, the planet’s atmosphere gave off a powerful burst of evaporation. The observations give a tantalising glimpse of the changing climates and weather on planets outside our Solar System.(read more)