Planetary Picture of the Day Week of June 09 2025

Tuesday, Jun 17, 2025

Peering through cloud cover can be quite a challenge, although spacecraft help, as shown by a stunning Hubble image, one from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, and one from Magellan showing volcanoes on the surface of Venus. Not that photography on Earth can't provide beautiful space pictures, too! Check out a comet from earlier this year and a fascinating phenomenon called gravity waves seen in our own clouds.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz), C. Kilpatrick

Monday, 9 June 2025

Snapshot of a Peculiar Spiral

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture shows a beautiful but skewed spiral galaxy, Arp 184 or NGC 1961, about 190 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

The name Arp 184 comes from the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which was compiled by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. The 338 galaxies in the atlas are oddly shaped, tending to be neither entirely elliptical nor spiral-shaped. Many galaxies are in the process of interacting with other galaxies, while others are dwarf galaxies without well-defined structures. Arp 184 earned its spot in the catalogue thanks to its single broad, star-speckled spiral arm that appears to stretch toward us. The galaxy’s far side sports a few wisps of gas and stars but lacks a similarly impressive spiral arm.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Tuesday, 10 June 2025

Martian Volcano Peeks Above Clouds

A new panorama from NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter shows one of the Red Planet’s biggest volcanoes, Arsia Mons, poking through a canopy of clouds just before dawn. Arsia Mons and two other volcanoes form what is known as the Tharsis Montes, or Tharsis Mountains, which are often surrounded by water ice clouds (as opposed to Mars’ equally common carbon dioxide clouds), especially in the early morning. This panorama marks the first time one of the volcanoes has been imaged on the planet’s horizon, offering the same perspective of Mars that astronauts have of the Earth when they peer down from the International Space Station.

Credit: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO

Wednesday, 11 June 2025

Colorful Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS)

This stunning photograph of comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS), taken by Yuri Beletsky on 19 January from ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, looks almost like a watercolour painting. The comet is next to one of the Auxiliary Telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer.

Credit: Miguel Claro Astrophotography | Dark Sky® Alqueva

Thursday, 12 June 2025

Rainbow Airglow over the Azores

Due to airglow, which is usually hard to see, the sky can glow like a giant rainbow. Disturbances like storms cause gravity waves, making airglow visible. The colors likely originate from various molecules: deep red from OH molecules at 87 km high, and orange and green from sodium and oxygen atoms higher up. This image was captured on Mount Pico in the Azores, Portugal, with Faial Island's lights in view. The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) are also visible through the airglow.

Credit: NASA/JPL

Friday, 13 June 2025

Pancake Domes

This Magellan full-resolution mosaic shows an area 160 kilometers by 250 kilometers in the Eistla region of Venus. The prominent circular features are volcanic domes, 65 kilometers in diameter, with broad, flat tops less than one kilometer in height. Sometimes called 'pancake' domes, they represent a unique category of volcanic extrusions on Venus formed from viscous (sticky) lava. The cracks and pits commonly found in these features result from cooling and the withdrawal of lava. A less viscous flow was emitted from the northeastern dome toward the other large dome in the southwest corner of the image.

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Planetary Picture of the Day - Week of June 09, 2025

Snapshot of a Peculiar Spiral

Martian Volcano Peeks Above Clouds

Colorful Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS)

Rainbow Airglow over the Azores

Pancake Domes

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