Monday, June 6, 2022

Lunar Illusion
This image shows a strongly-refracted Moon as photographed from the Space Station two years ago on June 5, 2020. The photo is one image of a sequence of forty taken of the full Moon while over the South Atlantic.

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Mars’ Whirling Dust Devil
A Martian dust devil roughly twenty kilometers high was captured winding its way along the Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars on March 14, 2012, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite its height, the plume is only seventy meters wide.

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Colorful Cloud Belts
Jupiter appears in this color-enhanced image as a tapestry of vibrant cloud bands and storms. The dark region in the far left is called the South Temperate Belt. Intersecting the belt is a ghost-like feature of slithering white clouds. This is the largest feature in Jupiter’s low latitudes that’s a cyclone (rotating with clockwise motion).

Thursday, June 9, 2022

Closest Dione Flyby
Flying past Saturn's moon Dione, Cassini captured this view which includes two smaller moons, Epimetheus and Prometheus, near the planet's rings. The image was taken in visible light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera during the spacecraft's flyby of Dione on Dec. 12, 2011.

This encounter was the spacecraft's closest pass of the moon's surface, but, because this flyby was intended primarily for other Cassini instruments, it did not yield Cassini's best images of the moon. Dione (1,123 kilometers across) is closest to Cassini here and is on the left of the image. Potato-shaped Prometheus (86 kilometers across) appears above the rings near the center top of the image. Epimetheus (113 kilometers across) is on the right.

Friday, June 10, 2022

Kodiak Mesa
NASA's Perseverance rover captured this view of the Kodiak mesa in Jezero Crater, Mars, on May 31, 2022 (Sol 454). The feature shows evidence of sedimentary layering and boulders transported by fast-flowing water.