There was a stunning cosmic image to celebrate the festival in 2020, from Hubble’s 30th birthday image to footage of a daring specimen on a planet. Here is a selection of our year’s offerings.
Hubble’s ‘Cosmic Reef’
The Hubble Telescope, one of the most important scientific instruments ever, celebrates its 30th anniversary in April.
To mark the occasion, a stunning image was released, showing the star-forming region near our galaxy.
In this magnificent Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its tiny blue neighborhood (NGC 2020) reside in the galaxy’s satellite galaxy 163,000 light years away.
Nebulae are clouds between giant stars of dust and gas where constellations can form.
NGC is a collection of bright stars in mid-2014, 10 to 20 times larger than our Sun.
The image was nicknamed the “Cosmic Reef” because astronomers thought the nebula looked like an undersea world.
The BBC Horizon documentary, which aired to coincide with the anniversary, featured stunning 3D visualizations of iconic Hubble images – such as Columns of Creation, part of the Eagle Nebula.
See also: The universe of the Hubble Telescope has come out in 3D
Grab asteroids
This year, NASA’s Osiris-Rex conducted a daring “touch-and-go” maneuver with the planet Bennu, to collect rock and clay samples to be delivered to Earth.
Asteroids like Bennu are early fossils from the beginning of the solar system. They are free-roaming building blocks of planets and offer a window into how the Earth-like world came into being.
To collect samples, Osiris-Rex used a long boom with a ring-shaped storage chamber at the end. The spacecraft descended toward the surface of Benue, giving a squirt of nitrogen when the boom made contact with the asteroid.
This was because the gas shook the surface of Bennu, causing pieces of the planet to float in the storage chamber.
As seen in the order of the images above, the strategy seems to have worked.
Meanwhile, on December 5, the Japanese mission to collect samples from a different species of planet returned to Earth with its precious cash. The Hayabusa-2 spacecraft released its sample return capsule, which safely parachuted down into the Australian Australian desert.
Samples will be analyzed at a curation facility in Sagamihara City, Japan.
Close to the sun
In January, Daniel K. Inoy saw the release of images taken in the air by the Solar Telescope (DKIST) showing the sun’s surface in unprecedented detail.
These images show cell-like structures that are found in the U.S. Is approximately the size of the state of Texas. They are a mass of hot, excited gas or plasma.
Bright areas indicate where this material is growing; In between is the dark lane where the cooler plasma is sinking.
DKIST is a new facility at Helikali, a 3,000-meter-high volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
Scientists have used it to uncover a fresh insight into the dynamic behavior of our parent star, in the hope that they can better predict its getaway campaign.
These massive explosions of charged particles can damage Earth-orbiting satellites, damage astronauts and even harden the electrical grid.
Jupiter fly-past
Launched in 2011, NASA’s old spacecraft continues to send stunning images from Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.
The investigation captured an image of the gas giant’s swirling cloud deck as it launched a flyby near the world’s 27th on June 2nd.
Civil scientist Kevin M. Gile then converted the data into video, with still1 still images taken during a pass near Juno.
Stability was digitally estimated on the sphere, providing Jupiter’s perspective from different angles with a virtual “camera camera”.
Among other things, the footage offers stunning views of Jupiter’s most notable feature, the huge red spot – which is actually a huge ongoing storm.
Starship Test
Looking a little like the rocket ship of the golden age of science fiction, Elon Musk’s Starship Vehicle – at the right time, he hopes – will take humans to the Red Planet.
In December, SpaceX tested the first complete prototype of the vehicle, which sent it on a 12.5-kilometer flight straight from its pads to the company’s Boca Chika facility in South Texas.
We’re doing a little bit of cheating with its inclusion here, because the images aren’t out of space. But we will see it there one day in the very distant future.
The test flight showcased some of the spacecraft’s distinctive features, including its methane-burning Raptor engines and flight trajectory, including a stomach-facing landing toward Earth, then standing before landing.
It was at this stage of the test that S.N. The Starship prototype, named 8, approached the pad a little faster and harder, which is why Musk describes it as an RUD – a quick nonlinear dissociation. In other words crash.
But the flight will give SpaceX a huge amount of engineering data to chew on, which will help them improve the vehicle. And the next prototype – the SN9 – is waiting its turn on the launch pad.
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