The Earth’s aurora can be seen in outer space. The moon, the fifth largest object in our solar system, is also visible. The Hubble space telescope has taken a super-sharp image of Jupiter in August 2020. It shows new storms that have been spotted on the planet. This may be one of the coolest things we’ve ever photographed in space.
The Veil Nebula, the remnant of a supernova, was discovered by Hubble. This galaxy is more than 2 million light years away. The Hubble Space Telescope analyzed the picture using five different filters. The object is a bright, boxy object that’s more than a hundred light years across. It is a supernova remnant and astronomers used it to measure the expansion of the universe.
In 1990, NASA astronauts caught a spectacular photo of Earth. They took a picture of the “Pale Blue Dot” from 3.75 billion miles away. It held the record for the furthest photo ever taken from Earth. In 2011, a new spacecraft, New Horizons, set a new record. It took an image of a Kuiper Belt object.
In the last few decades, NASA’s Cassini mission has visited Mars. This mission has taken pictures of the red planet and its two moons. The plumes of water vapor coming out of cracks in the surface suggest that the planet contains a liquid ocean underneath its ice surface. Geothermal vents may be the source of the plumes. But no matter how amazing the image is, we’ll never know if it is actually life.
