Space is a vast, and often incredibly weird, place. The first artificial spacecraft, Sputnik 1,
was launched into orbit in 1957. Back then, we were just beginning to learn what lies
beyond our Earthly home. In the six decades since,
thousands of probes and satellites have been launched into space, and have
helped us discover things beyond our wildest imagination. The images that these spacecraft
send back from strange and surreal environments are never anything short of breathtaking.
You are watching Matter, and these are 10 of the most spectacular images
ever taken from outer space.
Number 10: Solar Outburst The Sun has been burning steadily for nearly
five billion years—but an 860,000-mile wide ball of churning, white-hot plasma
is far from stable. The constant flowing and shifting of the solar plasma twists
the Sun’s magnetic field into convoluted knots.
These magnetic tangles will catch charged particles at the Sun’s surface,
slowly building up pressure until the knot breaks, unleashing a surge of hot plasma into outer space.
This image, taken in 2012 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows one such outburst, called a
“solar prominence”. The image shows a stream of plasma erupting from the Sun’s photosphere,
extending thousands of miles into space before falling back down to the surface.
To give you a sense of scale, the solar prominence in this image is nearly 200,000 miles long—20 to
30 Earths wide. The glowing plasma is shooting away from the Sun at 900 miles per second.
Number 9: An Alien Solar System
To date, astronomers have discovered nearly 5,000 extrasolar planets—planets that orbit
a star outside of our solar system. But in 2020, the European Southern
Observatory managed to capture a historic image using their aptly-named Very Large Telescope:
the first-ever direct image of multiple exoplanets in orbit around a Sun-like star.
The star is designated TYC 8998-760-1 and lies around 310 light-years from Earth.
It is around the same size and mass as our Sun, but significantly younger.
The star is orbited by two exoplanets, both visible in this image.
Both planets are gas giants, similar to Jupiter or Saturn in our own solar system.
The first planet, closer to the star, is an incredible 14 times the mass of
Jupiter—nearly 4500 Earth masses. This planet would be wider than 33 Earths set side-by-side.
The second planet in the system is somewhat smaller than the first,
but still 6 times more massive than Jupiter. Both planets are so far from their young sun
that they would each take thousands of years just to complete one orbit.
Number 8: The Surface of Venus In 1982, the Soviet-built Venera
13 spacecraft touched down on the hellish surface of Venus. Temperatures on Venus can
easily approach 900 degrees Fahrenheit (or 480 degrees Celcius), and the atmospheric pressure
is nearly 100 times greater than on Earth. The Venera 13 probe was only able to
operate for 127 minutes in this extreme environment. But before it went silent,
it was able to transmit back some spectacular photographs from the surface of another world.
This image shows Venera 13’s perspective from the wide, desolate plain known as Pheobe Regio.
The dusty Venusian wilderness is covered in outcroppings of dark-colored igneous bedrock.
The yellow haze of the Venusian sky
comes from the thick clouds of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid that surround the planet.
Number 7: Mountains on Pluto In 2015, the New Horizons probe
became the first—and so far the only—spacecraft to take up-close pictures of the dwarf planet Pluto.
The images from New Horizons revealed a much more geologically diverse world
than astronomers had previously imagined. Mere minutes after the spacecraft’s closest
approach, New Horizons captured this stunning sunset view of Pluto’s terrain.
On the far right of the image, you can see the low, flat plains of Sputnik Planitia—comprised
mostly of solid nitrogen ice. To the left, in the foreground, are the craggy Tenzing Montes.
Because Pluto’s gravitational pull is so weak, these mountains can be much taller
than mountains on Earth—the tallest of the Tenzing Montes is 5,000 feet
taller than Mount Everest from base to peak. Above the Tenzing Mountain range in this photo,
sitting along the curved horizon, are the Hillary Montes. The mountain peaks can be
seen stretching upward into the layers of Pluto’s tenuous, hazy atmosphere.
Number 6: Alien Sunset
Most everyone on Earth has probably marveled at the beauty of the sky
at sunset—the blue sky becomes painted with swirling hues of red, orange, pink, and purple.
But the familiar beauty of a sunset would look very different
when standing on the surface of another world. In 2015, the Curiosity Mars rover took this
image of the Sun setting over the rim of Gale Crater. As the Sun descends toward the horizon,
the Martian sky is bathed—not in shades of red and orange—but a pastel blue.
The fine-grained dust that covers Mars’ frozen deserts is rich in iron oxide—rust.
This is what gives Mars its distinctive reddish coloration. But it is also, strangely, the reason
that Martian sunsets are blue. Windstorms scatter the dust grains high into the atmosphere. When the
Sun begins to set on the horizon, the light passes through the thickest part of the dusty haze.
The dust particles are the perfect size that the blue wavelengths of the
fading sunlight easily pass through, while yellow and red wavelengths are scattered or absorbed.
The result is a view that looks entirely alien, indeed.
Number 5: Heart of Darkness Black holes get their name
from the fact that their gravitational pull is so strong that, beyond a certain point,
absolutely nothing can escape it—not even light. But because they do not emit any light,
black holes are incredibly difficult to find. They can only be observed indirectly,
through the effects of their gravitational pull on other bodies around it, or by the light emitted
by matter that is being pulled down into it. But in 2019, a team of astronomers managed to
achieve the impossible: they captured the first-ever direct image of a black hole.
This photo was generated by combining the data from an array of radio telescopes across the
world, collectively known as the Event Horizon Telescope.
The network of telescopes works together to effectively create a single, enormous telescope
with greater magnifying power than ever before. The Event Horizon Telescope was aimed at the
center of the M87 galaxy, 53 million light-years away. At the core of this
galaxy is a supermassive black hole, with a mass 6 and a half billion times that of our Sun.
The historic image captured by the Event Horizon telescope shows the glowing ring of surrounding
matter. The dark orb at the center hides the black hole itself, which measures more than 22 billion
miles across—six times greater than the distance between the Sun and Pluto.
Number 4: Eclipse Over Saturn Saturn, the sixth planet of our solar system,
is best known for its prominent system of rings. These rings are made up of billions
of tiny chunks of ice and dust, and have been admired and studied by astronomers since they
were first observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610. But in 2013, the Cassini orbiter captured a very
different view of the planet’s famous rings. Cassini took this photo as it passed into
the shadow of Saturn, capturing the spectacle of a Saturnian solar eclipse.
The translucent rings are brilliantly lit, revealing the finest details of the complex
ring structure. The eclipse also reveals Saturn’s outermost E ring, normally too faint to be seen.
The region of Saturn near the plane of the rings, despite the image being taken from the night-time
side, is partially illuminated by the faint “ringshine”—sunlight being
reflected from the rings onto Saturn’s surface. Many of Saturn’s moons are visible in this image,
but also our home. In the lower right, situated between Saturn’s E and G rings, is the Earth.
Nearly 900 million miles distant, our home planet appears as nothing more than a pale, blue dot.
Number 3: Cosmic Snowstorm In 2014, the Rosetta space probe,
built by the European Space Agency, entered orbit around a 4-kilometer wide comet—the
first spacecraft to ever do so. Rosetta returned some never-before-seen views
of a comet landscape, including this series of images strung together to form a short animation.
The images show a handful of boulders clinging to the dusty surface,
sitting in the shadow of a range of tall, jagged cliffs. The stars in the background seem to move
downward as the comet slowly spins around. The flurries of particles seen in the images
are likely tiny grains of dust and ice that have been blown off the surface
by the solar wind—you are looking at a dusty snowstorm on the surface of another world.
Number 2: Storms of Jupiter The Juno space probe entered orbit around
Jupiter in 2016. Unlike any previous spacecraft that has visited Jupiter, Juno orbits around the
planet’s poles, allowing for some unprecedented close-up observations of Jupiter’s polar regions.
This image, taken by the Juno orbiter, shows the swirling, blue-tinted clouds in Jupiter’s northern
hemisphere. Because of the low angle of the sunlight at this location, the taller cloud layers
cast shadows on their surroundings, creating a true sense of depth within the Jovian atmosphere.
The turbulent atmospheric currents generate powerful, cyclonic storms that can last for
years—or even centuries. The wind within Jovian storms can blow up to 400 miles per hour.
The prominent, light-colored storm near the top left of this image is around 1300 miles wide.
Number 1: Smiling Galaxies The final photo on our list takes us far, far
away from our solar system—millions of light-years away to the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849.
This image—what appears to be a cosmic “smiley face”—was
captured in 2015 by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright yellow “eyes” of the face are actually
two elliptical galaxies, each one home to billions of stars.
The face’s “smile,” strangely enough, isn’t actually real. It’s only an illusion created
by a phenomenon called “gravitational lensing.” One of the things that Einstein predicted with
his general theory of relativity is that gravity can actually bend light,
much like the lens of a magnifying glass. When rays of light interact with the
gravitational field generated by a massive object in space, the light’s
trajectory will appear to bend around it slightly. Normally, this effect is hardly noticeable. But
for particularly massive objects, like a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies, the effect becomes
much more obvious. The light from any objects coming from behind the gravitational lens becomes
stretched and distorted from our perspective. The bluish “smile” in this Hubble image
is actually just another galaxy, situated farther behind the two that form the “eyes.”
But the combined gravity of the two stretches the more distant galaxy’s light into a long,
thin arc, known as an Einstein ring. So,
what we see here on Earth happens to look like the galaxies are smiling back at us.
Thank you for watching Matter! Leave a comment below and tell us which one of these photos
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