Three views of Saturn moon Rhea made from data obtained by NASA Cassini spacecraft, were enhanced to show colorful splotches and bands on the icy moon surface. Scientists believe the reddish and bluish tints came from bombardments large and small.
Tinted Rhea
California's NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Carla Thomas takes photos on January 31 of the rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth's shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
Image is NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center's aircraft hangar that houses the jets and other aircraft with the eclipsed moon overhead during Jan. 31 Super Blue Blood Moon.
California's NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Carla Thomas takes photos on January 31 of the rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth's shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
Image shows January 31 Super Blue Blood Moon starting the lunar eclipse over NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center's mission support building located in California.
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Lauren Hughes takes photos of the Super Blue Blood Moon eclipse from California’s Trona Pinnacles Desert National Conservation for the Jan. 31 of the total lunar eclipse that provided a rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth’s shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
Image shows Trona Pinnacles near California’s NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center during Jan. 31 Super Blue Blood Moon. Trona Pinnacles is an unusual geological feature of the state’s Desert National Conservation.
California's NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Carla Thomas takes photos on January 31 of the rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon will pass through Earth's shadow and take on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
NASA photographer captures Super Blue Blood Moon beginning its eclipse January 31 from NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center on the West Coast.
California’s NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s photographer Carla Thomas takes photos on January 31 of the rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth’s shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s communications facility with radar dish and antennas is shown having the eclipsed moon overhead during Jan. 31 Super Blue Blood Moon.
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Lauren Hughes takes photos of the Super Blue Blood Moon eclipse from California’s Trona Pinnacles Desert National Conservation for the Jan. 31 of the total lunar eclipse that provided a rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth’s shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
Image shows Trona Pinnacles near California’s NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center during Jan. 31 Super Blue Blood Moon. Trona Pinnacles is an unusual geological feature of the state’s Desert National Conservation.
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Lauren Hughes takes photos of the Super Blue Blood Moon eclipse from California's Trona Pinnacles Desert National Conservation for the Jan. 31 of the total lunar eclipse that provided a rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth's shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
Image shows Trona Pinnacles near California's NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center during Jan. 31 Super Blue Blood Moon. Trona Pinnacles is an unusual geological feature of the state's Desert National Conservation.
California's NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Carla Thomas takes photos on January 31 of the rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth's shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center's communications facility with radar dish and the eclipsed moon overhead during Jan. 31 Super Blue Blood Moon.
California’s NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center photographer Ken Ulbrich takes photos of Super Blue Blood Moon eclipse making a time-lapse composition of the event on January 31. The total lunar eclipse provided a rare opportunity to capture a supermoon, a blue moon and a lunar eclipse at the same time. A supermoon occurs when the Moon is closer to Earth in its orbit and appearing 14 percent brighter than usual. As the second full moon of the month, this moon is also commonly known as a blue moon, though it will not be blue in appearance. The super blue moon passed through Earth’s shadow and took on a reddish tint, known as a blood moon. This total lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and a full moon form a near-perfect lineup in space. The Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow).
Image is NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s mission support building with a composite of 16 images of the eclipsed moons overhead during Jan. 31 Super Blue Blood Moon.
Unusual arc-shaped, reddish streaks cut across the surface of Saturn's ice-rich moon Tethys in this enhanced-color mosaic. The red streaks are narrow, curved lines on the moon's surface, only a few miles (or kilometers) wide but several hundred miles (or kilometers) long. The red streaks are among the most unusual color features on Saturn's moons to be revealed by Cassini's cameras. A few of the red arcs can be faintly seen in Cassini imaging observations made earlier in the mission, but the color images for this observation, which were obtained in April 2015, were the first to show large northern areas of Tethys under the illumination and viewing conditions necessary to see the features clearly. As the Saturn system moved into its northern hemisphere summer over the past few years, northern latitudes have become increasingly well illuminated. As a result, the red arc features have become clearly visible for the first time. The origin of the features and their reddish color is currently a mystery to Cassini scientists. Possibilities being studied include ideas that the reddish material is exposed ice with chemical impurities, or the result of outgassing from inside Tethys. The streaks could also be associated with features like fractures that are below the resolution of the available images. Except for a few small craters on Dione, reddish tinted features are rare on other moons of Saturn. However, many reddish features are observed on the geologically young surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Images taken using clear, green, infrared and ultraviolet spectral filters were combined to create the view, which highlights subtle color differences across Tethys' surface at wavelengths not visible to human eyes. The moon's surface is fairly uniform in natural color. The yellowish tones on the left side of the view are a result of alteration of the moon's surface by high-energy particles from Saturn's magnetosphere. This particle radiation slams into the moon's trailing hemisphere, modifying it chemically and changing its appearance in enhanced-color views like this one. The area of Tethys shown here is centered on 30 degrees north latitude, 187 degrees west longitude, and measures 305 by 258 miles (490 by 415 kilometers) across. The original color images were obtained at a resolution of about 2,300 feet (700 meters) per pixel on April 11, 2015. This is a cropped close-up of an area visible in PIA19636. This is a mosaic of images that have been photometrically calibrated and map-projected. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19637
Red Arcs on Tethys
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows infant stars "hatching" in the head of the hunter constellation, Orion. Astronomers suspect that shockwaves from a supernova explosion in Orion's head, nearly three million years ago, may have initiated this newfound birth. The region featured in this Spitzer image is called Barnard 30. It is located approximately 1,300 light-years away and sits on the right side of Orion's "head," just north of the massive star Lambda Orionis. Wisps of green in the cloud are organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These molecules are formed anytime carbon-based materials are burned incompletely. On Earth, they can be found in the sooty exhaust from automobile and airplane engines. They also coat the grills where charcoal-broiled meats are cooked. Tints of orange-red in the cloud are dust particles warmed by the newly forming stars. The reddish-pink dots at the top of the cloud are very young stars embedded in a cocoon of cosmic gas and dust. Blue spots throughout the image are background Milky Way along this line of sight. This composite includes data from Spitzer's infrared array camera instrument, and multiband imaging photometer instrument. Light at 4.5 microns is shown as blue, 8.0 microns is green, and 24 microns is red. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09411
Young Stars Emerge from Orion Head
What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named W40, the butterfly is a nebula - a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars may form. The butterfly's two "wings" are giant bubbles of hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars in this region. The material that forms W40's wings was ejected from a dense cluster of stars that lies between the wings in the image. The hottest, most massive of these stars, W40 IRS 1a, lies near the center of the star cluster. W40 is about 1,400 light-years from the Sun, about the same distance as the well-known Orion nebula, although the two are almost 180 degrees apart in the sky. They are two of the nearest regions in which massive stars - with masses upwards of 10 times that of the Sun - have been observed to be forming. The W40 star-forming region was observed as part of a Spitzer Legacy Survey, and the resulting mosaic image was published as part of the MYStIX (Massive Young stellar clusters Study in Infrared and X-rays) survey of young stellar objects. The Spitzer picture is composed of four images taken with the telescope's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) in different wavelengths of infrared light: 3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8.0 µm (shown as blue, green, orange and red). Organic molecules made of carbon and hydrogen, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), are excited by interstellar radiation and become luminescent at wavelengths near 8.0 microns, giving the nebula its reddish features. Stars are brighter at the shorter wavelengths, giving them a blue tint. Some of the youngest stars are surrounded by dusty disks of material, which glow with a yellow or red hue. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23121
Space Butterfly
STS059-S-080 (18 April 1994) --- This is a false-color three frequency image of the Oberpfaffenhofen supersite, an area just south-west of Munich in southern Germany. The colors show the different conditions that the three radars (X-Band, C-Band and L-Band) can see on the ground. The image covers a 27 by 36 kilometer area. The center of the site is 48.09 degrees north and 11.29 degrees east. The image was acquired by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C and X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on April 11, 1994. The dark area on the left is Lake Ammersee. The two smaller lakes are the Woerthsee and the Pilsensee. On the bottom is the tip of the Starnbergersee. The city of Munich is located just beyond the right of the image. The Oberpfaffenhofen supersite is the major test site for SIR-C/X-SAR calibration and scientific investigations concerning agriculture, forestry, hydrology and geology. This color composite image is a three frequency overlay. L-Band total power was assigned red, the C-Band total power is shown in green and the X-Band VV polarization appears blue. The colors on the image stress the differences between the L-Band, C-Band, X-Band images. If the three radar antennas were getting an equal response from objects on the ground, this image would appear in black and white. However, in this image, the blue areas corresponds to area for which the X-Band backscatter is relatively higher than the backscatter at L and C-Bands. This behavior is characteristic of grasslands, clear cuts and shorter vegetation. Similarly, the forested areas have a reddish tint (L-Band). The green areas seen near both the Ammersee and the Pilsensee lakes indicate marshy areas. The agricultural fields in the upper right hand corner appear mostly in blue and green (X-Band and C-Band). The white areas are mostly urban areas, while the smooth surfaces of the lakes appear very dark. SIR-C/X-SAR is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE). SIR-C/X-SAR radars illuminate Earth with microwaves allowing detailed observations at any time, regardless of weather or sunlight conditions. SIR-C/X-SAR uses three microwave wavelengths: L-Band (24 cm), C-Band (6 cm), and X-Band (3 cm). The multi-frequency data will be used by the international scientific community to better understand the global environment and how it is changing. The SIR-C/X-SAR data, complemented by aircraft and ground studies, will give scientists clearer insights into those environmental changes which are caused by nature and those changes which are induced by human activity. SIR-C was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). X-SAR was developed by the Dornire and Alenia Spazio Companies for the German Space Agency, Deutsche Agentur fuer Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (DARA), and the Italian Space Agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI). JPL Photo ID: P-43930
Three frequency false-color image of Oberpfaffenhofen supersite in Germany