Featured Photos from Space Atlas
An infared image of the Helix Nebula, taken from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Located some 700 light-years away, the planetary nebula is the gaseous remains of a dying star, seen as a bright white dwarf in the center of the image.Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Su (Univ. of Arizona), p. 250
Planet-building dust around a young star.Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC-Caltech), p. 45
Half in sunlight, Mercury’s south pole displays the planet’s characteristic craters. Like the moon, the planet has almost no atmosphere, so its craters do not erode; thus, some of these structures are billions of years old.Photo by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington, p. 57
Dwarfed by the bulk of its parent planet, little Mimas (at bottom of image) circles in orbit against the bluish mass of Saturn’s northern hemisphere. The dark bands in the picture are shadows cast on Saturn’s surface by its rings.Photo by NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, p. 147