5 NASA images show universe’s rich phenomena, colorful lunar features and more Mint

Space is a mysterious realm, home to countless galaxies, stars, asteroids, meteorites, and astronomical phenomena. Similarly, our own planet Earth boasts remarkable features that astonish scientists and arouse curiosity about the existence of such wonders.

From Earth’s Moon to the nebulae that surround the planet, these spectacular NASA images keep us updated on all the happenings in space.

NASA released a composite photo of Earth’s moon, which generally appears gray in color, made from images taken by the Galileo spacecraft. This image is a mixture of red, orange and blue.

The unusual colors in this photo help scientists study what the moon’s soil is made of. Areas appearing red generally correspond to lunar highlands, while blue to orange colors indicate ancient volcanic lava flows of mare, or lunar sea.

Blue areas contain more titanium than orange areas. The dark blue patch on the right is Mare Tranquillitatis, and it is richer in titanium than Mare Serenitatis, with Mare Tranquillitatis having a slightly smaller circular area to the upper left.

Finally, the small purple areas found near the center are deposits formed from explosive volcanic eruptions.

Astronomers using NASA Chandra X-rays found a galaxy cluster in which two streams of extremely hot gas are crossing each other, which could lead to the formation of new structure.

Researchers discovered a massive, comet-like tail of hot gas – more than 1.6 million light years long – trailing a galaxy within a galaxy cluster called Zwicky 8338 (Z8338 for short). As the galaxy moved through space, its tail split into two streams

It is the second pair of tails behind any galaxy in this system. Earlier, astronomers discovered a small pair of tails from a different galaxy near this latest galaxy. This new and longer set of tails was only seen due to intensive observations with Chandra, which revealed faint X-rays.⁣

The bright star in the center is a Wolf-Rayet star known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina (The Wedge). Wolf–Rayet stars, named after astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet, who discovered the first of these stars, are extremely hot and massive. Some can be nearly 20 times larger than the Sun! However, their lifecycle is only a few million years. In cosmic terms, this is equivalent to the blinking of an eye.

Wolf–Rayet stars typically lose half their mass in less than 100,000 years, and WR 31a is no exception. It will eventually end its life as a spectacular supernova, and the stellar material expelled from its explosion will later nurture a new generation of stars and planets.

The blue bubble looks like it’s around WR 31a and its unnamed companion, the Wolf-Rayet Nebula. These are typically round or ring-shaped interstellar clouds of dust and gas that form when strong winds interact with the outer layers of hydrogen emitted by Wolf-Rayet stars.

Stars are often born in clusters or groups, in vast clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers studied this star cluster using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Telescope, seen here in purple, and infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, seen here in red, green and blue.

This composite image shows a cluster at the center of the Flame Nebula, found about 1,400 light years from Earth. Research shows that the stars in the center of this cluster are about 200,000 years old, while the stars on the outskirts are about 1.5 million years old.

This spiral galaxy, as seen by NASA’s Hubble Telescope, is 45 million light years away from Earth. Hidden within its twisting spiral arms are patches of glowing pink spots: these represent “H-alpha regions”, signs of nebulae where new stars are forming.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been studying the universe from its vantage point in low Earth orbit since it was first launched in 1990. From determining the atmospheric composition of planets around other stars to discovering dark energy, Hubble has transformed humanity’s understanding of the universe.