This is a photo montage of Uranus and five of it’s largest moons. The photos were taken separately by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The moons, from largest to smallest as they appear here, are Ariel, Miranda, Titania, Oberon and Umbriel.
When Voyager 2 visited the planet, it discovered 10 new smaller moons and took close-up pictures of its ring system.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
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A pulsar is probably the deadliest object in the Universe. Despite their beauty, you wouldn’t want to get close to one of them! They are a type of neutron star that emits a highly focused beam of electromagnetic radiation from both magnetic poles. This radiation, deadly to any form of life, can only be visible when one of the two beams is turned to face towards the observer (which is hopefully not anywhere close). The radiation is so strong that it would disintegrate the molecular bonds holding together DNA strands, killing any life in the process. Pulsars rotate in an extremely regular period. It’s this rotation that makes them pulse, hence their name. Their rate of pulsations is as regular and precise as an atomic clock.
Schematic view of a pulsar. The sphere in the middle represents the pulsar, the curves indicate the magnetic field lines and the protruding cones represent the emission beams. Graphic made by Wikipedia user Mysid.
Despite its deadly nature, a pulsar known as PSR B1257+12, has at least three known planets orbiting in a close orbit around it. The pulsar was discovered by the Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan in 1990 using the Arecibo radio telescope. In 1992 he and Dale Frail discovered two extra-solar planets (also known as exoplanets) in orbit around the pulsar. Two years later a third planet was discovered. Since 2002 a dwarf planet is suspected to also orbit the pulsar. If true, this would be the first (and so far only) extra-solar dwarf planet discovered. READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>
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This photo of the unusual stone mesas of the Cydonia region on Mars was taken by the robotic spacecraft called Mars Express. It shows an area about 90 kilometers wide. What most people don’t know is that the region in the far lower right of this photo is the same region in which the Viking orbiter saw a human face in 1976. This was due to the angle in which the mesa was lit. We could say it was some sort of an optical illusion, since without shading the whole thing is just a regular mound of rock.
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