Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: Hangry Stars Munch Down a Cloud
<a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/05/The_Little_Fox_and_the_Giant_Stars">ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project</a>01SPoW-May28-06.jpg
Situated 8000 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula – Latin for little fox – the region in the image is known as Vulpecula OB1. It is a “stellar association” in which a batch of truly giant “OB” stars is being born. The vast quantities of ultraviolet and other radiation emitted by these stars is compressing the surrounding cloud, causing nearby regions of dust and gas to begin the collapse into more new stars. In time, this process will "eat" its way through the cloud, transforming some of the raw material into shining new stars.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-gets-in-on-a-galactic-gathering">ESA (European Space Agency)/Hubble & NASA</a>02SPoW-May28-05.jpg
This incredible image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals thousands of colorful galaxies in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Galaxy clusters are massive. They can have a tremendous impact on their surroundings, with their immense gravity warping and amplifying the light from more distant objects. This phenomenon, known as gravitational lensing, can help astronomers to see galaxies that would otherwise be too faint, aiding our hunt for residents of the primordial universe.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-s-sdo-peers-into-huge-coronal-hole">NASA/SDO</a>03SPoW-May28-08.gif
This imagery of the sun captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory from May 17-19, 2016, shows a giant dark area on the star's upper half, known as a coronal hole. Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona. Because they contain little solar material, they have lower temperatures and thus appear much darker than their surroundings. Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in purple for easy viewing.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-best-close-up-of-plutos-surface">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a>04SPoW-May28-02.jpg
This is the most detailed view of Pluto’s terrain you’ll see for a very long time. This mosaic strip – extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 – now includes all of the highest-resolution images taken by the NASA probe. With a resolution of about 260 feet per pixel, the mosaic affords New Horizons scientists and the public the best opportunity to examine the fine details of the various types of terrain on Pluto, and determine the processes that formed and shaped them.
<a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/05/Chile_s_salt_flat">ESA</a>05SPoW-May28-01.jpg
The Sentinel-2A satellite takes you to the diverse landscape of the eastern Atacama desert in South America. The region pictured lies around 124 miles east of the Chilean city of Antofagasta on the Pacific coast (not pictured), and is virtually devoid of vegetation. At the far right of the image you can see part of Chile’s largest salt flat, the Salar de Atacama. With an average elevation of some 1.4 miles above sea level, it’s formed by waters flowing down from the Andes, which, having no drainage outlets, are forced to evaporate, leaving salt deposits.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia20481/up-and-over">NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute</a>06SPoW-May28-04.jpg
Cassini orbited in Saturn's ring plane -- around the planet's equator -- for most of 2015. This enabled a season of flybys of the planet's icy moons, but did not allow for angled views of the rings and the planet's poles, like this one. But in early 2016, the spacecraft began to increase its orbital inclination, climbing higher over the poles in preparation for the mission's final spectacular orbits in 2017.
