Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: A Star Proves It's Hip to Be Square
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-frames-a-unique-red-rectangle"> European Space Agency</a>01SPoW-April3-9-06.jpg
The star HD 44179 is surrounded by an extraordinary structure known as the Red Rectangle. It acquired its moniker because of its shape and its apparent color when seen in early images from Earth. This strikingly detailed Hubble image reveals how, when seen from space, the nebula, rather than being rectangular, is shaped like an X with additional complex structures of spaced lines of glowing gas, a little like the rungs of a ladder.
<a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA20547">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>02SPoW-April3-9-051.jpg
This image shows a set of coalesced collapse pits in western Valles Marineris on Mars. Fine layers are exposed in the walls of the pits, and in some places those layers are displaced by faults. What formed these layers, and what caused them to collapse into pits? Detailed study of this image and other data should help answer those questions.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/behemoth-black-hole-found-in-an-unlikely-place">NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)</a>03SPoW-April3-9-01.jpg
Astronomers have uncovered a near-record breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe. The observations, made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, may indicate that these monster objects may be more common than once thought. The image above is computer simulation.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia18364/saturn-askew">NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute</a>04SPoW-April3-9-02.jpg
Cassini images of Saturn are generally oriented so that Saturn appears north up, but the spacecraft views the planet and its expansive rings from all sorts of angles. Here, a half-lit Saturn sits askew as tiny Dione (698 miles across) looks on from lower left. And the terminator, which separates night from day on Saturn, is also askew, owing to the planet’s approach to northern summer solstice. As a result, the planet’s northern pole is in sunlight all throughout Saturn’s day, much as it would be on Earth during northern summer.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-turbulent-north-atlantic">NASA/Ocean Biology Processing Group</a>05SPoW-April3-9-04.jpg
The Gulf Stream waters flow in somewhat parallel layers, slicing across what is otherwise a fairly turbulent western North Atlantic Ocean in this image collected by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite. The turbulence — made visible by the pigmented phytoplankton it entrains — extends across the whole North American Basin from Anegada to Bermuda to Cape Cod.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/opportunitys-devilish-view-from-on-high">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a>06SPoW-April3-9-03.jpg
From its perch high on a ridge, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded this image of a Martian dust devil twisting through the valley below. The view looks back at the rover's tracks leading up the north-facing slope of "Knudsen Ridge," which forms part of the southern edge of "Marathon Valley."
