Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: Watch It. This Star's Bustin' Out
<a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/05/A_golden_veil_cloaks_a_newborn_star">ESA/Hubble & NASA</a>01SPoW-Jun2-001.jpg
This young star is breaking out. Like a hatchling pecking through its shell, this particular stellar newborn is forcing its way out into the surrounding universe. The golden veil of light cloaks a young stellar object known only as IRAS 14568-6304. It is ejecting gas at supersonic speeds and eventually will have cleared a hole in the cloud, allowing it to be easily visible to the outside universe.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-small-satellite-duo-deploys-from-space-station-into-earth-orbit">NASA</a>02SPoW-Jun2-005.gif
Two Nodes satellites deployed from the International Space Station on May 16. The third smaller cubesat is a student project from St. Thomas Moore Elementary School that deployed at the same time. The satellites are performing perfectly and during their first week in orbit have already accomplished technology ‘firsts’ for small spacecraft.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-rocks-with-a-heavy-metal-home"> ESA/Hubble & NASA</a>03SPoW-Jun2-07.jpg
This 10.5-billion-year-old globular cluster, NGC 6496, is home to heavy-metal stars of a celestial kind! The stars comprising this spectacular spherical cluster are enriched with much higher proportions of metals — elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are curiously known as metals in astronomy — than stars found in similar clusters.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-heart-like-a-cosmic-lava-lamp">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a>04SPoW-Jun2-002.jpg
Scientists from NASA’s New Horizons mission used state-of-the-art computer simulations to show that the surface of Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planum is covered with churning ice "cells" that are geologically young and turning over due to a process called convection.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/secrets-revealed-from-pluto-s-twilight-zone">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a>05SPoW-Jun2-08.jpg
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took this stunning image of Pluto only a few minutes after closest approach on July 14, 2015. Scientists have spotted an intriguing bright wisp measuring tens of miles across that may be a discreet, low-lying cloud in Pluto’s atmosphere; if so, it would be the only one yet identified in New Horizons imagery. This cloud – if that’s what it is – is visible for the same reason the haze layers are so bright: illumination from the sunlight grazing Pluto’s surface at a low angle. Atmospheric models suggest that methane clouds can occasionally form in Pluto’s atmosphere.
<a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Telecommunications_Integrated_Applications/EDRS/Europe_s_SpaceDataHighway_relays_first_Sentinel-1_images_via_laser">Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ESA</a>06SPoW-Jun2-004.jpg
ESA today unveiled the first Sentinel-1 satellite images sent via the European Data Relay System’s world-leading laser technology in high orbit. The two images were taken by the radar on the Copernicus Sentinel-1A over La Reunion Island and its coastal area. The first was scanned in a high-resolution mode, the second in a wide-swath mode that provides broad coverage of surrounding waters, and used in particular for maritime surveillance.
