The best photos of the cosmos for the week (11.01-17.01)

A lot of interesting things happened this week. Space continues to delight us with interesting news and spectacular photos. For the benefit of mankind there are many space stations, telescopes and other systems that constantly send hundreds of photos of near and far space objects.

And we have the opportunity to admire all this. This week there are new photos that deserve special attention. Of course, there are a lot of them, and in this post - only a small fraction of the whole mass of great shots. Well, let's get started.


Photo: ESA / Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt
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NGC 3697 is the product of the collision of two fairly large galaxies. Now NGC 3697 is gradually evolving, turning into a giant elliptical galaxy. Astronomers had the opportunity to study the process of evolution of elliptical galaxies, of which there are quite a few in the Universe.



Scientists working with the tool GRAVITY, had the opportunity to take a closer look at the bright, young stars from the Trampezium Cluster. These stars are located in the star-forming region of Orion. Scientists have received a gift - one of the components of the cluster (Theta1 Orionis F) is a double star. The background image was obtained using the Very Large Telescope , an ISAAC tool (Infrared Spectrometer and an array of cameras).


This is a photograph of the compact galaxy J0925 + 1403, which throws out ionizing particles in unexpectedly large quantities. The discovery confirmed the theory that galaxies like this were the cause of the heating of the Universe 13 billion years ago, they played an important role in the formation of the young Universe.


The probe of the New Horizons has recently sent a high-quality image of the surface of Pluto, taken on July 14 last year. The distance from the station to the surface of the planetoid at that time was 48 thousand kilometers. The picture was taken using tools such as LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) and MVIC (Ralph / Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera).

Scientists believe that the picture may be seen cryovolcan. It is located in the region, called Wright Mons. This area stretches for about 150 kilometers, and its height is 4 kilometers. If this is indeed what it seems, then Pluto has managed to find the largest cryovolcan on the outer edges of the solar system.


This photo shows the layers of the atmosphere of Pluto (few people suspected that the planetoid has an atmosphere at all). Perhaps the haze is a photochemical smog formed by the action of sunlight on methane and other organic molecules in the Pluto atmosphere.


A gorgeous photograph of Saturn. One of his companions, Tethys (Tethys), is in the lower right corner of the photo. The satellite diameter is about 1060 km. Tethys was discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1684 and received the name of one of the Titanides of Greek mythology. The apparent magnitude of Tethys - 10.2. The photo was taken from a distance of 2.6 million km from Saturn. The image scale is 16 km per pixel.