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Titan in natural colours
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Caption: This image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in January 2012 shows Saturn's moon Titan in near natural colours. The orange-yellowsh colour stems from a layer of partially charged hyodrocarbon compounds. In the visible light, Titan's surface remains largely hidden below the opaque atmosphere.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
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Glossary Terms:
Moons , Titan
Categories:
Solar System
License: Public Domain Public Domain icons
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( image
24.07 kB)
Enceladus
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Caption: On 9 Oct. 2008, just after coming within 25 kilometers (15.6 miles) of the surface of Enceladus, NASA's Cassini probe captured this stunning mosaic of Saturn's 500 km large ice-moon. Craters and cratered terrains are rare in this view of the southern region of the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere. Instead, the surface is replete with fractures, folds, and ridges — all hallmarks of remarkable tectonic activity for a relatively small world. In this enhanced-color view, regions that appear blue-green are thought to be coated with larger grains than those that appear white or gray. Similar to Europa, Enceladus has a subsurface ocean of liquid water spanning the entire moon.
A false colour image of a partially illuminated Enceladus. The white surface is covered by numerous straight and curved crevices at random orientations
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Glossary Terms:
Moons
Categories:
Solar System
License: Public Domain Public Domain icons
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588.31 kB)
Titan with surface features
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Caption: This composite image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in November 2015 visualises infrared radiation from Saturn's moon Titan. Infrared light can penetrate its hazy atmosphere and reveal some of its surface features. During its decent to the surface, the piggy-backed ESA lander Huygens discovered lakes made of liquid hydrocarbons.
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Idaho
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Glossary Terms:
Moons , Titan
Categories:
Solar System
License: Public Domain Public Domain icons
File
( image
160.31 kB)
Equatorial Milky Way
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Created for the OAE
Caption: Honourable mention in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns: Equatorial Milky Way
Taken in Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, Java Island, Indonesia, in March 2016, this image captures regions of the southern Milky Way and, at its left edge, the two planets Mars and Saturn. Mars appears orange and is similar in colour to the star Antares, whose Greek name — anti Ares — references this. Saturn is a little bit fainter than Mars, but clearly visible among the stars of Ophiuchus, above the Pipe Nebula and forming an isosceles triangle with Mars and Antares.
Mars is on the top and Saturn is vertically below. Visible to the naked eye, both planets have significance in many cultures around the world. In Roman mythology Mars is the god of war and fertility, and Saturn the god of sowing and agriculture. Its Greek equivalent, the god Kronos, is also considered the regent of completion. Indigenous Australians, including the Kamilaroi and Wailan people, associate Saturn with “wunygal”, a small bird. Mars is called Iherm-penh (something burnt in flames) by the Anmatyerre people of the Central Desert, while the Kokatha people of the Western Desert associate Mars and the star Anatres with the red-tailed black cockatoo (Kogolongo).
In the middle of this photograph, the most famous southern constellations are clearly recognisable: the Southern Cross (Crux), the pointer stars, Alpha and Beta Centauri, the dark Coalsack Nebula and the red Eta Carina Nebula, which is not visible to the unaided eye but is prominent in modern photographs. In the 19th century, the star eta Carinae had been the second-brightest star in the sky for some time, but since it varies irregularly, it has hardly been recognisable in recent decades, and its future visibility is unpredictable.
Triangulum Australe is visible between the pointer stars and the Scorpion, and in the constellation of Centaurus, the bright globular star cluster Omega Centauri is clearly displayed. It was considered a “nebulous star” since antiquity and, thus, was listed in star catalogues for at least 2000 years. Only within the last century did astronomers discover that globular star clusters are in the halo of our galaxy and that this one consists of roughly 10 million stars.
The dark regions in the Milky Way, which are cool, dense clouds of dust and gas, form the head and body of the Celestial Emu Tchingal. Together with the Southern Cross and the pointer stars, they appear in the Dreamtime stories of many Indigenous Australians. One story associated with the Djab Wurrung and the Jardwadjali people is part of a Dreamtime Story involving Tchingal, the Bram-bram-bult brothers (the pointer stars), their mother Druk (Delta Crux), and Bunya the hunter, who gets transformed into a possum (Gacrux, the red star at the top of the Southern Cross).
Credit: Giorgia Hofer/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Dust , Mars , Milky Way , Saturn , Scorpius , Southern Cross , Dust Cloud , Interstellar Extinction , Alpha Centauri
Categories:
Milky Way and Interstellar Medium
, Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 1.61 MB)
Copernicus's heliocentric system
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Caption: Sketch of Copernicus's heliocentric model of the Solar System, from his book "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the revolution of the heavenly spheres) published in 1543. Shown are the Sun as well as the orbits of Mercury, Venus, the Earth (itself orbited by the Moon), Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The outermost circle represents the sphere of the stars.
In this model, the Earth is not special – it is merely one planet, among several, orbiting the Sun. This was the first example for what is now known as the Copernican Principle: that our positions as observers in the universe is not special or privileged in any way. The shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric model of our universe is known as the Copernican revolution.
Credit: Nicolaus Copernicus
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Glossary Terms:
Copernican Revolution , Heliocentric Model , Scientific Model , Copernican Principle
Categories:
Solar System
License: Public Domain Public Domain icons
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( image
702.64 kB)
