Planetary Image of the Day – Weeks of November 14 and 21, 2022

Welcome to our weekly recap of our Planetary Picture of the Day (PPOD)!
Eclipses, galaxies, our diverse and fascinating solar system – there’s so much to see out there!

Monday, November 14, 2022

Planetary latte
This very impressive – and little-known – image of a meandering scribble of high-altitude clouds on Saturn was captured by the Cassini spacecraft on July 18, 2010. It almost looks like one of those whimsical drawings of art latte!

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

blue marble
Earth photographed from space during the uncrewed Apollo 4 mission on November 9, 1967, the flight of the Saturn 5 Moon rocket. Taken about 18,000 kilometers.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Pluto’s Ice Mountains and Plains
High-resolution images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015 are the sharpest images yet of Pluto’s varied terrain details down to scales of 270 meters. In this 75-mile (120 kilometer) section taken from the largest high-resolution mosaic, the plain’s textured surface surrounds two isolated mountains of ice.

Thursday, November 17, 2022

lava dragon
Using a drone, photographer Michael Shainblum captured stunning footage of the recent eruption of Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano. His favorite of the set happened to be this one which appears to be a dragon made out of flowing lava.

Friday, November 18, 2022

Luminous Enceladus
Saturn’s moon Enceladus reflects bright sunlight as the planet and its rings fill the background of this Cassini view. Enceladus is one of the most reflective bodies in the solar system because it is constantly covered in particles of cool, white ice.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera on December 21, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 102,000 kilometers from Enceladus. The scale of the image is 612 meters per pixel.

Monday, November 21, 2022

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP

Rounded Rock on Mars
Water rounded boulders seen by Supercam aboard NASA’s Perseverance embedded in the layers of the preserved river delta. This image was acquired on November 17, 2022.
Supercam images like this can be seen in the Mars 2020 Mission Perseverance rover multimedia raw image gallery: https://buff.ly/3tMf9cB

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

European Transit
Galilean moon Europa captured during transit of Jupiter, taken during the Voyager 1 mission using orange and purple filters on March 3, 1979.

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Andromeda Galaxy
Astrophotographer Dustin Gibson took this photo using over 20 hours of exposure with a Pentax 125 telescope. The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest large galaxy to our own Milky Way, but it’s still 2.5 million light-years… and getting closer. The two galaxies are expected to collide in 2.5 to 4 billion years.

Thursday, November 24, 2022

L1527 and Protostar
The protostar in the dark cloud L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s JWST near-infrared camera (NIRCam), is embedded in a cloud of matter fueling its growth. Ejections from the star have cleared cavities above and below, the edges of which glow orange and blue in this infrared view. The upper central region displays bubble-like shapes due to stellar “burps” or sporadic ejections. Webb also detects filaments made of molecular hydrogen that have been shocked by past stellar ejections. The edges of the upper left and lower right cavities appear straight, while the upper right and lower left boundaries are curved. The lower right region appears blue, as there is less dust between it and Webb than the orange regions above.

Friday, November 25, 2022

Partial solar eclipse
Mohammad Adeel in Islamabad, Pakistan shared this photo he took of the last partial solar eclipse. He wrote: “Not only can you see the moon’s shadow obscuring part of the sun, but if you look closely at the lower edge of the moon’s shadow on the solar surface, it appears to be irregular and unusual. these are visible due to sunlight streaming through the mountains and peaks of the lunar surface at the terminator, giving it a jagged appearance.The black dot you see above the lower right half is only a visibility marker suspended above distant power lines.