wonderful universe
June 8 , 2021
Hello Mercury !
The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Mercury on 1 October 2021 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist maneuver . The image was taken at 23:44:12 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module ’ s Monitoring Camera 2 , when the spacecraft was about 2418 km from Mercury . Closest approach of about 199 km took place shortly before , at 23:34 UTC . In this view , north is towards the lower left . The cameras provide blackand-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution . The region shown is part of Mercury ’ s northern hemisphere including Sihtu Planitia that has been flooded by lavas . A round area smoother and brighter than its surroundings characterizes the plains around the Calvino crater , which are called the Rudaki Plains . The 166 km-wide Lermontov crater is also seen , which looks bright because it contains features unique to Mercury called ‘ hollows ’ where volatile elements are escaping to space . It also contains a vent where volcanic explosions have occurred .
October 21 , 2021
Capturing a doomed star ’ s destruction
Astronomers recently witnessed supernova SN 2020fqv explode inside the interacting Butterfly galaxies , located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo . Researchers quickly trained NASA ’ s Hubble Space Telescope on the aftermath . Along with other space- and ground-based telescopes , Hubble delivered a ringside seat to the first moments of the illfated star ’ s demise , giving a comprehensive view of a supernova in the very earliest stage of exploding . Hubble probed the material very close to the supernova that was ejected by the star in the last year of its life . These observations allowed researchers to understand what was happening to the star just before it died , and may provide astronomers with an early warning system for other stars on the brink of death .
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