There were amazing cosmic images to feast on in 2020, from Hubble’s 30th birthday to the imagery of a daring example of an asteroid. Here is our selection of this year’s offerings.
Hubble’s ‘cosmic reef’
The Hubble Telescope, one of the most important scientific instruments ever built, celebrated its 30th anniversary in April.
In celebration of the occasion, an amazing statue was released showing a star-forming region near our Milky Way galaxy.
In this magnificent Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are located in the Great Magellanic Cloud, a satellite system of the Milky Way that is 163,000 light-years away.
Nebulae are expansive interstellar clouds of dust and gas where star formation can occur.
The core of NGC 2014 is a coupling of bright stars, each 10 to 20 times more massive than our sun.
The image was nicknamed “cosmic reef” because astronomers thought the nebulae looked like an underwater world.
A BBC Horizon documentary, which aired alongside the anniversary, showed beautiful 3D visualizations of iconic Hubble images – such as the Pillars of Creation, part of the Eagle Nebula.
See also: Hubble Telescope’s Universe Revealed in 3D
Asteroid flu
This year, Nasa’s Osiris-Rex performed a daring ‘touch-and-go’ maneuver with the asteroid Bennu to collect rock and soil samples for delivery to Earth.
Asteroids like Bennu are primitive remnants from the dawn of the solar system. It is the free-flowing building blocks of planets and provides a window into how worlds like the earth came into being.
To collect samples, Osiris-Rex used a long spray bar with an annular collection chamber at the end. The spacecraft descends to Bennu’s surface and delivers a spray of nitrogen when the spray bar makes contact with the asteroid.
This was to stir up the gas Bennu’s surface and make fragments of the asteroid float in the collection chamber.
The strategy seems to have worked, as seen in the series of photos above.
Meanwhile, a Japanese mission to collect samples from another asteroid returned to Earth on December 5 with its precious closet. The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has released its monster return capsule, which has crashed safely into the Australian desert.
The samples will be analyzed at a board of trustees in Sagamihara City, Japan.
Close-up with the sun
In January, photos of the Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) were released in Hawaii showing the sun’s surface in unprecedented detail.
The images show cellular structures about the size of the US state of Texas. These are masses of hot, excited gas or plasma.
The bright areas indicate where this material rises; the dark lanes in between are where cooler plasma sinks.
DKIST is a brand new plant in Haleakalā, a 3000-meter volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
Scientists want to use it to discover fresh insights into our parents’ dynamic behavior, hoping to better predict its energetic eruptions.
These colossal eruptions of charged particles can damage satellites around the earth, damage astronauts and even knock out electric grids.
Jupiter flies by
Launched in 2011, Nasa’s spacecraft Juno continues to send back beautiful images of the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter.
The probe captured footage of the host giant’s swirling cloud cover when it launched its 27th near – world flight on June 2.
Civil scientist Kevin M Gill then converted the data into a video, in which 41 still photos were taken during Juno’s close pace.
The photos were digitally projected onto a sphere, with a virtual “camera” looking from different angles of Jupiter.
Among other things, the footage offers a wonderful view of Jupiter’s most striking feature, the giant red dot – which is actually a giant storm.
Starship Test
Elon Musk’s Starship vehicle, like a rocket ship from the golden age of science fiction, will – in time, he hopes – transport people to the Red Planet.
In December, SpaceX tested the first complete prototype of the vehicle and sent it on a 12.5-mile flight straight from its path to the company Boca Chica in South Texas.
We cheat a bit with the inclusion here, as the images do not come out of space as such. But we may see it one day in the not too distant future.
The test flight displayed some unique features of the spacecraft, including the methane-burning Raptor engines and an orbit that includes a downward descent to Earth, followed by a turn back to the vertical plane before landing.
It was at this stage of the test that the Starship prototype, called SN8, approached the road slightly too fast and hard, which Musk describes as a RUD – rapid unplanned disassembly. A collapse, in other words.
But the flight gave SpaceX large amounts of engineering data to chew on, helping them improve the vehicle. And the next prototype – SN9 – is waiting its turn on the launch pad.
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