Never Stop The Vortex

The Frozen Canyons of Pluto’s North Pole

If someone showed me this image telling to guess what’s on it, I would have no idea. Well, the recently published scene captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft turns out to show an enhanced color image of Pluto’s north polar area! 

Long canyons run vertically across the polar area—part of the informally named Lowell Regio, named for Percival Lowell, who initiated the search that led to Pluto’s discovery. The degraded walls of these canyons appear to be much older than the more sharply defined canyon systems elsewhere on Pluto, perhaps because the polar canyons are older and made of weaker material. These canyons also appear to represent evidence for an ancient period of tectonics.

The color and composition of this region – shown in enhanced color – also are unusual. High elevations show up in a distinctive yellow, not seen elsewhere on Pluto. The yellowish terrain fades to a uniform bluish gray at lower elevations and latitudes. New Horizons’ infrared measurements show methane ice is abundant across Lowell Regio, and there is relatively little nitrogen ice. read more here

Hubble Sees a Galaxy With a Glowing Heart

The galaxy known as NGC 1433 is a type of very active galaxy known as a Seyfert galaxy — a classification that accounts for only 10% of all galaxies. They have very bright, luminous centers that are comparable in brightness to that of our entire galaxy.

NGC 1433 is being studied as part of a survey of 50 nearby galaxies known as the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS). Ultraviolet radiation is observed from galaxies, mainly tracing the most recently formed stars. In Seyfert galaxies, ultraviolet light is also thought to emanate from the accretion discs around their central black holes. Studying these galaxies in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum is incredibly useful to study how the gas is behaving near the black hole.