J. Dougherty

Mars’ “tadpole craters” are unusual impact craters with long trailing tails of debris, making them resemble tadpoles when viewed from orbit. They’re found mainly in icy regions of Mars and are thought to form when meteoroids strike ground rich in subsurface ice.

The leading idea is that the impact melts or vaporizes buried ice, creating a muddy, fluidized flow rather than the normal circular spray of dry rock debris. Strong winds or sloping terrain may then stretch the ejecta into a tail shape. Some tails extend for miles across the surface.

A beacon of light in swirls of dust (MIRI)

The heart of galaxy M77 is shining so brightly in this Webb telescope image, it nearly outshines the galaxy itself. The intense glow is due to gas being pulled by the strong gravity of the central black hole into a tight and rapid orbit around it. The motion of the gas causes it to heat up, releasing tremendous amounts of radiation. 

This image is Webb’s mid-infrared view with swirling filaments of dust shown in blue. The glowing orange bubbles along the arms are being carved out by newly formed star clusters. 

Those bright orange lines radiating out of the center are diffraction spikes. They aren’t a physical feature of the galaxy, but an optical effect caused by the telescope itself. Observing a bright object results in the light being slightly bent (or diffracted) around the edges of the telescope primary mirror, and the struts that hold the secondary mirror. In this case, Webb’s primary mirror segments are hexagonal, and there is a tripod holding up the secondary, which gives the resulting spike effect a distinctive six-plus-two-pointed signature pattern. Hubble images will show 4 point diffraction spikes due to the different configuration. 

Read more: esawebb.org/images/potm2604a/ 

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy