AkaSci 🛰️May 18, 2024

Let's celebrate #AstronomyDay with this image taken today by Mars rover Perseverance's SHERLOC Autofocus and Context Imager (ACI).

This is the first such image of a rock sample since Dec 16, 2023, when the dust cover of the camera and laser spectroscopy instrument got stuck. It is still stuck, but in an open position and its auto-focus mechanism is nonoperational.

The camera took a sequence of images from different distances; the middle ones are in focus.

🎉
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
#Mars
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Images from the Mars Perseverance Rover - NASA

Raw images of Mars taken by the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars helicopter in Jezero Crater.

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Next on #AstronomyDay is this strange looking lenticular galaxy NGC 4753 by #Hubble.

Those are dust lanes twisting around the galactic nucleus and are likely the result of a merger with a dwarf galaxy about 1.3 billion years ago.

The gas and dust in the galactic disk got twisted by "differential precession" and are seen as the complex shapes seen edge-on from earth.

Most of the unseen mass in the galaxy lies in a slightly flattened, spherical halo of dark matter.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-views-cosmic-dust-lanes/
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Hubble Views Cosmic Dust Lanes

Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a nearly edge-on view of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4753. Lenticular galaxies have an

NASA Science
May 19, 2024 at 12:47amWeb