ESA Mars Express Image: Cappuccino swirls at Mars’ south pole

Swirls of chocolate, caramel and cream, this image is definitely one to trigger sweet-toothed cravings.

Smooth cream-coloured plateaus surrounded by cocoa-dusted ridges interspersed with caramel-hued streaks create a scene reminiscent of a cosmic cappuccino.

This picture is, perhaps surprisingly, from ESA’s Mars Express, which has been exploring and imaging the martian surface and atmosphere since 2003.

We may be used to seeing numerous images of red and brown-hued soil and ruddy landscapes peppered with craters, but the Red Planet isn’t always so red.

The bright white region of this image shows the icy cap that covers Mars’ south pole, composed of frozen water and carbon dioxide.

While it looks smooth in this image, at close quarters the cap is a layered mix of peaks, troughs and flat plains, and has been likened in appearance to swiss cheese.

The southern cap reaches some 3 km thick in places, and is around 350 km in diameter. This icy region is permanent; in the martian winter another, thinner ice cap forms over the top of it, stretching further out across the planet and disappearing again when the weather warms up.

The cap is around 150 km north of Mars’ geographical south pole and Mars Express has shed light on why this ice cap is displaced.

Perspective view of Hellespontus Montes

Credit: ESA

Deep impact craters,notably the Hellas Basin, the largest impact structure on the entire planet at 7 km deep and 2300 km across, funnel the strong winds that blow across Mars towards its southern pole, creating a mix of different low- and high-pressure systems.

The carbon dioxide in the polar cap sublimates at different rates in these regions with contrasting pressure, resulting in the cap’s lopsided structure.

Mars Express imaged this area of Mars on 17 December 2012, in infrared, green and blue light, using its High Resolution Stereo Camera.

This image was processed by Bill Dunford, using data available from the ESA Planetary Science Archive.

NASA Galileo Image: Jupiter’s cratered moon, Callisto

The speckled object depicted here is Callisto, Jupiter’s second largest moon. 

This image was taken in May 2001 by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which studied Jupiter and its moons from 1995 until 2003.

Similar in appearance to a golf ball, Callisto is covered almost uniformly with pockmarks and craters across its surface, evidence of relentless collisions.

In fact, Callisto is the most heavily cratered object in the Solar System.

The moon is made up of equal parts of rock and ice, the brighter parts of Callisto’s surface are thought to be mainly water ice, whereas the darker patches are regions of highly eroded and ice-poor rocky material.

Callisto is roughly the same size as the planet Mercury, but only about a third of the mass. It is the outermost of Jupiter’s four large Galilean satellites, a group consisting of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

It orbits relatively far away from Jupiter compared to these other satellites: it lies 1 880 000 km from the planet, roughly 26 times the radius of the planet itself.

While this in itself is not unusual, our Moon orbits at some 60 times Earth’s radius, the important thing is Callisto’s isolation from its neighbouring moons.

Callisto’s closest neighbour is Ganymede, which orbits 800 000 km closer to Jupiter.

This isolation means that Callisto does not experience any significant tidal forces from Jupiter that would tear at its structure.

It also does not show any signs of geological processes such as volcanism or plate tectonics, which we clearly see on moons that are involved in violent cosmic tugs-of-war with Jupiter, such as Io, Europa and Ganymede.

Callisto remains relatively intact and is a witness of the early Solar System: its surface is the oldest terrain, at a truly ancient four billion years.

This image is the only complete full-colour view of Callisto obtained by Galileo.

The spacecraft provided us with a great deal of information about the jovian system: as well as sending the first probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter, and measuring Jupiter’s composition and dynamics, it observed Io’s volcanism, sent back data supporting the idea of a liquid ocean on Europa, and probed the properties of Ganymede and the subject of this image,

Callisto. It also managed to observe the famous Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 colliding with Jupiter in 1994.

The jovian system will be visited again in the not-too-distant future. In 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter and start to beam back images of the planet’s poles.

Later, ESA’s Juice, short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, planned for launch in 2022, will tour the system with the aim of making a breakthrough in our knowledge of the giant gaseous planet and its environs, especially the intriguing moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto.

ESA Venus Express snaps swirling vortex

Credit: ESA /VIRTIS/INAF-IASF /Obs. de Paris-LESIA /Univ. Oxford

This ghostly puff of smoke is actually a mass of swirling gas and cloud at Venus' south pole, as seen by the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) aboard ESA's Venus Express spacecraft.

Venus has a very choppy and fast-moving atmosphere, although wind speeds are sluggish at the surface, they reach dizzying speeds of around 400 km/h at the altitude of the cloud tops, some 70 km above the surface.

At this altitude, Venus' atmosphere spins round some 60 times faster than the planet itself.

This is very rapid; even Earth's fastest winds move at most about 30% of our planet's rotation speed.

Quick-moving Venusian winds can complete a full lap of the planet in just four Earth days.

Polar vortices form because heated air from equatorial latitudes rises and spirals towards the poles, carried by the fast winds.

As the air converges on the pole and then sinks, it creates a vortex much like that found above the plughole of a bath.

Artist view of ESA Venus Express in orbit.

Credit: ESA

In 1979, the Pioneer Venus orbiter spotted a huge hourglass-shaped depression in the clouds, some 2000 km across, at the centre of the north polar vortex.

However, other than brief glimpses from the Pioneer Venus and Mariner 10 missions in the 1970s, Venus' south pole had not been seen in detail until ESA's Venus Express first entered orbit in April 2006.

One of Venus Express' first discoveries, made during its very first orbit, was confirming the existence of a huge atmospheric vortex circulation at the south pole with a shape matching the one glimpsed at the north pole.

This south polar vortex is a turbulent mix of warming and cooling gases, all surrounded by a 'collar' of cool air.

Follow-up Venus Express observations in 2007, including this image, showed that the core of the vortex changes shape on a daily basis.

Just four hours after this image the vortex looked very different and a day later it had morphed into a squashed shape unrecognisable from the eye-like structure here.

A video of the vortex, made from 10 images taken over a period of five hours, can be seen below. The vortex rotates with a period of around 44 hours.

The dynamic nature of the South polar vortex can be seen in this video sequence, composed of images obtained on 7 April 2007. 

The video is composed of a series of ten images taken over a period of five hours at half-hourly intervals, at a wavelength of 3.9 micrometres. 

The vortex is rotating with a period of about 44 hours. In video, the point of view of the observer has been rotated at the same rate so that the vortex appears stationary in the centre of the image. 

These images were obtained as part of the ‘VIRTIS movie’ sequence, previously reported on 7 May 2007. 

This movie shows that the vortex is very complex, with atmospheric gases flowing in different directions at different altitudes. 

The bright region at the top-centre appears to be the most active region and its brightness suggests that it is where atmospheric gases are flowing downward. 

Extending leftward from this point is an ‘S’-shaped feature which is seen frequently in the polar vortex. 

A very similar feature was observed at the northern polar vortex in 1979 by Pioneer Venus. 

Credit: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA/Univ. of Oxford

The swirling region shown in this VIRTIS image is about 60 km above the planet's surface. Venus' south pole is located just up and to the left of the image centre, slightly above the wispy 'eye' itself.

This image was obtained on 7 April 2007 at a wavelength of 5.02 micrometres. It shows thermal-infrared emission from the cloud tops; brighter regions like the 'eye' of the vortex are at lower altitude and therefore hotter.

NASA Dawn Spacecraft captures new images of CERES craters

The Dawn spacecraft observed Ceres for an hour on Jan. 13, 2015, from a distance of 238,000 miles (383,000 kilometers). 

A little more than half of its surface was observed at a resolution of 27 pixels. 

This animated GIF shows bright and dark features. 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI

Latest image from Nasa's Dawn Spacecraft showing the craters on Ceres.

Credit: NASA

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft.

Dawn launched in 2007 and is scheduled to enter Ceres orbit in March 2015.

Dawn recently emerged from solar conjunction, in which the spacecraft is on the opposite side of the sun, limiting communication with antennas on Earth.

Now that Dawn can reliably communicate with Earth again, mission controllers have programmed the maneuvers necessary for the next stage of the rendezvous, which they label the Ceres approach phase.

Dawn is currently 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers) from Ceres, approaching it at around 450 miles per hour (725 kilometers per hour).

The spacecraft's arrival at Ceres will mark the first time that a spacecraft has ever orbited two solar system targets.

MRO Mars HiRise Image: Russell Crater Dunes

Russell Crater Dunes on Mars

Credit: HiRise camera Team, JPL, University of Arizona

The Russell Crater dune field is covered seasonally by carbon dioxide frost, and this image shows the dune field after the frost has sublimated (evaporated directly from solid to gas).

There are just a few patches left of the bright seasonal frost.

Numerous dark dust devil tracks can be seen meandering across the dunes. The face of the largest dune is lined with gullies.

The source of the gullies is unclear but could involve erosion by the seasonal carbon dioxide ice.

A closer view of the Russell Crater Dunes on Mars, in colour.

Credit: HiRise camera Team, JPL, University of Arizona

Comet 2014 Q2 Lovejoy image

A new comet is in the skies during January. 

This is comet 2014 Q2 Lovejoy, discovered last August by prolific comet-hunter Terry Lovejoy.

Having spent the time since its discovery in the southern hemisphere as a faint object, it is now reaching fourth magnitude, and is visible using binoculars or small telescopes.

It should be visible with the naked eye from country locations.

On 6 January Robin Scagell found the comet easily in 12 x 45 binoculars from Flackwell Heath, Bucks.

'I was surprised how bright and large it appeared. I didn't have to search very carefully to find it, ' he reports. 'It was circular, with no hint of a tail.'

By 10 January the comet was easily spotted using 30 mm binoculars. Photography brings out a faint gas tail, which changes daily as a result of pressure from the solar wind.

During January it gets higher in the sky and also becomes brighter. It reaches perihelion – its closest to the Sun, on 30 January.

However, it will be closest to the Earth in the second week of January, which is when it will probably be at its brightest for Earth-bound observers.

Comet Lovejoy's track during December 2014 and early January 2015. 

Ticks mark its position at midnight on the date shown.

NASA DAWN Mission: Near-True Colour Image of Vesta impact craters

Image credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /UCLA /MPS /DLR /IDA

Three impact craters of different sizes, which some have said are arranged in the shape of a snowman, make up one of the most striking features on Vesta, as seen in this view from NASA's Dawn mission.

In this view the three "snowballs" are upside down, so that the shadows make the features easily recognizable.

North is to the lower right in the image, which has a resolution of 230 feet (70 meters) per pixel.

The image is composed of many individual photographs taken between October and December 2011 by Dawn's framing camera.

The NASA Dawn space probe is equipped with two identical European designed cameras, Framing Camera 1 (FC1) and Framing Camera 2 (FC2). 

Should one of the cameras fail during the mission, the other can replace it. 

The mission itself would not be endangered.

Credit: Max Planck Institute

They were obtained during the high-altitude mapping orbit, at about 420 miles (680 kilometers) above Vesta's surface.

The largest of the three craters, Marcia, has a diameter of about 40 miles (60 kilometers). The central crater, which is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) in diameter, is named Calpurnia, and the lower crater, named Minucia, has a diameter of about 14 miles (22 kilometers).

Marcia and Calpurnia are possibly the result of an impact by doublet asteroids, whereas Minucia was formed by a later impact.

To derive the colour information, scientists combined images acquired by the framing camera in two near-infrared channels (0.917 microns and 0.749 microns) and an ultraviolet channel (0.438 microns).

The true colours of the surface of Vesta differ somewhat from what is displayed here, but this mode of reproduction allows subtle changes in material properties across the craters and material ejected from impacts to be detected.

In both Marcia and Calpurnia, landslides can be seen; also, dark material has been exposed below the rim of Marcia.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The framing camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR and NASA/JPL.

More information about the Dawn Mission is online at: .

Hubble Image: Capturing the Egg Nebula

Credit: NASA /ESA /Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: W. Sparks (STScI) & R. Sahai (JPL)

This colourful image shows a cosmic lighthouse known as the Egg Nebula, which lies around 3000 light-years from Earth.

The image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, has captured a brief but dramatic phase in the life of a Sun-like star.

The Egg Nebula is a 'preplanetary nebula'. These objects occur as a dying star's hot remains briefly illuminates material it has expelled, lighting up the gas and dust that surrounds it.

These objects will one day develop into planetary nebulas which, despite the name, have nothing at all to do with planets.

They gained their rather misleading title because when they were discovered in the 18th century they resembled planets in our Solar System when viewed through a telescope.

Although the dying star is hidden behind the thick dust lane that streaks down the centre of this image, it is revealed by the four lighthouse-like beams clearly visible through the veil of dust that lies beyond the central lane.

The light beams were able to penetrate the central dust lane due to paths carved out of the thick cloud by powerful jets of material expelled from the star, although the cause of these jets is not yet known.

The concentric rings seen in the less dense cloud surrounding the star are due to the star ejecting material at regular intervals, typically every hundred years, during a phase of the star's evolution just prior to this preplanetary nebula phase.

These dusty shells are not usually visible in these nebulas, but when they are it provides astronomers with a rare opportunity to study their formation and evolution.

The fleeting nature of this phase in a star's life, which occupies only a few thousand of the star's few billion years of existence, and the fact that they are fairly faint make it rare to capture them in action. In fact, the Egg Nebula, the first of its kind to be identified, was discovered only 40 years ago.

This image was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Artificial colours are used to represent how the light from the star reflects off the dust, this can tell scientists about the physical properties of the dust.

The image combines observations with three different polarising filters, each showing light vibrating at a specific orientation.

The three filters have been coloured red, blue and green, and all three observations were made at a wavelength of 0.606 microns. The image spans 1.2 light-years. North is to the right and east is up.

NASA Chandra Image: Supernova remnant MSH 11-62

A long observation with Chandra of the supernova remnant MSH 11-62 reveals an irregular shell of hot gas, shown in red, surrounding an extended nebula of high energy X-rays, shown in blue. 

Even though scientists have yet to detect any pulsations from the central object within MSH 11-62, the structure around it has many of the same characteristics as other pulsar wind nebulas. 

The reverse shock and other, secondary shocks within MSH 11-62 appear to have begun to crush the pulsar wind nebula, possibly contributing to its elongated shape. 

Note: the orientation of this image has been rotated by 24 degrees so that north is pointed to the upper left.

Image credit:  NASA/CXC/SAO/P. Slane et al.

NASA Cassini image of the swirling clouds on Saturn

Nature is an artist, and this time she seems to have let her paints swirl together a bit.

What the viewer might perceive to be Saturn's surface is really just the tops of its uppermost cloud layers.

Everything we see is the result of fluid dynamics.

Astronomers study Saturn's cloud dynamics in part to test and improve our understanding of fluid flows.

Hopefully, what we learn will be useful for understanding our own atmosphere and that of other planetary bodies.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 25 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in red light with the NAC (Narrow Angle Camera) Cassini spacecraft on Aug. 23, 2014.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 127 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel.

ESA Rosetta mission: Philae Lander is safe on Comet 67/P - image

A brand new image shows the view from the Philae lander of the surface of the comet

The robot probe Philae that made a historic comet landing is now stable after initially failing to attach to the surface, and is sending pictures.

Efforts are now being made to locate the precise position of the European Space Agency probe on the comet.

Engineers say it may have bounced hundreds of metres back off the surface after first touching down.

Scientists hope the probe will analyse the comet's surface to yield insights into the origins of our Solar System.

The first pictures indicate that the lander is sitting at an angle - perhaps on a slope, or maybe even on its side. But the team is continuing to receive "great data" from Philae.

Esa's Rosetta satellite carried Philae on a 6.4 billion-km (4bn-mile) journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

ESA Rosetta mission: Comet 67/P image captured by Philae Lander ROLIS instrument

The image shows comet 67P/CG acquired by the ROLIS instrument on the Philae lander during descent on Nov 12, 2014 14:38:41 UT from a distance of approximately 3 km from the surface. 

The landing site is imaged with a resolution of about 3m per pixel.

The ROLIS instrument is a down-looking imager that acquires images during the descent and doubles as a multispectral close-up camera after the landing.

The aim of the ROLIS experiment is to study the texture and microstructure of the comet's surface.

ROLIS (ROsetta Lander Imaging System) is a descent and close-up camera on the Philae Lander. It has been developed by the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin.

The lander separated from the orbiter at 09:03 GMT (10:03 CET) and touched down on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko seven hours later.

ESA Sentinel-1A Image: Lake County, Oregon from orbit

Credit: ESA

This image from Sentinel-1A was acquired over the Lake County in the US state of Oregon on 17 July.

Even though the northwestern United States receives plenty of rainfall, the 'high desert region' east of the Cascade Mountain Range is fairly dry.

Most crops require irrigation, such as the circles visible in this image from a centre pivot irrigation system.

Sentinel-1A's radar gathers information in either horizontal or vertical radar pulses, and colours were assigned to the different types.

Sentinel-1A satellite

In this image, rough surfaces, like vegetated areas, appear white and light blue while smoother surfaces are red and black.

Some of the black areas are, or once were, lakes. These lakes formed when glaciers melted after the last ice ages, but dried up as the climate became drier.

Running north–south through the centre of the image we see a line of evenly dispersed red dots.

These are reflections from metal towers holding power lines. While these structures are difficult to spot in optical imagery, their reflectivity makes them more visible to radar.

Launched in April, Sentinel-1A recently completed its commissioning phase, ensuring that the satellite, instruments, data acquisition and data processing procedures are working well.

During this phase, it manoeuvred eight times to avoid space debris.

The satellite is now fully operational delivering radar data for an array of services and scientific research.

NASA Mars Opportunity rover gets panoramic image at 'Wdowiak Ridge'

This stereo vista from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows "Wdowiak Ridge," from left foreground to center, as part of a northward look with the rover's tracks visible at right. 

The image combines views from the left eye and right eye of Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) to appear three-dimensional when seen through blue-red glasses with the red lens on the left. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

The latest fieldwork site for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which has been examining a series of Martian craters since 2004, is on the slope of a prominent hill jutting out of the rim of a large crater and bearing its own much smaller crater.

It's called "Wdowiak Ridge." "Wdowiak Ridge sticks out like a sore thumb.

"We want to understand why this ridge is located off the primary rim of Endeavour Crater and how it fits into the geologic story of this region," said Opportunity science-team member Jim Rice of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.

The ridge extends about 500 feet (about 150 meters) long and stands about 40 feet (12 meters) above surrounding ground, about two football fields' distance outside the main crest line of Endeavour Crater's western rim.

Thomas J. Wdowiak

The science team calls it "Wdowiak Ridge" [DOW-ee-ak] as a tribute to former team member Thomas J. Wdowiak (1939-2013), who taught astronomy for decades at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

"Tom would have enjoyed this view," said Rice, who first knew of Wdowiak as the enthusiastic outer-space expert who appeared on local television when Rice was a grade-schooler in Alabama in the 1960s.

"Decades later, when I was selected by NASA to be on the Mars rover science team with him, I told Tom I was one of the kids he inspired," Rice said. "Inspiring young people to become interested in space exploration is important to us on this mission."

This vista from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows "Wdowiak Ridge," from left foreground to center, as part of a northward look with the rover's tracks visible at right. 

Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Cornell Univ. /Arizona State Univ.

Opportunity approached Wdowiak Ridge from the north on the rover's traverse along the western rim of Endeavour crater, which is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

The rover is now examining rocks that were tossed outward by an impact that dug a crater 100 feet wide (30 meters) into the southern end of the ridge. That much-smaller crater is called "Ulysses."

Jim Rice

"Ulysses is punched down into Wdowiak Ridge, so this boulder field around the crater gives us samples of different types of rocks from inside the ridge," said Opportunity Principal Investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

"Wdowiak Ridge is one on the most dramatic topographic features we've seen on this mission. Why does it stand up the way it does? Is it especially resistant to erosion? What formed it?"

During Opportunity's first decade on Mars and the 2004-2010 career of its twin, Spirit, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project yielded a range of findings proving wet environmental conditions on ancient Mars—some very acidic, others milder and more conducive to supporting life.

This vista from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows "Wdowiak Ridge" in false color, from left foreground to center, as part of a northward look with the rover's tracks visible at right. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

ESA Rosetta's lander, Philae snaps image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

A camera aboard Rosetta's lander, Philae, snapped this image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Oct. 7.

Credit: ESA /Rosetta /Philae /CIVA

With an icy comet lurking just over its shoulder, a far-flung European spacecraft snapped a selfie in outer space.

The photographer was Philae, a small lander attached to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta probe.

At the time (Oct. 7), Philae was just 10 miles (16 kilometers) away from the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but they're about to get much closer.

On Nov. 12, Philae is scheduled to separate from Rosetta to make an unprecedented touchdown on the comet.

After a decade-long, 4-billion-mile (6 billion km) journey from Earth, Rosetta was awakened from a deep sleep in January.

Then, through a series of carefully choreographed maneuvers, the probe arrived at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August and became the first spacecraft to ever orbit a comet.

The new image, released by ESA this week, shows off Rosetta's glinting 52-foot-long (16-meter) solar arrays.

The composition is almost identical to a selfie Philae snapped last month, but at 31 miles (50 kilometers) away, the comet looked much smaller in that photo.

ISRO's MOM and ESA's Rosetta: Global 3-D Mars image

Mars 3-D anaglyph (color) taken by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft during Mars flyby on 24 February 2007 from a distance of about 240,000 km. 

Image resolution is about 5 km. 

Credit: MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS /UPD /LAM / IAA/ RSSD/ INTA/ UPM/ DASP/ IDA

Here's another breathtakingly glorious view from India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), her first global 3-D portrait of her new home careening around the Red Planet.

MOM is India's first deep space voyager to explore beyond the confines of her home planet's influence and just successfully arrived at the Red Planet after the "history creating" orbital insertion maneuver on Sept. 23/24 following a ten month journey.

This newly released 3-D view from MOM expands upon the initial 2-D global color view of Mars released by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), India's space agency.

The 3-D image was generated from multiple pictures acquired by MOM's on-board Mars Colour Camera on Sept 28, 2014, from the very high altitude of approximately 74,500 kilometers as the spacecraft orbits Mars.

The images were taken by the tri-colour camera as MOM swooped around the Red Planet in a highly elliptical orbit whose nearest point to Mars (periapsis) is at 421.7 km and farthest point (apoapsis) at 76,993.6 km, according to ISRO.

Therefore, the 3-D Red Planet portrait was captured nearly at apoapsis, and being three dimensional, it gives a stereo sense of the huge dust storm swirling over a large swath of the planet's Northern Hemisphere set against the blackness of space.

Below right is the southern polar ice cap. To see the 3-D effect, whip out your handy pair of left-eye red, right-eye blue colour anaglyph glasses.

Mars 3-D anaglyph (black & white) taken by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft during Mars flyby on 24 February 2007 from a distance of about 240,000 km. Image resolution is about 5 km. 

Credit: MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS /UPD /LAM / IAA/ RSSD/ INTA/ UPM/ DASP/ IDA

It's also worth noting that another of humanity's ground breaking probes currently making news, ESA's comet hunting Rosetta probe, likewise snapped a glorious 3-D view of Mars way back in 2007, during the brief, but critical, gravity assist slingshot maneuver that flung Rosetta along her vast 10 year path through interplanetary space.

So by way of comparison let's take a trip down memory lane and be sure to look back at Rosetta's global 3-D Martian views (below) taken by the high resolution OSIRIS camera on 24 February 2007 at 19:28 CET from a distance of about 240,000 kilometers.

NASA Terra MODIS Image captures Great Lakes in the Fall

A few days after autumn showed up on the calendar in the Northern Hemisphere, it showed up on the landscape of North America. 

Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz at NASA GSFC. Caption by Mike Carlowicz

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of fall colors around the Great Lakes on Sept. 26, 2014.

The changing of leaf colour in temperate forests involves several causes and reactions, but the dominant factors are sunlight and heat.

Since temperatures tend to drop sooner and sunlight fades faster at higher latitudes, the progression of fall colour changes tends to move from north to south across North America from mid-September through mid-November.

In late summer and autumn, tree and plant leaves produce less chlorophyll, the green pigment that harvests sunlight for plants to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars.

The subsidence of chlorophyll allows other chemical compounds in the leaves, particularly carotenoids and flavonoids, to emerge from the green shadow of summer.

These compounds do not decay as fast as chlorophyll, so they shine through in yellows, oranges, and reds as the green fades.

Another set of chemicals, anthocyanins, are associated with the storage of sugars and give the leaves of some species deep purple and red hues.

ISRO MoM: First images of Mars transmitted - Update

One of the first images taken by the ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft, released on September 25, 2014, shows the surface of Mars seen from a height of 7,300m.

Credit: ISRO

India's spacecraft has beamed back its first photos of Mars, showing its crater-marked surface, as the country glowed with pride Thursday after winning Asia's race to the Red Planet.

ISRO Scientists present a print of MoM's first image of Mars to India's PM Narendra Modi.

Credit: ISRO, Hindustan Times

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) uploaded one of the photos onto its Facebook page, showing an orange surface and dark holes, taken from a height of 7.3 kilometres (4.5 miles).

ISRO also posted the photo on Twitter, with the caption "The view is nice up here."

A senior ISRO official told reporters several photos have been successfully received, while a spokesman for the government agency said the spacecraft was working well.

India became the first Asian country to reach Mars on Wednesday when its unmanned Mangalyaan spacecraft entered the orbit after a 10-month journey on a shoestring budget.

The mission, which is designed to search for evidence of life on the planet, is a huge source of national pride for India as it competes with Asian rivals for success in space.

India's first Mars orbiter Mangalyaan captured this photo of the Martian atmosphere just after arriving at Mars on Sept. 24, 2014 Indian Standard Time. 

The Indian Space Research Organisation released the image on Sept. 25.

Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation

India beat rival neighbour China, whose first attempt flopped in 2011 despite the Asian superpower pouring billions of dollars into its programme.

At just $74 million, India's mission cost is less than the estimated $100 million budget of the sci-fi blockbuster "Gravity".

It also represents just a fraction of the cost of NASA's $671 million MAVEN spacecraft, which successfully began orbiting the fourth planet from the sun on Sunday.

The true test of success will come from the quality, value and extent of the scientific data collected by both spacecraft and their ability to advance our understanding of Mars and our Solar System.

An Indian Space Research Organisation official uses a scale model of the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft to explain how parts of the orbiter works, at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore on September 15, 2014

Credit: ISRO

India now joins an elite club of the United States, Russia and Europe who can boast of reaching Mars.

More than half of all missions to the planet have ended in failure.

This photo of Earth was the first photo from India's Mars Orbiter Mission and captured on Nov. 19, 2013. It shows India and the surrounding region from Earth orbit.

Credit: ISRO

The mission's success received front-page coverage in Indian newspapers on Thursday, with the Hindustan Times declaring "MARTIAN RACE WON" and the Times of India saying "India enters super exclusive Mars club."

Indians, from government ministers to office workers and cricketers poured onto Twitter to show their national pride, while school students celebrated by eating traditional Indian sweets.

NASA Earth Observatory: King Fire in California, False-Colour Infrared image

On Sept. 19, 2014, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite captured these images of the King fire in Eldorado National Forest. 

In the false-colour image, burned forest appears red; unaffected forests are green; cleared forest is beige; and smoke is blue. 

As of Sept. 23, the blaze had charred 36,320 hectares (89,571 acres).

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Hubble Image: NGC 6872 in the constellation of Pavo

Credit: ESA /Hubble & NASA / Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

This picture, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), shows a galaxy known as NGC 6872 in the constellation of Pavo (The Peacock).

Its unusual shape is caused by its interactions with the smaller galaxy that can be seen just above NGC 6872, called IC 4970. They both lie roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth.

From tip to tip, NGC 6872 measures over 500,000 light-years across, making it the second largest spiral galaxy discovered to date.

In terms of size it is beaten only by NGC 262, a galaxy that measures a mind-boggling 1.3 million light-years in diameter!

To put that into perspective, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, measures between 100,000 and 120,000 light-years across, making NGC 6872 about five times its size.

The upper left spiral arm of NGC 6872 is visibly distorted and is populated by star-forming regions, which appear blue on this image.

This may have been be caused by IC 4970 recently passing through this arm, although here, recent means 130 million years ago!

Astronomers have noted that NGC 6872 seems to be relatively sparse in terms of free hydrogen, which is the basis material for new stars, meaning that if it weren't for its interactions with IC 4970, NGC 6872 might not have been able to produce new bursts of star formation.