EYE ON THE SKY
A cosmic pickpocket
A huge galaxy steals from a smaller companion as it brushes up against it in this spectacular new image
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 7 FEBRUARY 2022
The friendship between two near neighbours, the Seyfert galaxy NGC 169 (bottom) and galaxy IC 1559 (top), is getting a little too close for the more diminutive of the pair. Collectively known as Arp 282 and found 319 million lightyears away in the constellation of Andromeda, they give us a vivid demonstration of the tidal interactions that occur when galaxies meet.
Thanks to its immense gravitational pull, NGC 169 is causing the smaller satellite to warp and stretch. Captured in such fine detail here, wispy strands of gas, dust and even star systems are being stripped away from the outskirts of the smaller galaxy by its colossal companion.
You can’t blame the bigger galaxy, however: galaxies grow and evolve by cannibalising material from head-on collisions, fleeting encounters and mergers with smaller galaxies. Throughout the cosmos, these small galaxies lose some of their molecular gas when they get close to a larger one. If they lose all of their gas, eventually they have no ability to make new stars, and will fade and die. What’s rare is to see the moment captured so dramatically as in this incredible Hubble image.
A peek beneath the clouds
PARKER SOLAR PROBE, 9 FEBRUARY 2022
Parker Solar Probe has grabbed an unprecedented glimpse at the surface of Venus during a flyby on its way to the Sun. The first visible light images to penetrate the planet’s thick, largely sulphuric acid clouds (shown left), they match up beautifully with radar data mapped by the Magellan mission (right) in the 1990s. The images of Venus’s whole night side, gathered during three of the probe’s seven scheduled flybys of the Solar System’s hottest planet, have also been combined into a video at bit.ly/3hp7x9L.
Full blast
SOLAR ORBITER, 15 FEBRUARY 2022
The largest solar prominence ever observed in a single field of view, including the full solar disc, has been snapped by ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter. The solar eruption surged millions of kilometres into space – luckily from the side facing away from Earth – and was caught by the probe’s Full Sun Imager (FSI). Currently in the sweetspot for capturing the disc and its surroundings, the orbiter will eventually fly just 42 million kilometres above the surface, capturing images from closer than ever before, including the Sun’s polar regions.
Thar she blows!
VERY LARGE TELESCOPE, 7 FEBRUARY 2022
Gobbling up material and blasting huge amounts of energy out into the cosmos, this supermassive black hole at the core of NGC 7582 was captured by astronomers trying to untangle the connections between black holes, their host galaxies and star formation. Roughly 70 million lightyears away in the constellation of Grus, the Crane, the red glowing areas show star creation, while the dominant blue regions show the cone-shaped material flowing out of the galaxy’s active galactic nucleus.
Weird and wonderful
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 31 JANUARY 2022
A world away from a classic spiral galaxy with well-defined arms that glitter with stars, this brooding, cave-like object is the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 1705, 17 million lightyears away in the southern constellation of Pictor, the Painter. Within its dimly glowing walls of gas are a group of young stars, the baby boomers produced by a frenetic period of star formation known as a starburst. Odd galaxies like this one, which contain few elements other than hydrogen and helium, provide a window on how the earliest galaxies in the Universe formed.
Multiwavelength composite image (x-ray, radio and optical) of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A – KARL JANSKY VERY LARGE ARRAY, HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE & CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY, 2 February 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA 
‘Santa Cruz’, a hill in Mars’s Jezero Crater – PERSEVERANCE, 18 February, 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS 
Elektra and its three moons. Elektra is the first ever quadruple asteroid system – VERY LARGE TELESCOPE, 14 FEBRUARY 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESO/Berdeu et al., Yang et al. 
Arp 298, interacting galaxies NGC 7469 (left) and IC 5283 (right) – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 21 FEBRUARY 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Evans, R. Chandar 
IC 2431, a triple galaxy merger – HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 14 FEBRUARY 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel, Dark Energy Survey, DOE, FNAL, DECam, CTIO, NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, SDSS. Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt 
An intruder object captured flying through and past protoplanetary disk surrounding Z Canis Majoris – ALMA, SUBARU TELESCOPE & KARL JANSKY VERY LARGE ARRAY, 13 JANUARY 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF), NAOJ 
Galaxy NGC 1566 – VÍCTOR M. BLANCO 4-METER TELESCOPE, 2 FEBRUARY 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA 
Argyre Planitia, an unusual rippled landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars’ southern highlands – EXOMARS, 11 FEBRUARY 2022 – IMAGE CREDIT: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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