The cosmos is full of mysteries waiting to be solved, and some of them appear especially eerie with the arrival of Halloween.
A haunting 鈥渇ace鈥 on Jupiter and a ghostly, skeletal hand-shaped nebula are just a couple of creepy celestial features recently spotted by NASA missions.
Jupiter鈥檚 eerie 鈥榝ace鈥
The Juno mission, orbiting Jupiter and some of its largest moons since 2016, made its 54th close flyby of the largest planet in our solar system on September 7. The JunoCam instrument captured swirling clouds and storms in Jupiter鈥檚 northern regions along the planet鈥檚 terminator, or the line dividing the day side from the night side.
A Picasso-like face appears to emerge from the turbulent atmosphere in a phenomenon called pareidolia, in which viewers spy faces and other recognizable objects within random patterns.
The raw data, available to the public on the JunoCam website, was processed by citizen scientist Vladimir Tarasov. During the close pass, Juno flew about 4,800 miles (7,700 kilometres) above the planet鈥檚 cloud tops, where the low angle of sunlight added to the dramatic nature of the image.
X-rays spot celestial bones
X-rays were first used by physicist Wilhelm R枚ntgen to image the bones of his wife鈥檚 hand in 1895 鈥 and now, two X-ray telescopes have revealed the 鈥渂ones鈥 of a glowing hand-shaped cloud that formed in the aftermath of a star鈥檚 collapse.
The cloud of gas and dust, or nebula, was created 1,500 years ago when a massive star burned through its interior nuclear fuel and collapsed. The nebula, known as MSH 15-52, is located about 16,000 light-years from Earth.
As the star collapsed, it left behind a dense remnant known as a neutron star. Rapidly rotating neutron stars that have strong magnetic fields are called pulsars. Newly formed pulsars send out jets of energized material and have powerful winds, which created this particular nebula.
NASA鈥檚 Chandra X-ray Observatory observed the pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, for the first time in 2001. The bright pulsar was spotted within the base of the 鈥減alm鈥 of the hand-shaped nebula. A jet from the pulsar can be traced down to the 鈥渨rist.鈥
Map of a nebula鈥檚 magnetic field
More than 20 years later, NASA鈥檚 Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE, spent 17 days observing the nebula. This is the space observatory鈥檚 longest observing campaign since launching in December 2021. The results of the new telescope鈥檚 operations were published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal.
鈥淭he IXPE data gives us the first map of the magnetic field in the 鈥榟and,鈥欌 said 锘縧ead study author Roger Romani, professor of physics at Stanford University in California, in a statement 鈥淭he charged particles producing the X-rays travel along the magnetic field, determining the basic shape of the nebula, like the bones do in a person鈥檚 hand.鈥
The telescope鈥檚 unique observational capabilities are allowing scientists to determine where particles in the nebula are accelerated by turbulent regions within the magnetic field.