God's Marbles: Lost and Found

Saturn Mosaic

Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

A total of 126 images taken over the course of two hours make up this mosaic picture of Saturn. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft snapped the photos on October 6, 2004, when it was approximately 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometers) from Saturn. Cassini was on a four-year mission to explore the ringed planet.

Aurora on Saturn

Photograph courtesy NASA, ESA, J. Clarke (Boston University), and Z. Levay (STScI)

Streams of charged particles blasted from the sun collide with Saturn's magnetic field, creating an aurora on the planet's south pole. Unlike Earth's relatively short-lived auroras, Saturn's can last for days. Scientists combined ultraviolet images of the auroras, taken by Hubble over a period of days, with visible-light images of the ringed planet. In this view the aurora appears blue because of the ultraviolet camera, but a Saturn-based observer would see red light flashes.

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Sombrero Galaxy

Photograph courtesy NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Over its lifetime, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured many stunning images. Among the most memorable is this edge-on mosaic of the Sombrero galaxy. With its relatively high brightness magnitude and at a distance of 28 million light-years from Earth, Messier 104, as Sombrero is more formally known, is easily viewed through a small telescope.

Eagle Nebula Gas Pillars

Photograph courtesy NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)

Pillars of hydrogen gas and dust streaming from the Eagle nebula give birth to new stars. The largest pillar (left) is an estimated four light-years long and, like its neighbors, is being bombarded by ultraviolet starlight that boils away gas on its surface and exposes the embryonic stars forming in its interior. The stepped shape of this image is caused by the design of Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.