Space has a lot to offer, from breathtaking alien landscapes to far-off cosmic wonders. Images from spacecraft and telescopes have shown us a lot over the years that space loves us back!
Love Notes from Mars NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor circled the Fourth Planet from the Sun for nearly a decade, taking photographs of its surface and mapping its surface. Scientists studying the world and planning future exploration missions benefited greatly from the spacecraft’s data.
A number of sweet love notes from the Red Planet to us on Earth were also embedded in that image stream.
The mission team noticed a number of mesas and depressions on the Martian surface, including the heart-shaped ones shown above. The NASA JPL website has additional information about each’s location and size.
Despite the fact that each of these is a naturally occurring formation that has been carved by water and wind over many millennia, it still reveals the reason why we are so in love with Mars.
A Greek god inspired the name of asteroid 433 Eros, as with many other objects in our solar system. Although the asteroid was first discovered in 1989, it wasn’t until the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft of NASA made a visit to it in the year 2000 that we realized how fitting it was to name it after the god of love.
A strangely shaped feature on the surface of asteroid 433 Eros can be seen in this February 11, 2000, image taken by the NEAR Shoemaker probe. “The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft snapped this photo during its approach to the 21-mile-long space rock just in time for its Valentine’s Day date with 433 Eros.” The picture was taken on February 11, 2000, from a distance of 1,609 miles (2590 kilometers). It shows a heart-shaped depression that is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) long.”
The rest of the asteroid’s shape was created by the play of light and shadow across a crater-studded depression in its surface, and subsequent images of the asteroid revealed the two upper lobes as small impact craters.
The Icy Heart of Pluto Before the New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto in 2015, there was no way to know how much Pluto loved us.
During the flyby, the NASA mission returned staggering pictures of an immense plain of frozen nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, presently known as Sputnik Planitia.
Pluto and Charon are depicted in this composite false-color image as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft during its 2015 approach and flyby. Sputnik Planitia, Pluto’s ice feature in the shape of a heart, is highlighted by the imagery’s high contrast color scheme. Credit: This nitrogen glacier in the shape of a heart is the largest known glacier in the solar system, according to NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute!
Who would have thought that one of the coldest and farthest planets in the solar system would have the largest heart of all of them?!
Life is possible on this world thanks to the Sun’s light and heat (it would simply be an ice ball otherwise). However, the star’s attraction occasionally showers us with affection as well.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this view of the Sun in the extreme ultraviolet on February 1, 2013. The “coronal heart” that developed on that day is depicted in detail in the left panel. Credit: NASA SDO Activity in the Sun’s corona, or atmosphere, can be seen in the image above because it blocks out all light from the Sun except for one specific wavelength of ultraviolet radiation (211 Angstroms). Swirls, loops, and arches are produced here by the magnetic fields caused by the boiling, electrically charged plasma that covers the star’s surface. The dark spots indicate the locations in the corona where tangles of these magnetic fields have drilled holes, letting the slightly cooler surface below into space.
A “magnetic valentine” slowly traveled across the face of the Sun on February 1, 2013, when one of these coronal holes opened up in the shape of a heart.
A pair of nebulae that stand for the Heart and Soul of the Milky Way can be found approximately 6,000 light years away in the Perseus Arm of the galaxy.
Imaged by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the Heart and Soul nebulae Credit: The Heart nebula, which gets its name from its resemblance to a human heart, can be found on the right side of the image that was previously provided by NASA, JPL, Caltech, and UCLA.
The Soul nebula, also known as the Embryo nebula, can be seen on the left; however, when viewed from the other side, this collection of gas and dust resembles a heart, which is the symbol of Valentine’s Day.
The Soul nebula looks like a Valentine’s Day heart when viewed from this angle, which is 180 degrees from the view in the previous image. About 45 million light years away is what could be the largest expression of love in the local universe.
The Antennae galaxies, two spiral galaxies undergoing merger due to their mutual gravitational pull, are depicted in this image, which was taken in 2016 by the Hubble Space Telescope. The image is punctuated by brilliant blue regions that indicate the locations of intense star formation. Credit: Collaboration between NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); B. Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute) The Antennae galaxies began interacting hundreds of millions of years ago. Their name comes from the two long structures that resemble antennas and extend far beyond the edges of the image above.
They are igniting a flurry of creation as the two combine. The birth of billions of new stars is undoubtedly resulting in the formation of an astounding array of planetary systems.
NASA claims that: In a few billion years, when our Milky Way galaxy and the nearby Andromeda galaxy collide, they give us a glimpse of what might occur.
