1. In the photo - the mouth of the Becibuka River in the northwestern part of the island of Madagascar. The picture was taken on March 8, 2005 by a member of the ISS-10 crew, who worked on the ISS from October 16, 2004 to April 24, 2005.

2. The picture shows Hurricane Dean is the strongest tropical cyclone of the Atlantic hurricane season. The photo was taken on August 18, 2007 by crew members on the Space Shuttle Endeavor.

3. October 5-13, 1984 - view of the Great Himalayas from the southwest. The photo captures the territories of India, Pakistan and China. The picture was taken during the 6th flight of the Challenger shuttle by one of the crew members.

4. Great Lakes located in North America. Lake Ontario is in the foreground, with the city of Detroit in the center of the image. The photo was taken during the September 1994 period during the 19th Discovery spaceflight.

5. Cleveland volcano eruption on Chuginadak Island, North America. The photo was taken on May 23, 2006 by members of the thirteenth long-term crew of the International Space Station ISS-13.

6. Flying over Madagascar. This image is the latest in our selection: it was taken by cosmonaut Ricky Arnold, who on March 21 of this year was a flight engineer-2 of the Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft together with Oleg Artemyev and Andrew Feistel. Two days later, the spacecraft docked with the Russian Segment of the ISS.

7. And this famous The picture was taken from a distance of 29,000 kilometers back in 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 mission. The image is called the Blue Marble and shows the Earth completely illuminated by the Sun.

Photographs from space published on the website of NASA and other space agencies often attract the attention of those who doubt their authenticity - critics find traces of editing, retouching or color manipulation in the images. This has been the case since the birth of the "lunar conspiracy", and now the pictures taken not only by Americans, but also by Europeans, Japanese, Indians have come under suspicion. Together with the N + 1 portal, we understand why space images are processed at all and whether they can, despite this, be considered authentic.

In order to correctly evaluate the quality of satellite images that we see on the Web, two important factors must be taken into account. One of them is related to the nature of the interaction between agencies and the general public, the other is dictated by physical laws.

Public relations

Space images are one of the most effective means of popularizing the work of research missions in near and far space. However, not all frames are immediately available to the media.

Images obtained from space can be divided into three groups: "raw" (raw), scientific and public. Raw, or original, files from spacecraft are sometimes available to everyone, and sometimes not. For example, images taken by the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers or Saturn's moon Cassini are published in near real time, so that anyone can see them at the same time as scientists studying Mars or Saturn. Raw photos of the Earth from the ISS are uploaded to a separate NASA server. Astronauts flood them by the thousands, and no one has time to pre-process them. The only thing that is added to them on Earth is a geo-referencing to facilitate the search.

Usually public footage that is attached to press releases from NASA and other space agencies is criticized for retouching, because it is they who catch the eye of Internet users in the first place. And if you want, you can find a lot of things there. And color manipulation:

Photo of the landing platform of the Spirit rover in the visible range of light and with the capture of the near infrared.
(c) NASA/JPL/Cornell

And overlaying multiple shots:

Earthrise over the lunar crater Compton.

And copypasta:

Fragment Blue Marble 2001
(c) NASA/Robert Simmon/MODIS/USGS EROS

And even direct retouching, with overwriting of some fragments of the image:

Bleached shotApollo 17 Expedition GPN-2000-001137.
(c) NASA

NASA's motivation in the case of all these manipulations is so simple that not everyone is ready to believe it: it's more beautiful.

But the truth is, the bottomless blackness of space looks more impressive when it is not interfered with by debris on the lens and charged particles on the film. A color frame is, indeed, more attractive than a black and white one. The panorama from the pictures is better than individual frames. It is important that in the case of NASA, you can almost always find the original frames and compare one with the other. For example, the original version (AS17-134-20384) and the “printable” version (GPN-2000-001137) of this image from Apollo 17, which is cited as almost the main evidence of the retouching of lunar photographs:

Frame comparison AS17-134-20384 and GPN-2000-001137
(c) NASA

Or find the rover's "selfie stick" that "disappeared" while taking its self-portrait:

Curiosity snapshots from Jan 14, 2015 Sol 868
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Physics of Digital Photography

As a general rule, those who blame space agencies for manipulating color, using filters, or publishing black-and-white photographs "in this age of digital advancement" do not take into account the physical processes of obtaining digital images. They believe that if a smartphone or camera immediately gives out color frames, then the spacecraft should be even more capable of it, and they don’t even know what complex operations are needed to get a color image on the screen right away.

Let's explain the theory of digital photography: the matrix of a digital camera is, in fact, a solar battery. If there is light, there is current; if there is no light, there is no current. Only the matrix is ​​​​not a single battery, but many small batteries - pixels, from each of which the output of current is read individually. The optics focuses the light onto the photomatrix, and the electronics reads the intensity of energy release by each pixel. From the received data, an image is built in grayscale - from zero current in the dark to maximum in the light, that is, at the output it turns out to be black and white. To make it colored, you need to apply color filters. It turns out, oddly enough, that color filters are present in every smartphone and in every digital camera from the nearest store! (For some, this information is banal, but, according to the author's experience, for many it will turn out to be news.) In the case of conventional photographic equipment, alternating red, green and blue filters are used, which are alternately superimposed on individual pixels of the matrix - this is the so-called Bayer filter .

The Bayer filter consists of half green pixels, and red and blue each occupy one quarter of the area.
(c) Wikimedia

Here we repeat: navigation cameras produce black-and-white images because such files weigh less, and also because color is simply not needed there. Science cameras allow you to extract more information about space than the human eye can perceive, and therefore they use a wider range of color filters:

Matrix and filter drum of the OSIRIS instrument on Rosetta
(c) MPS

The use of a near-infrared filter, which is not visible to the eye, instead of red, caused Mars to turn red in many frames that were leaked to the media. Not all of the explanation about the infrared range was reprinted, which gave rise to a separate discussion, which we also analyzed in the material “What color is Mars”.

However, the Curiosity rover has a Bayer filter, which allows it to shoot in the color familiar to our eyes, although a separate set of color filters is also attached to the camera.

(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The use of separate filters is more convenient in terms of choosing the ranges of light in which you want to look at the object. But if this object moves quickly, then in the pictures in different ranges its position changes. On the frames of Electro-L, this was noticeable on fast clouds, which had time to move in a matter of seconds, while the satellite changed the filter. On Mars, this happened when shooting sunsets at the Spirit and Opportunity rovers - they do not have a Bayer filter:

Sunset taken by Spirit in Sol 489 Superposition of images taken with filters at 753,535 and 432 nanometers.
(c) NASA/JPL/Cornell

On Saturn, Cassini has similar difficulties:

Saturn's moons Titan (behind) and Rhea (in front) in Cassini images
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

At the Lagrange point, DSCOVR faces the same situation:

The transit of the Moon across the Earth's disk in a DSCOVR image on July 16, 2015.
(c) NASA/NOAA

To get a beautiful photo from this shoot suitable for distribution to the media, you have to work in an image editor.

There is another physical factor that not everyone knows about - black and white images have higher resolution and clarity compared to color ones. These are the so-called panchromatic images, which include all the light information that enters the camera, without cutting off any of its parts by filters. Therefore, many "long-range" satellite cameras shoot only in panchrome, which for us means black and white shots. Such a LORRI camera is installed on New Horizons, a NAC camera is installed on the LRO lunar satellite. Yes, in fact, all telescopes shoot in panchrome, unless filters are specifically used. (“NASA is obscuring the true color of the Moon” is where it came from.)

A multispectral "color" camera, equipped with filters and having a much lower resolution, can be attached to a panchromatic one. At the same time, its color images can be superimposed on panchromatic ones, as a result of which we will get high-resolution color images.

Pluto in New Horizons panchromatic and multispectral images
(c) NASA/JHU APL/Southwest Research Institute

This method is often used when surveying the Earth. If you know about this, you can see a typical halo on some frames, which leaves a blurry color frame:

Composite image of the Earth from the WorldView-2 satellite
(c) Digital Globe

It was through such an overlay that the very impressive frame of the Earth over the Moon was created, which is given above as an example of overlaying different images:

(c) NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

Additional processing

Often you have to resort to the tools of graphic editors when you need to clean up a frame before publishing. Ideas about the impeccability of space technology are not always justified, so debris on space cameras is a common thing. For example, the MAHLI camera on the Curiosity rover is simply crap, otherwise you can’t say:

Photo of Curiosity by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) in Sol 1401
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Mote in the solar telescope STEREO-B gave rise to a separate myth about an alien space station constantly flying over the north pole of the Sun:

(c) NASA/GSFC/JHU APL

Even in space, charged particles are not uncommon, which leave their traces on the matrix in the form of separate dots or stripes. The longer the shutter speed, the more traces remain, “snow” appears on the frames, which does not look very presentable in the media, so they also try to clean it off (read: “photoshop”) before publication:

(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Therefore, we can say: yes, NASA photoshops images from space. ESA photoshop. Roscosmos photoshop. ISRO Photoshop. JAXA photoshops... Only the National Space Agency of Zambia doesn't photoshop. So if someone is not satisfied with the images of NASA, then you can always use their images of space without any sign of processing.

Beautiful and amazing our planet. Perhaps, with the development of space tourism, the innermost dream of many people to see the earth from space will come true. Today, you can admire the breathtaking magnificent panoramas of the Earth in photographs.

Here is a selection of the ten most famous images of the globe from NASA.

"Blue marble" (blue marble)

Widely known and widespread until 2002, the image of our amazing planet. The birth of this photograph was the result of long and painstaking work. From cutting frames of many months of research on the movement of oceans, clouds, drifting ice, scientists have compiled an amazing mosaic in terms of colors.
"Blue Marble" is recognized as a universal heritage and even now is considered the most detailed and detailed image of the globe.

An image taken from a record (about 6 billion kilometers) distance using the Voyajer 1 space probe. This spacecraft managed to transmit to NASA about 60 frames from the deepest solar system, including the Pale Blue Dot, where the globe looks tiny (0.12 px) a bluish speck on a brown stripe.
The “Pale Blue Dot” was destined to become the very first “portrait” of the Earth against the endless backdrop of outer space.

Another world-famous photo is the amazing view of the Earth, taken by the American crew of Apollo 11 during the historic mission: the landing of earthlings on the moon in 1969.
Then three astronauts, led by Neil Armstrong, successfully completed the task - they landed on the lunar surface and safely returned home, having managed to leave this legendary image for history.

An unexpected photo for human perception: two luminous crescents on an absolutely black background of the universe. On the bluish crescent of the Earth, you can see the contours of East Asia, the western Pacific Ocean and the white areas of the Arctic. The image was transmitted in September 1977 by the interplanetary probe Voyager 1. In this photo, our planet is captured at a distance of more than 11 million kilometers.

The crew of Apollo 11 took two more famous photographs, in which the Terminator of the Earth (from the Latin terminare - to stop) is visible as a rounded line - a light division line separating the illuminated (light) part of the celestial body from the unlit (dark) part, enveloping the planet twice in a circle day - at sunset and sunrise. At the North and South Poles, this phenomenon is observed quite rarely.

Thanks to this photo, humanity was able to see what our house looks like from another planet. From the surface of Mars, the globe appears as a planetary disk shimmering above the horizon.

This image was the first to capture the landscape of the far side of the moon using Swedish Hasselblad equipment. This event occurred in April 1972, when the crew of Apollo 16 descended to the dark side of the Earth's satellite, with John Young as the expedition commander.

This photograph has notoriety: many experts believe that the picture was taken not at all on the Moon, but in a specially equipped studio that imitates the lunar surface. Many question the very fact of astronauts being on the moon.

The surface of the Earth can now be monitored continuously. In addition, access to viewing satellite images is provided. Among the many applications for such actions, Google Earth online in real time has the greatest popularity in Russia.

Yandex maps can be called as the main competitor. Their developers are Russians, due to which the cities of Russia are worked out with the greatest accuracy. Due to the available functions, for large settlements, you can view the level of Internet congestion, as well as numerous geodata and demographic data. Google provides access to traffic, as well as all information on land plots only in the United States.

Online viewing of the Earth from a satellite

Google Earth online from satellite in real time is displayed on the manufacturer's website. In order for the plugin to fully work and display all the main elements, it is recommended to use the Google Chrome Internet browser. In some situations, it will be enough to refresh the page so that everything opens correctly.

The main advantage of Google Maps is the presence of a developed application for users, through which you can view satellite images in any direction. This provides an opportunity to move away from the classic browser, but simply download the application in advance and use all its features. In addition, there will be much more functions and properties in it. If desired, you can open a three-dimensional globe in virtual mode.

Main advantages

If you pre-download Google Earth online, and not view maps in an Internet browser, customers receive a full range of positive aspects, which include:

• Create screenshots of a specific location, as well as record high-definition video.
• To search for a piece of land or a building, just enter the name or specific coordinates in the search bar.
• Move between "favorite places" by saving them in advance in the settings.
• In order to subsequently be able to work in the program in offline mode, it is necessary to perform preliminary synchronization via the Internet.
• From object to object, you can move the flight simulator. This option provides more and more convenience for each user.
• In addition to the earth's surface, you can open access to other bodies in the heavens, like the Moon or Mars.

This is only the minimum list of advantages purchased by customers of online maps from a satellite.

View modes

As mentioned earlier, Google maps are available not only through an Internet browser, but also through an application. Through the plug-in, you can use interactive maps in any web browser. The specified address is embedded in the resource's program code. In this case, the entire planet, as well as a specific selected region, can be displayed. In the latter case, you will have to enter the appropriate coordinates.

Management is carried out by means of the keyboard and mouse. Together with each other, they allow you to zoom in or out, adjust the cursor while moving. In addition, there are additional icons (“+”, “-”) on the map.

The map view modes include the following:

• Satellite landscape. Here, the features of the planet's surface are more interesting.
• Geographic - in the form of a scheme that allows you to study incoming images in more detail.
• Physical - display of streets with names, cities.

The main requirement for stable operation and instant loading of maps is a high-speed Internet connection. You can also use the offline mode, but even here you will initially have to use the Internet to download.

The science

Space full of unexpected surprises and the incredible beauty of landscapes that today astronomers can capture in the photo. Sometimes space or land-based spacecraft take such unusual photographs that scientists have yet to long puzzled over what it is.

Space photos help make amazing discoveries, see the details of the planets and their satellites, draw conclusions about their physical properties, determine the distance to objects, and much more.

1) The glowing gas of the Omega Nebula . This nebula, open Jean Philippe de Chezo in 1775, located in the area constellation Sagittarius galaxy Milky Way. The distance to this nebula to us is approximately 5-6 thousand light years, and in diameter it reaches 15 light years. The photo was taken by a special digital camera during the project Digitized Sky Survey 2.

New pictures of Mars

2) Strange bumps on Mars . This photo was taken by the panchromatic context camera of the automatic interplanetary station Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that explores Mars.

The picture shows strange formations, which formed on lava flows interacting with surface water. Lava, flowing down the slope, encircled the bases of the mounds, then swelling. Lava Bloating- a process in which the liquid layer, which is under the hardening layer of liquid lava, slightly raises the surface, forming such a relief.

These formations are located on the Martian plain Amazonis Planitia- a huge area that is covered with solidified lava. The plain is also covered thin layer of reddish dust, which slides down steep slopes, forming dark stripes.

Planet Mercury (photo)

3) Beautiful colors of Mercury . This colorful image of Mercury was obtained by combining a large number of images taken by NASA's interplanetary station "Messenger" for a year of work in the orbit of Mercury.

Of course it is not real colors of the planet closest to the Sun, however, the colorful image allows you to see the chemical, mineralogical and physical differences in the landscape of Mercury.

4) space lobster . This picture was taken by the VISTA telescope. European Southern Observatory. It depicts a cosmic landscape, including a huge glowing cloud of gas and dust that surrounds young stars.

This infrared image shows the nebula NGC 6357 in the constellation Scorpion presented in a new light. The picture was taken during the project Via Lactea. Scientists are currently scanning the Milky Way in an attempt to map the more detailed structure of our galaxy and explain how it was formed.

The mysterious mountain of the Carina Nebula

5) mysterious mountain . The image shows a mountain of dust and gas rising from the Carina Nebula. The upper part of a vertical column of chilled hydrogen, which has a height of about 3 light years, is carried away by radiation from nearby stars. Stars located in the area of ​​​​pillars release jets of gas, which can be seen at the tops.

Traces of water on Mars

6) Traces of an ancient water stream on Mars . This is a high resolution photo that was taken January 13, 2013 using a spacecraft Mars Express of the European Space Agency, offers to see the surface of the Red Planet in real colors. This is a snapshot of the area southeast of the plains Amenthes Planum and north of the plain Hesperia planum.

The picture shows craters, lava channels and valley where liquid water once flowed. The valley and bottom of the craters are covered with wind-blown dark deposits.

7) Dark space gecko . The picture was taken with a ground-based 2.2-meter telescope. MPG/ESO European Southern Observatory in Chile. The photo shows a bright star cluster NGC 6520 and his neighbor - a strangely shaped dark cloud Barnard 86.

This space couple is surrounded by millions of luminous stars in the brightest part of the Milky Way. The area is so filled with stars that one can hardly see the dark background of the sky behind them.

Star formation (photo)

8) Star Education Center . Several generations of stars are shown in an infrared image taken by NASA's Space Telescope. "Spitzer". In this smoky area known as W5, new stars are formed.

The oldest stars can be seen as bright blue dots. Younger stars emit pinkish glow. In brighter regions, new stars form. Red indicates heated dust, while green indicates dense clouds.

Unusual nebula (photo)

9) Nebula "Valentines Day" . This is an image of a planetary nebula, which may remind someone rosebud, was taken with a telescope Kitt Peak National Observatory in the USA.

Sh2-174- an unusual ancient nebula. It was formed during the explosion of a low-mass star at the end of its existence. From the star remains its center - white dwarf.

Usually white dwarfs are located very close to the center, however, in the case of this nebula, its the white dwarf is on the right. This asymmetry is associated with the interaction of the nebula with the environment that surrounds it.

10) Heart of the Sun . In honor of the recently passed Valentine's Day, another unusual phenomenon appeared in the sky. More precisely, it was made photo of an unusual solar flare, which is pictured in the shape of a heart.

Satellite of Saturn (photo)

11) Mimas - Death Star . A photograph of Saturn's moon Mimas was taken by a NASA spacecraft "Cassini" during its closest approach to the object. This satellite is something looks like the death star- a space station from a fantasy saga "Star Wars".

Herschel Crater has a diameter 130 kilometers and covers most of the right side of the satellite in the image. Scientists continue to explore this impact crater and its surrounding areas.

Photos were taken February 13, 2010 from a distance 9.5 thousand kilometers, and then, like a mosaic, assembled into one sharper and more detailed shot.

12) Galactic duo . These two galaxies, shown in the same photo, have completely different shapes. Galaxy NGC 2964 is a symmetrical spiral, and the galaxy NGC 2968(top right) - a galaxy that has a fairly close interaction with another small galaxy.

13) Colored crater of Mercury . Although Mercury does not boast a particularly colorful surface, some areas on it still stand out for the contrast of colors. The pictures were taken during the mission of the spacecraft "Messenger".

Halley's Comet (photo)

14) Halley's comet in 1986 . This famous historical picture of the comet, when it last approached Earth, was taken 27 years ago. The photo clearly shows how the Milky Way is illuminated from the right by a flying comet.

15) Strange Hill on Mars . This image shows a strange spiky formation near the Red Planet's South Pole. It seems that the surface of the hill is layered and has traces of erosion. Its height is supposed 20-30 meters. The appearance of dark spots and stripes on the hill is associated with seasonal thawing of the layer of dry ice (carbon dioxide).

Orion Nebula (photo)

16) Beautiful veil of Orion . This beautiful image includes cosmic clouds and stellar wind around the star LL Orionis, which is interacting with the stream. Orion Nebulae. The star LL Orionis produces a wind that is stronger than that of our own middle-aged star, the Sun.

Galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici (photo)

17) Spiral galaxy Messier 106 in the constellation Canes Venatici . NASA space telescope Hubble with the assistance of an amateur astronomer took one of the best pictures of a spiral galaxy Messier 106.

Situated at a distance of about 20 million light years from us, which is not too far in space terms, this galaxy is one of the brightest galaxies and also one of the closest to us.

18) Starburst galaxy . Galaxy Messier 82 or galaxy cigar located at a distance from us 12 million light years in the constellation Big Dipper. In it, there is a fairly rapid formation of new stars, which puts it at a certain phase in the evolution of galaxies, according to scientists.

Since intense star formation is taking place in the Cigar Galaxy, it 5 times brighter than our Milky Way. This picture was taken Mount Lemmon Observatory(USA) and demanded an exposure of 28 hours.

19) Ghost Nebula . This photo was taken with a 4m telescope. (Arizona, USA). An object called vdB 141 is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Cepheus.

Several stars can be seen in the region of the nebula. Their light gives the nebula a not-so-pleasant yellowish-brown color. Picture taken August 28, 2009.

20) Powerful hurricane of Saturn . This colorful picture taken by NASA "Cassini", depicts Saturn's strong northerly storm, which was at its strongest at the time. Image contrast has been increased to show troubled areas (in white) that stand out from other details. The photo was taken March 6, 2011.

Photo of the Earth from the Moon

21) earth from the moon . Being on the surface of the Moon, our planet will look like this. From this angle, the Earth too phases will be visible: part of the planet will be in shadow, and part will be illuminated by sunlight.

Andromeda Galaxy

22) New images of Andromeda . In a new image of the Andromeda galaxy, obtained using Herschel Space Observatory, bright stripes where new stars are formed are visible in especially detail.

The Andromeda Galaxy or M31 is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way. It is located at a distance of about 2.5 million years, therefore, is an excellent object for studying the formation of new stars and the evolution of galaxies.

23) Star cradle of the constellation Unicorn . This image was taken with a 4m telescope. Inter-American Observatory Cerro Tololo in Chile January 11, 2012. The image captures part of the Unicorn R2 molecular cloud. This is a site of intense new star formation, especially in the red nebula region just below the center of the image.

Satellite of Uranus (photo)

24) Ariel's Scarred Face . This image of Ariel, Uranus's moon, is a composite of 4 different images taken by spacecraft "Voyager 2". Pictures were taken January 24, 1986 from a distance 130 thousand kilometers from the object.

Ariel has a diameter about 1200 kilometers, most of its surface is covered with craters with a diameter of 5 to 10 kilometers. In addition to craters, the image shows valleys and faults in the form of long stripes, so the landscape of the object is very heterogeneous.

25) Spring "fans" on Mars . At high latitudes, every winter, carbon dioxide condenses from the atmosphere of Mars and accumulates on its surface, forming seasonal polar ice caps. In the spring, the sun begins to warm the surface more intensively and the heat passes through these translucent layers of dry ice, heating the ground below them.

Dry ice evaporates, immediately turning into a gas, bypassing the liquid phase. If the pressure is high enough, ice cracks and gas bursts out of cracks, forming "fan". These dark "fans" are small fragments of material that are blown away by gas escaping from cracks.

Merging galaxies

26) Stephen's Quintet . This group from 5 galaxies in the constellation Pegasus, located in 280 million light years from the earth. Four of the five galaxies are undergoing a violent merging phase, they will crash into each other, eventually forming a single galaxy.

The central blue galaxy appears to be part of this group, but this is an illusion. This galaxy is much closer to us - at a distance only 40 million light years. The picture was taken by the researchers Mount Lemmon Observatory(USA).

27) Soap Bubble Nebula . This planetary nebula was discovered by an amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich July 6, 2008 in the constellation Swan. The picture was taken with a 4m telescope. Mayall Kitt Peak National Observatory in June 2009. This nebula was part of another diffuse nebula, and it is also quite pale, so it has been hidden from the eyes of astronomers for a long time.

Sunset on Mars - photo from the surface of Mars

28) Sunset on Mars. May 19, 2005 nasa rover MER-A Spirit took this amazing picture of the sunset, being at this moment on the edge Gusev crater. The solar disk, as you can see, is slightly smaller than the disk that is visible from the Earth.

29) Hypergiant star Eta Carina . In this incredibly detailed image taken by NASA's Space Telescope Hubble, you can see huge clouds of gas and dust from the giant star Ety Kiel. This star is located at a distance of more than 8 thousand light years, and the overall structure is comparable in width to our solar system.

Near 150 years ago supernova explosion was observed. This Carina became the second most luminous star after Sirius, but quickly faded away and ceased to be visible to the naked eye.

30) polar ring galaxy . amazing galaxy NGC 660 is the result of the merger of two different galaxies. It is located at a distance 44 million light years from us in the constellation Pisces. On January 7, astronomers announced that this galaxy has powerful flash, which is most likely the result of the activity of the massive black hole at its center.