March's Stunning Space Pictures
(Inside Science) -- Check out five astronomy images that caught our eye in this month's astronomy slideshow. They include a breathtaking picture of the Milky Way bedazzling the sky high above the Chilean desert and two artists' illustrations of unexpected stars living in the extreme environment around black holes.
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope perches above the Chilean Atacama Desert on Cerro Paranal, far from cities and potential light pollution. The Milky Way billows above the secluded structure, stretching up into the night sky. (ESO/B. Tafreshi)
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the colorful canyons of Juventae Chasma, an area just north of the Martian equator. The mineral composition found in the region gives the hills their vibrant and varied colors. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
This month, astronomers unveiled evidence that material within the turbulent outflows of colliding supermassive black holes is coming together to form new stars. The artist’s impression above illustrates the IRAS-F23128-5919 galaxies, where the drama is unfolding about 600 million light-years from Earth. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)
This valiant white dwarf star is thriving in an extreme environment -- right in the neighborhood of a black hole. This star boasts the closest known orbit around a black hole, completing a full circuit in about 25 minutes. The system is located 14,800 light-years from Earth in the 47 Tucanae cluster. (NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)
Closer to home, equipment is loaded onto the International Space Station for an experiment known as the GROUP-C project. Research engineers at Cornell University hope to use this equipment to explore the effect of space weather on Earth's atmosphere. (Cornell/NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center)
