《国家地理》评出2007年度十大太空照片 太空

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Top Ten Space Pictures of 2007
《国家地理》评出2007年度十大太空照片


更多精彩内容：2008十大热门太空图片 TOP TEN SPACE PHOTOS



Hubble spies dazzling death of a sunlike star. On Feb. 13 NASA released this shot of a dying star—a white dwarf shown as a bright dot near the center of nebula NGC 2440—that was once similar to our sun.

第一、哈勃太空望远镜所拍摄的一颗接近死亡星球的照片

尽管哈勃太空望远镜中最受欢迎的一个照相机于1月份发生故障，但哈勃太空望远镜今年仍证实了自己的价值，它用其它的相机拍下了一系列的令人感到震惊的新照片。

美国宇航局2月13日公布了一颗接近死亡星球的照片，在一个名为NGC 2440的星云中心附近，一颗曾经与我们太阳类似的白矮星正在发光，它被外层大气向外膨胀而形成的行星状星云所包围。

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Bizarre object found circling star. An object detected orbiting a neutron star is among the strangest planet-mass bodies ever found, astronomers said in September. Instead of circling around a normal star, the low-mass object—likely the "skeleton" of a smaller star—orbits a rapidly spinning pulsar, or neutron star. The odd mass, which was spotted on June 7 by NASA's Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellites, orbits the bigger star in a little less than once an hour. 

第二、奇怪物体沿中子星运传

天文学家9月份称，沿中子星轨道运传的一个物体是有史以来被发现的最奇怪的星球物质。这一低质量物体没有围绕一个通常的星球运传，它沿一个快速旋转脉冲星或者中子星的轨道运行。这颗中子星的旋转达每秒数百次。

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New Mars pictures show signs of watery "aquifers." Stunning images from a satellite orbiting Mars reveal that water once snuck along fractures in Mars's layered rocks, according to a study that appeared in the Feb. 17 issue of the journal Science.


第三：火星发现液态水痕迹

2月17日出版的《科学》杂志刊登的一篇研究报告称，“火星侦察轨道器”所拍摄的令人震惊的照片显示，液态水曾沿火星多层岩石的缝隙流动。人们对贝克勒尔坑进行俯视时可以清楚地看到这些缝隙，蓝色的区域是巨大的沙丘，而不是水。

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Helix nebula. Dust from comets that survived the death of their star is clouding the "eye" of the distant Helix nebula, as revealed by an image released by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope on Feb. 12.


第四：旋涡星云

美国宇航局2月12日公布的斯皮策太空望远镜图片显示，来自慧星的尘埃将遥远的“旋涡星云”之“眼”包围起来。距地球700光年的星云是一颗接近死亡的类似地球星的彩色残留物。类似地球星正释放出外层物质以成为一颗白矮星。

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Magnetar explosion. A rare celestial body known as a magnetar shimmers in an explosion of x-rays in an artist's depiction. The unusual object, about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, is a small, fast-spinning neutron star that periodically shoots out huge cataclysms of x-ray emissions.

第五：超强磁星体爆炸

艺术家画出了超强磁星体发生x射线爆炸时的想象图。这一距地球15000光年的奇特物体位于射手座，它是一个旋转速度很快的小中子星，它定期释放出大量的X射线。

艺术家画出了超强磁星体发生x射线爆炸时的想象图

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Alien life may be "weirder" than scientists think, report says. An artist's rendering depicts the NASA/ESA Huygens probe floating in a lake of methane on Saturn's moon Titan. A report issued on July 6 by the National Academy of Sciences said that extraterrestrial organisms might be even more bizarre than experts had previously predicted. The report concluded that scientists need to consider an expanded list of characteristics that define life, including so-called "weird" life-forms that may thrive where Earth organisms couldn't.

第六：外星生命可能比专家们想像的更为怪异

艺术家所绘制的美国宇航局/欧洲宇航局惠更斯探测器在土星的最大卫星“提坦”上的米塔尼湖上浮着的想像图。

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Supernova destroys "Pillars of Creation." In a thousand years, astronomers predicted in January, people on Earth will see the iconic "Pillars of Creation" get toppled by a supernova, the explosive death of a giant star. The pillars are dense clouds of gas in the Eagle Nebula, a star nursery in the constellation Serpens, near Sagittarius. They were made famous by a dramatic 1995 Hubble Space Telescope image (inset).


第七：超新星摧毁“创造之柱”

天文学家在过去的一千年前一直预测称，地球上的人们在今年一月份将看到超新星摧毁“创造之柱”的景象。

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Solar system is "bullet shaped." A graphic depicts the solar system, encased in an envelope of charged particles (yellow), as it passes through the interstellar magnetic field of the Milky Way galaxy (brown lines). A study that appeared in the May 11 issue of the journal Science used data from the far-flung Voyager spacecraft to determine that the solar system takes on a bulletlike shape as it passes through space.


第八：太阳系形状像子弹

图片展示了太阳系的形状，它在穿越银河系的星际磁场时(棕色线)像是一颗子弹。

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Jupiter Auroras "northern lights on steroids."  Those dashing purple puffs are x-ray images of the gas giant's high-voltage auroras—"northern lights on steroids," said planetary scientist Randy Gladstone of an image released by NASA in March.


第九：木星上的极光

美国宇航局3月份公布的“钱德拉”X射线望远镜拍摄到的木星极地地区发出的绚丽光辉的图片。

德克萨斯州西南研究学院的加尔德斯通称：“木星上的极光的规模是我们整个太阳系最大的。”加尔德斯通希望这些最新观测成果将帮助解开一些有关木星的谜团，其中包括这些超级极光是如何产生的疑问。

木星是太阳系最大的星球、磁场每隔十小时轮换一次，在其极区产生一千万伏的高压，来自木星卫星上的火山活动中喷发出的带电气体会进入木星大气层就产生了极光现象。但是这些火山带电气体是如何从一个相对小的卫星进至木星上的极地区域呢？加尔德斯顿称，这仍是有关木星的一个未解之谜。

“钱德拉”X射线望远镜拍摄到的木星极地地区发出的绚丽光辉

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Superbright comet sweeps across southern skies. Australian astronomer Robert McNaught first discovered the comet last August via a telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. The celestial body's orbit brought it close to the sun in early January, making the comet visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere. 

第十：最明亮的麦克诺特彗星划过地球南半球

宇宙学家曾警告人们在今年年初观看麦克诺特彗星时要小心行事。人们在南半球的黎明和黄昏时候可以观察到这颗慧星，由于它接近太阳，天文学家提醒观测者不要直视麦克诺特彗星。