When An Asteroid Or Other Object Impacts The Surface Of A Planet, Material That Was Originally Beneath

Europa is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System. The image shows the stunning diversity of Europa’s surface geology. Long, linear cracks and ridges crisscross the surface, interrupted by regions of disrupted terrain where the surface ice crust has been broken up and re-frozen into new patterns.

Space Scene

The first time humans saw Earth from the Moon.

Space Scene

An image of a fresh crater on Mars! The crater spans approximately 30m (100 ft) in diameter and is surrounded by a large, rayed blast zone. Because the terrain where the crater formed is dusty, the fresh crater appears blue in the enhanced colour of the image, due to removal of the reddish dust in that area.

Space Scene

Star formation in the tadpole nebula. Dusty emission in the Tadpole nebula, IC 410, lies about 12,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Auriga.

Space Scene

A subsurface ocean lies deep within Saturn's moon Dione, according to new data from the Cassini mission to Saturn.

Space Scene

The South Pole of Mars looks like a tasty ice cream!

Space Scene

The Milky Way from the Bahamas.

Space Scene

The Lagoon Nebula (catalogued as Messier 8 or M8, NGC 6523, Sharpless 25, RCW 146, and Gum 72) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.

Space Scene

This shot from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a maelstrom of glowing gas and dark dust within one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, named the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

Big fan of the universe? See more at the Space Scene and our partner site the Telescope Scene

This illustration shows an alien planet named OGLE-2007-BLG-349 orbiting a pair of red dwarf stars. It was originally thought that the exoplanet may only have one sun according to astronomers. However, the Hubble Space Telescope has found a second star.