2000 Spacepics :: Please note that images are chronicled by date - most recent listed first.

2000 Images
	Angry Solar Cycle  Visit the PAO Solar Max Cycle page about the peak of the 11-year solar cycle. 2000 December
	SOHO's Birthday Flare In celebration of the birthday of its most diligent watcher, the Sun has let loose an unusual and quick-fire series of eruptions during the past few days. Saturday (Dec. 2) will be the 5th anniversary of SOHO's launch into space, on 2 December 1995. 26 November 2000
	Fountains of Fire Illuminate Solar Mystery, Overturn 30 Year Old Theory  26 September 2000 (Details)
	Hubble Captures Spirograph Nebula Image (Details) 07 September 2000
	Hubble Discovers Missing Pieces of Comet Linear To the surprise and delight of astronomers, the Hubble telescope discovered a small armada of "mini-comets" left behind from what some scientists had prematurely thought was a total disintegration of the explosive Comet LINEAR. In one observation, Hubble's powerful vision has settled the fate of the mysteriously vanished solid nucleus of Comet LINEAR, which was reported "missing in action" following its passage around the Sun on July 26. Though comets have been known to break apart and vanish before, for the first time astronomers are getting a close-up view of the dismantling of a comet's nucleus due to warming by the Sun. The results support the popular theory that comet nuclei are really made up of a cluster of smaller icy bodies called "cometesimals." Credit: NASA, Harold Weaver (the Johns Hopkins University), the HST Comet LINEAR Investigation Team, and the University of Hawaii 08 August 2000
	Black Hole Winds, Fueled by the Force of Light, Blow Matter Away from Impending Doom  (Details)   Click on pic to see a movie of the black hole. Click here for press release images, and additional information on the explosion of the black hole.   17 July 2000
	Water on Mars?? NASA HQ Mars Press Release 22 June 2000
	Planets on Parade Captured by SOHO This exclusive image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft shows four planets coming together on the side of the sun opposite from Earth. The Pleiades constellation is visible in the upper left portion of the image.  Click on the image for an MPEG video of the planets aligning from April 29 through May 15, 2000. SOHO Homepage 15 May 2000
	The Glowing Eye of NGC 6751 Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have obtained images of the strikingly unusual planetary nebula, NGC 6751. Glowing in the constellation Aquila like a giant eye, the nebula is a cloud of gas ejected several thousand years ago from the hot star visible in its center. "Planetary nebulae" are named after their round shapes as seen visually in small telescopes, and have nothing else to do with planets. They are shells of gas thrown off by stars of masses similar to that of our own Sun, when the stars are nearing the ends of their lives. The loss of the outer layers of the star into space exposes the hot stellar core, whose strong ultraviolet radiation then causes the ejected gas to fluoresce as the planetary nebula. Our own Sun is predicted to eject its planetary nebula some 6 billion years from now. STScI Press Release PRC00-12 04 April 2000
	HUBBLE FINDS YOUNG STARS IN COSMIC DANCE A trio of newborn stars, 1,400 light-years away are taking part in a complex dance, as revealed by recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations. Two are now closely embracing each other, while the third has parted from their company. The new HST images in infrared light, combined with ground-based radio observations, reveal three young stars. These stars are located near a huge torus, or donut, of gas and dust from which they formed. For the full text of the press release, click here. 16 March 2000
	View Inside Mars Reveals Rapid Cooling and Buried Channels Top Image: By combining highly accurate topographic maps with new plots of the planet’s gravitational field, researchers have developed a working draft of what the planet’s interior looks like several kilometers below the surface. This map shows the "moho", the area where the planet’s crust borders its mantle. For a higher res image of this picture, named cutaway.tif go to:  http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp/newsmedia/mars/channels Bottom Image: Evidence suggests that rapid heat flow in the Northern Hemisphere produced a wide lowland area, encouraging the formation of channels, which could have sluiced water resources into a large basin, even an early ocean. Shown in this image is one such channel, draining from the giant Valles Marineris into the wide, flat area of the north.   For a high resolution image of this picture named , please go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp/newsmedia/mars/channels/ For more details, visit the Mars Channel homepage 09 March 2000
	Flashy Sun Makes Eros Blush for Scientists Using NEAR  -- For more details 10 March 2000
	Onset of Titanic Collision Lights Up Supernova Ring (Details) 16 February 2000
	NEAR Begins Looking Closely at Eros (Details) 14 February 2000
	Previously unseen details of a mysterious, complex structure within the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) are revealed by this image of the "Keyhole Nebula," obtained with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The picture is a montage assembled from four different April 1999 telescope pointings with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which used six different color filters.  (Details) 03 February 2000
	The Lunar Eclipse on Jan. 20, 2000 produced spectacular images.  These were taken by Fred Espenak of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
	HETE Burst Alert Network One of the key features of the HETE-2 satellite is its ability to calculate precise localizations of GRBs on board within seconds of burst onset, and then to transmit the burst localizations to the ground as soon as they have been calculated. The HETE-2 satellite utilizes a low-rate VHF transmitter to continuously broadcast the burst information; on the ground, an array of listen-only secondary ground stations receive the data and transmit them to the MIT Control Center. Once received at MIT, burst information are immediately relayed to the GRB Coordinate Distribution Network at the Goddard Space Flight Center for distribution to interested ground observers.  http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/10 January 2000
	IMAGE to Be Launched March 25, 2000 IMAGE is a MIDEX mission, selected by NASA in 1996, to study the global response of the Earth's magnetosphere to changes in the solar wind.   05 January 2000
	This photo which appeared on the Goddard Website frontpage on January 5, 2000 shows the HETE II being loaded onto the Pegasus rocket which launches it into orbit. 05 January 2000
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