#10: Europa's surface by Galileo (2014)
Europa is one of the most interesting celestial bodies in solar system. Scientists believe that this moon hides giant liquid ocean under it's surface of rock and ice. If life exists anywhere in our solar system outside Earth, we're most likely to find it in dark waters of Europa. NASA is planning to launch Europa Clipper mission somewhere between 2022 and 2025, which will perform multiple flybys near Europa and hopefully will help us discover more of its secrets.
#9 Giant Red Spot (2017)
There are many photos of the Giant Red Spot of Jupiter, first one made all the way back in 1974 by Pioneer 10 space probe, but the phenomena is theorised to have existed long way before then. Giant Red Spot is in essence an enormous storm, comparable in size to the whole Earth, which is raging in a Jupiters atmosphere for centuries. Winds on the edges of the storm reach speeds up to 120 mps (432 km/h). Blows my mind this powerful weather phenomenon might have started around the same time we here on Earth started to colonise American continent.
#8: Saturn by Cassini (2016)
This image looks like it's fake. It's too perfect. Saturn rings are too round, planet itself is colored in stripes and shadow is pitch black. Looks like something out of beginner level photoshop tutorial. Well, the amazing thing about this photo is that it's real, and that's what Saturn actually looks like up-close. Driven by Saturn's gravity, uncountable ring particles visually merge together into ideal ring shape, ammonia crystals clouds are stretched around the planet's atmosphere by eternal winds, and shadows are pitch black because there is no air in space to bend light and blur shadows this way. Just goes to prove how alien space imagery is to our every day experiences.
#7: First color picture of Mars (1976)
Think about it: the image above is a place on another planet. The rock, just like our, hurdling through space. But unlike Earth, it was never contaminated with life, never in a millions of years disturbed by bustling life. Thinking that through the power of human ingenuity we can see it as if with our own eyes gives me the good kind of shivers.
#6: McCandless's Spacewalk (1994)
During the 1994 mission, astronaut Bruce McCandless II was testing Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). This device, which looks something like a weird oversized backpack, was designed to allow astronauts to move freely in space, without the usual tether connection. McCandless was the first person in history to experience being in open space completely disconnected from, well, everything...
I was grossly over-trained. I was just anxious to get out there and fly. I felt very comfortable ... It got so cold my teeth were chattering and I was shivering, but that was a very minor thing. ... I’d been told of the quiet vacuum you experience in space, but with three radio links saying, ‘How’s your oxygen holding out?’, ‘Stay away from the engines!’ and ‘When’s my turn?’, it wasn’t that peaceful ... It was a wonderful feeling, a mix of personal elation and professional pride: it had taken many years to get to that point.
#5: Earthrise (1968)
Seeing Earth our planet as a celestial body, rising in the sky from behind alien horizon is a real change in perspective. Looks like science fiction, but it's actually real.
#4: Hubble Deep Field (1995)
What happens when you direct the most powerful space telescope in a history of mankind to photograph empty piece of the space? This photo answers the question. It reveals that seemingly empty pitch black patch of space is actually filled with thousands upon thousands of stars, nebulas and galaxies. They might be too distant to spot them without magnification, but they are always there, hiding in every tiny piece of our sky.
#3: Blue Marble (1972)
This is the most famous "portrait" of our home. Isn't it pretty with that atmospheric turbulence, blue oceans and green continents? Reminds you we need to take an effort to make sure it stays this way, since it's unfortunately in our power now to repaint this picture into dull grey colours.
#2: Pillars Of Creation (1995)
This is arguably the most awe-inspiring picture in existence. Unimaginable in size gas clouds are in the process of forming new stars. This picture is taken from such a great distance that what we see here was actually happened six to seven thousand years ago. Scientists assume that these gas clouds have actually already been destroyed, but it will take another thousand years for the light from destruction event to reach our planet, enabling us to capture it on camera (assuming we are still around then).
#1: Pale Blue Dot (1990)
At first this photo doesn't seem to contain anything interesting, just the darkness of space. If you look really closely at the right side of the picture, there in the middle of the sunbeam you can spot tiny spec of blue. It is our Earth. I can't do this picture justice with my own words, so I'll just quote Carl Sagan, famous scientist and science populariser, who is commonly credited as an author of an idea to take this picture.
We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
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