Apollo 12 and Surveyor 3

On April 17, 1967, NASA's Surveyor 3 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on a mission to the lunar surface. A little more than two years after it landed on the moon with the goal of paving the way for a future human mission, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft got a visit from Apollo 12 Commander Charles Conrad Jr. and astronaut Alan L. Bean, who snapped this photo on November 20, 1969.

After Surveyor 1's initial studies of the lunar surface in 1966, Surveyor 3 made further inroads into preparations for human missions to the moon. Using a surface sampler to study the lunar soil, Surveyor 3 conducted experiments to see how the lunar surface would fare against the weight of an Apollo lunar module. The moon lander, which was the second of the Surveyor series to make a soft landing on the moon, also gathered information on the lunar soil's radar reflectivity and thermal properties in addition to transmitting more than 6,000 photographs of its surroundings.

The Apollo 12 Lunar Module, visible in the background at right, landed about 600 feet from Surveyor 3 in the Ocean of Storms. The television camera and several other pieces were taken from Surveyor 3 and brought back to Earth for scientific examination. Here, Conrad examines the Surveyor's TV camera prior to detaching it. Astronaut Richard F. Gordon Jr. remained with the Apollo 12 Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit while Conrad and Bean descended in the LM to explore the moon.

Photo credit: NASA

Galaxy Cluster CLASS B1608+656

An image of a galaxy cluster taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope gives a remarkable cross-section of the Universe, showing objects at different distances and stages in cosmic history. They range from cosmic near-neighbors to objects seen in the early years of the Universe. The 14-hour exposure shows objects around a billion times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye.

Hubble's images might look flat, but this one shows a remarkable depth of field that lets us see more than halfway to the edge of the observable Universe. Most of the galaxies visible here are members of a huge cluster called CLASS B1608+656, which lies about five billion light-years away. But the field also contains other objects, both significantly closer and far more distant, including quasar QSO-160913+653228 which is so distant its light has taken nine billion years to reach us, two-thirds of the time that has elapsed since the Big Bang.

Photo credit: NASA, ESA

Note: For more information, see A Cross-Section of the Universe.

Kepler-186f

This artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone -- a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth.

The size of Kepler-186f is known to be less than ten percent larger than Earth, but its mass, composition and density are not known. Previous research suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky. Prior to this discovery, the "record holder" for the most "Earth-like" planet went to Kepler-62f, which is 40 percent larger than the size of Earth and orbits in its star's habitable zone.

Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days and receives one-third the energy that Earth does from the sun, placing it near the outer edge of the habitable zone. If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its star at high noon would appear as bright as our sun is about an hour before sunset on Earth.

Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four inner planets, seen lined up in orbit around a host star that is half the size and mass of the sun.

The artistic concept of Kepler-186f is the result of scientists and artists collaborating to imagine the appearance of these distant worlds.

Illustration credit: NASA/Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see PIA18000: Kepler-186 and the Solar System, NASA's Kepler Telescope Discovers First Earth-Size Planet in 'Habitable Zone', and Earth-Size Planet Found In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star.

Gum 41

This new image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile reveals a cloud of hydrogen and newborn stars called Gum 41. In the middle of this little-known nebula, brilliant hot young stars emit energetic radiation that causes the surrounding hydrogen to glow with a characteristic red hue.

Image credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see A Study in Scarlet.

IRAS 20324+4057, The Tadpole, and The Wriggler

A bright blue tadpole appears to swim through the inky blackness of space. Known as IRAS 20324+4057, but dubbed "the Tadpole," this clump of gas and dust has given birth to a bright, "protostar," one of the earliest steps in building a star. This image was taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and released publicly, in 2012.

There are actually multiple protostars within this tadpole's 'head," but the glowing yellow one in this image is the most luminous and massive. When this protostar has gathered together enough mass from its surroundings, it will eventually emerge as a fully-fledged young star.

The intense blue glow is caused by nearby stars firing ultraviolet radiation at IRAS 20324+4057, which also sculpts its tail into a long, wiggly shape. In total, this clump spans roughly a light-year from head to tail-tip, and contains gas weighing almost four times the mass of the sun.

Framed against a background of distant stars, IRAS 20324+4057 is making its way through the Cygnus OB2 association, a loose cluster of stars some 4,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. This association is one of the largest clusters known, and is famed for its heavyweight members. It contains some of the hottest, most massive and most luminous stars known, some of which are about two million times more luminous than the sun.

The Tadpole is not alone in this interstellar pond. Just out of view, to the bottom right of this image, lies another curious object dubbed "the Goldfish" by astronomers. The Goldfish is about half the length of IRAS 20324+4057, and is also thought to be a globule of gas that is being both lit up and sculpted by radiation from cluster stars.

Completing this trio is a small clump of blue gas, informally nicknamed "the Wriggler" by some astronomers, visible in the bottom left of this Hubble image. All three objects have the same orientation in the sky and appear to be brighter on their northern sides, leading astronomers to believe they are being shaped by aggressive winds and radiation flowing from hot Cygnus OB2 stars towards the top right of the frame.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and IPHAS

Note: For more information, see The Tadpole and The Wriggler.

Possible New Moon Forming Around Saturn

The disturbance visible at the outer edge of Saturn's A ring in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft could be caused by an object replaying the birth process of icy moons.

The image is adapted from one in a paper in the journal Icarus, reporting the likely presence of an icy body causing gravitational effects on nearby ring particles, producing the bright feature visible at the ring's edge. The object, informally called "Peggy," is estimated to be no more than about half a mile, or one kilometer, in diameter. It may be in the process of migrating out of the ring, a process that one recent theory proposes as a step in the births of Saturn's several icy moons.

This image is a portion of an observation recorded by the narrow-angle camera of Cassini's imaging science subsystem on April 15, 2013. The bright feature at the edge of the A ring is about 750 miles (about 1,200 kilometers) long.

This view looks toward the illuminated side of the rings from about 53 degrees above the plane of the rings. It was obtained from a distance of approximately 775,000 miles (1.2 kilometers) from Saturn, with a sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 31 degrees. The scale is about 4 miles (about 7 kilometers) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Note: For more information, see NASA Cassini Images May Reveal Birth of a Saturn Moon and Possible New Moon Forming Around Saturn.

Supernova Remnant G352.7-0.1

G352.7-0.1: A supernova remnant about 24,000 light years from Earth.

Supernova remnants are created when a massive star explodes and its remains are hurled into space. Astronomers have found a supernova remnant that it is sweeping up a remarkable amount of material -- equivalent to 45 times the mass of the Sun – as it expands. This supernova remnant is called G352.7-0.1 and is seen in this composite image containing X-rays from Chandra (blue), radio waves from the VLA (pink), infrared data from Spitzer (orange), and optical data from the DSS (white).

Scale: Image is about 14.5 arcmin across (1000 light years).

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Morehead State Univ/T.Pannuti et al.; Optical: DSS; Infrared: NASA/JPLCaltech; Radio: NRAO/VLA/Argentinian Institute of Radioastronomy/G.Dubner

Note: For more information, see G352.7-0.1: Supernova Cleans Up its Surroundings.

Possible Exomoon Found

Researchers have detected the first "exomoon" candidate -- a moon orbiting a planet that lies outside our solar system. Using a technique called "microlensing," they observed what could be either a moon and a planet -- or a planet and a star. This artist's conception depicts the two possibilities, with the planet/moon pairing on the top, and star/planet on the bottom. If the moon scenario is true, the moon would weigh less than Earth, and the planet would be more massive than Jupiter.

The scientists can't confirm the results partly because microlensing events happen once, due to chance encounters. The events occur when a star or planet happens to pass in front of a more distant star, causing the distant star to brighten. If the passing object has a companion -- either a planet or moon -- it will alter the brightening effect. Once the event is over, it is possible to study the passing object on its own. But the results would still not be able to distinguish between a planet/moon duo and a faint star/planet. Both pairings would be too dim to be seen.

In the future, it may be possible to enlist the help of multiple telescopes to watch a lensing event as it occurs, and confirm the presence of exomoons.

Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see Faraway Moon or Faint Star? Possible Exomoon Found.

Abell 33

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have captured this eye-catching image of planetary nebula Abell 33. Created when an aging star blew off its outer layers, this beautiful blue bubble is, by chance, aligned with a foreground star, and bears an uncanny resemblance to a diamond engagement ring. This cosmic gem is unusually symmetric, appearing to be almost perfectly circular on the sky.

Photo credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see Chance Meeting Creates Celestial Diamond Ring.

Bright Spot in the Distance at Gale Crater

This image from the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover includes a bright spot near the upper left corner. The sun is in the same direction, west-northwest, above the frame. Bright spots appear in images from the rover nearly every week. Typical explanations for them are cosmic rays hitting the light detector or sunlight glinting from rocks.

The right-eye camera of the stereo Navcam recorded this frame during the afternoon of the 589th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (April 3, 2014), from the site where the rover reached a waypoint called "the Kimberley" by that sol's drive. An image taken by the Navcam's left-eye camera within one second of the same time (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=NLB_449790582EDR_F0310000NCAM00262M_&s=589) does not include a bright spot of this type. A pair of Navcam images in the same direction from the previous afternoon has a bright spot similarly located in the right-eye image (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=NRB_449700848EDR_F0301254NCAM00252M_&s=588) but not in the left-eye image (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=NLB_449700848EDR_F0301254NCAM00252M_&s=588).

One possible explanation for the bright spot in this image is a glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. Another is a cosmic ray hitting the camera's light detector, a CCD (charge-coupled device). Cosmic ray patterns in Mars rover images vary from a dot to a long line depending on the angle at which the ray strikes the detector.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see Images From NASA Mars Rover Include Bright Spots.

Liftoff of Sentinel-1A

Cameras mounted on the Soyuz Fregat upper stage that sent Sentinel-1A into space on 3 April 2014 captured this footage from liftoff to separation.

The 2.3-ton satellite lifted off on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 21:02 GMT (23:02 CEST). The first stage separated 118 sec later, followed by the fairing (209 sec), stage 2 (287 sec) and the upper assembly (526 sec). After a 617 sec burn, the Fregat upper stage delivered Sentinel into a Sun-synchronous orbit at 693 km altitude. The satellite separated from the upper stage 23 min 24 sec after liftoff.

Sentinel-1 is the first in the family of satellites for Europe’s Copernicus program. It carries an advanced radar to scan Earth’s surface in all weather conditions and regardless of whether it is day or night. This new mission will be used to care for many aspects of our environment, from detecting and tracking oil spills and mapping sea ice to monitoring movement in land surfaces and mapping changes in the way land is used.

Video credit: Arianespace/ESA/Roscosmos; Music written by M. Oldfield/copyright EMI Virgin

Update: A slightly longer version of the video can be found here: Onboard Cameras Show Full Launch and Separation of Sentinel-1A.

Titan's Dunes

The moons of our Solar System are brimming with unusual landscapes. However, sometimes they look a little more familiar, as in this new radar image from the Cassini orbiter. The image shows dark streaks carved into dunes reminiscent of those we might find on a beach on Earth, or raked with flowing lines in a Japanese Zen garden — but this scene is actually taking place on Saturn’s moon Titan.

While our sand is composed of silicates, the ‘sand’ of these alien dunes is formed from grains of organic materials about the same size as particles of our beach sand. The small size and smoothness of these grains means that the flowing lines carved into the dunes show up as dark to the human eye.

These grains are shunted around by winds shifting over the moon’s surface. These winds aren’t particularly fast — only moving at around 1 m/s — but they blow in opposing directions throughout the year, causing Titan’s ‘sand’ to pile up in certain places over time.

Titan seems to be full of features and phenomena that are quite familiar to those found on Earth. Since Cassini arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, and dropped off ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005, scientists have been studying the similarities between Titan and Earth by exploring sand dunes, channels and lakes of liquid ethane and methane scattered across its surface.

While previous images have spotted these eerily familiar patterns on Titan’s dunes, this new image shows them in greater detail. The image was obtained by Cassini’s Titan radar mapper on 10 July 2013, by a team led by Steve Wall at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, USA. The horizontal seam near the center is an artifact of radar image data processing.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

El Gordo Galactic Cluster (ACT-CL J0102-4915)

El Gordo: A galaxy cluster nicknamed "El Gordo" about 7 billion light years from Earth.

When scientists first discovered this galaxy cluster in 2012 with Chandra and ground-based optical telescopes, they nicknamed it "El Gordo" (the "fat one" in Spanish) because of its gigantic mass. New data from Hubble suggest it may weigh 43 percent more - about 3 million billion Suns -- than the original estimate based on the X-ray data and dynamical studies. This composite image of El Gordo contains X-rays from Chandra (pink), a map of where the dark matter is found determined by gravitational lensing (blue), and the individual galaxies in the cluster and stars in the field of view as observed by Hubble.

Scale: Image is about 5 arcmin across (7.72 million light years)

Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Jee (Univ. of California, Davis), J. Hughes (Rutgers Univ.), F. Menanteau (Rutgers Univ. & Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), C. Sifon (Leiden Obs.), R. Mandelbum (Carnegie Mellon Univ.), L. Barrientos (Univ. Catolica de Chile), and K. Ng (Univ. of California, Davis)

Note: For more information, see El Gordo: Monster "El Gordo" Galaxy Cluster is Bigger than Thought.

NGC 1084

In this new Hubble image, we can see an almost face-on view of the galaxy NGC 1084. At first glance, this galaxy is pretty unoriginal. Like the majority of galaxies that we observe it is a spiral galaxy, and, as with about half of all spirals, it has no bar running through its loosely wound arms. However, although it may seem unremarkable on paper, NGC 1084 is actually a near-perfect example of this type of galaxy — and Hubble has a near-perfect view of it.

NGC 1084 has hosted several violent events known as supernovae — explosions that occur when massive stars, many times more massive than the Sun, approach their twilight years. As the fusion processes in their cores run out of fuel and come to an end, these stellar giants collapse, blowing off their outer layers in a violent explosion. Supernovae can often briefly outshine an entire galaxy, before then fading away over several weeks or months. Although directly observing one of these explosions is hard to do, in galaxies like NGC 1084 astronomers can find and study the remnants left behind.

Astronomers have noted five supernova explosions within NGC 1084 over the past half century. These remnants are named after the year in which they took place — 1963P, 1996an, 1998dl, 2009H, and 2012ec.

The most recent explosion, 2012ec, was detected at the end of NGC 1084’s top right arm in August 2012. It is not visible here as these images were taken in 2001, some eleven years before this supernova exploded. Astronomers at Queen's University Belfast have managed to use these "before" images to directly identify the star that exploded. It appears to be a red supergiant some 10 to 20 times more massive than the Sun, and quite similar to the well-known star Betelguese in Orion.

Photo credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast)

Enceladus' Ocean

This diagram illustrates the possible interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus based on a gravity investigation by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Deep Space Network, reported in April 2014. The gravity measurements suggest an ice outer shell and a low density, rocky core with a regional water ocean sandwiched in between at high southern latitudes.

Views from Cassini's imaging science subsystem were used to depict the surface geology of Enceladus and the plume of water jets gushing from fractures near the moon's south pole.

Enceladus is 313 miles (504 kilometers) in diameter.

Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: This is the big story of the day. For more information, see Inside Enceladus, Icy Moon Enceladus Has Underground Sea, NASA Space Assets Detect Ocean inside Saturn Moon, and Deep Ocean Detected Inside Saturn's Moon.

NGC 1316 and 1317

This new image from the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile shows a contrasting pair of galaxies: NGC 1316, and its smaller companion NGC 1317 (right). Although NGC 1317 seems to have had a peaceful existence, its larger neighbor bears the scars of earlier mergers with other galaxies.

Image credit: ESO

Note: For more information, see Galactic Serial Killer.

Solar Cycle 23

It took 10 years to create this image of our changing Sun. Taken from space by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), it shows a dramatically different picture than the one we receive on Earth.

From Earth’s surface, we are treated to a biased view. Every day our world is bathed in the Sun’s light and heat, and at these visible and infrared wavelengths our luminary shines to within a fraction of a percent of the same energy every day.

At ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths, this is not true. Launched in 1995, SOHO has been continuously monitoring the Sun since then, in part to study this variation. Back in 2006, one image for each year of the mission until then was chosen and displayed in this montage.

The bright parts of these images correspond to gas in the Sun’s atmosphere at a temperature of about 2 million degrees Celsius.

Unlike visible light, the intensity of the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun varies greatly. This variation becomes more pronounced the shorter the wavelength, especially in the X-ray region of the spectrum. This is governed by solar activity, which runs in an approximately 11-year cycle. It is linked to the generation of the Sun’s magnetic field although our precise understanding of this mechanism remains elusive.

The waxing and waning of cycle-23, counted since 1755 when systematic record-taking began, can be seen clearly in this image. At its peak in 2001, the Sun was a maelstrom of activity, releasing about 10 times more ultraviolet light than at the minimum periods that can be seen in 1996 and 2006.

Now in cycle-24, the Sun is again at a peak of activity, although it is milder than that of 2001.

This image was originally published at the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory website.

Image credit: SOHO (ESA & NASA)

Comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko Near Messier 107

This is a picture of comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko in the constellation Ophiuchus. The image was taken on March 21, 2014, by the narrow-angle camera of the Rosetta spacecraft's Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS). The comet is indicated by the small circle next to the bright globular star cluster M107. The image was taken from a distance of about 3 million miles (5 million kilometers).

Image credit: ESA © 2014 MPS for OSIRIS-Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Note: For more information, see PIA17796: Rosetta Images its Target, Rosetta Sets Sights on Destination Comet, Rosetta’s First Sighting of its Target in 2014 – Narrow Angle View, and Rosetta Sets Sights on Destination Comet.

Rings Around Asteroid 10199 Chariklo

Observations at many sites in South America, including ESO’s La Silla Observatory, have made the surprise discovery that the remote asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two dense and narrow rings. This is the smallest object by far found to have rings and only the fifth body in the Solar System — after the much larger planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — to have this feature. The origin of these rings remains a mystery, but they may be the result of a collision that created a disc of debris.

This artist’s impression shows how the rings might look from close to the surface of Chariklo.

Illustration credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)

Note: For more information, see First Ring System Around Asteroid.

Update: A new video shows how the occultation of a star by Asteroid 10199 Chariklo revealed the two rings that orbit the asteroid.

NGC 4395

The galaxy NGC 4395 is shown here in infrared light, captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This dwarf galaxy is relatively small in comparison with our Milky Way galaxy, which is nearly 1,000 times more massive.

The galaxy is "bulgeless" because it lacks a large collection of stars at its center. Astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, have found more evidence that bulgeless galaxies, contrary to previous theories, do harbor supermassive black holes at their center. In this image, an actively feeding supermassive black hole resides in the galaxy's nucleus, as seen by the bright red source. The feeding supermassive black hole dominates the infrared light coming from the galaxy's center.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see The Search for Seeds of Black Holes.