The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript

The ancient text has no known title, no known author, and is written in no known language: what does it say and why does it have many astronomy illustrations? The mysterious book was once bought by an emperor, forgotten on a library shelf, sold for thousands of dollars, and later donated to Yale. Possibly written in the 15th century, the over 200-page volume is known most recently as the

Messier 88

Charles Messier described the 88th entry in his 18th century catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters as a spiral nebula without stars. Of course the gorgeous M88 is now understood to be a galaxy full of stars, gas, and dust, not unlike our own Milky Way. In fact, M88 is one of the brightest galaxies in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster some 50 million light-years away. M88's beautiful spiral arms are easy

Bayfordbury Open Evenings February and March

Visit a working astronomical observatory and see the telescopes. Weather permitting there will be the opportunity to view interesting objects in the sky both looking through the telescopes and also using CCD imaging cameras.(If the weather is bad, we will show you some pictures we took earlier!). In addition to the observatory there will be a number of other activities that you may choose in the

Ice on Galway Docks

The photo above showing ice at the docks in Galway, Ireland was captured in the early afternoon of January 9, 2010. The Atlantic coast of Ireland hasn't experienced seawater freezing in its dock area since the early 1980s. The freezing temperature of seawater varies according to the salinity of the water: the greater the concentration of salts, the lower the initial freezing temperature. Seawater

Let There be Light on Earth

An early morning sun illuminated the light rain over Nevada, Missouri, on May 14, 2009, spraying rays across the sky. Photographer Tommy Hornbeck captured what some viewers may believe to be virga, rain that evaporates before reaching the surface. However, Jim Foster, a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, confirmed with Hornbeck that the rain did indeed dampen the ground and the

ESMD Highlight

Electronic Nose (ENose)Challenge: Provide rapid, automated air-quality monitoring to prevent astronaut exposure to dangerous substances.Research Objective: Demonstrate six months of experimental operation of the Electronic Nose (ENose) on the International Space Station (ISS).Mission Description: The third generation ENose, developed by the Exploration Technology Development Program, is designed

Endeavour's STS-130 Mission

Commander George Zamka will lead the STS-130 mission to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Endeavour. Terry Virts will serve as the pilot. Mission Specialists are Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Stephen Robinson and Kathryn Hire. Virts will be making his first trip to space.Shuttle Endeavour and its crew will deliver to the space station a third connecting module, the

Day of Remembrance: Honoring NASA's Fallen Heroes

NASA's Day of Remembrance to honors the fallen heroes of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, and others who have given their lives for exploration and discovery. › President Obama's Message › Administrator Bolden's Message › Feature

Mars Opposition 2010

Mars is at opposition tonight, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. Of course, it will be easy to spot because Mars appears close to tonight's Full Moon, also opposite the Sun in Earth's night sky in the constellation Cancer. For this opposition, Mars remains just over 99 million kilometers away, not a particularly close approach for the Red Planet. Still, this sharp view of Mars recorded

Next Generation Weather/Environmental Satellite Marks Major Milestone

The development of a new series of weather and environmental monitoring satellites has marked a significant milestone with the delivery and the beginning of spacecraft integration efforts for a key science instrument.The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) will be one of five instruments to fly on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS)

The Coolest of Orbs

An international team of astronomers using several telescopes has discovered what appears to be the coolest star-like body known, a brown dwarf called SDSS1416+13B. The dim ball of gas is roughly 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius). NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope helped nail down the temperature of the object by observing at a particular range of light called mid-infrared. Too small to

President Barack Obama on NASA's Day of Remembrance

The White HouseOffice of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release January 29, 2010Message from the President on NASA's Day of RemembranceFor more than a half-century, NASA has explored our final frontier and transformed humankind's understanding of our planet and its place in the universe. These extraordinary achievements have required great sacrifice.On this Day of

Out-of-This-World Super Bowl Coin Lands in Ohio

After traveling more than four million miles, and making 171 orbits around Earth on board space shuttle Atlantis, the Super Bowl XLIV opening-toss coin took a slight detour to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Museum in Canton, Ohio, on Jan. 27, before heading to the Super Bowl.The coin was flown last November on STS-129 by crew members Commander Charlie Hobaugh, Pilot Barry Wilmore, and Mission

Kemble's Cascade

An asterism is just a recognized pattern of stars that is not one the 88 official constellations. For example, one of the most famous (and largest) asterisms is the Big Dipper within the constellation Ursa Major. But this pretty chain of stars, visible with binoculars towards the long-necked constellation of Camelopardalis, is also a recognized asterism. Known as Kemble's Cascade, it

New NASA Web Site Launches Kids on Mission to Save Our Planet

Climate change can be a daunting topic for most adults to grasp, let alone kids. A new NASA Web site can help our future explorers and leaders understand how and why their planet is changing and what they can do to help keep it habitable. Called "Climate Kids," the new Web site is the latest companion to NASA's award-winning Global Climate Change Web site, http://climate.nasa.gov . Geared toward

Tethys Behind Titan

What's that behind Titan? It's another of Saturn's moons: Tethys. The robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn captured the heavily cratered Tethys slipping behind Saturn's atmosphere-shrouded Titan late last year. The largest crater on Tethys, Odysseus, is easily visible on the distant moon. Titan shows not only its thick and opaque orange lower atmosphere, but also an unusual

Newborn Black Holes Boost Explosive Power of Supernovae

An international team of scientists, including two astronomers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have observed a supernova with peculiar radio emission. In the Jan. 28 issue of Nature, the team -- led by Zsolt Paragi of the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe, or JIVE -- reveals new details of these highly energetic explosions.Supernova SN

Route 66: Cassini's Next Look at Titan

Sixteen days after last visiting Saturn's largest moon, NASA's Cassini spacecraft returns for another look-see of the cloud-shrouded moon - this time from on high. The flyby on Thursday, Jan. 28, referred to as "T-66" in the hollowed halls of Cassini operations, will place the spacecraft within 7,490 kilometers (4,654 miles) above the surface during time of closest approach.While this latest

Annular Eclipse Over Myanmar

A hole crossed the Sun for a few minutes this month, as seen across a thin swath of planet Earth. The event on January 15 was actually an annular solar eclipse, and the hole was really Earth's Moon, an object whose dark half may appear even darker when compared to the tremendously bright Sun. The Moon was too far from Earth to create a total solar eclipse, but instead left well placed

Now a Stationary Research Platform, NASA's Mars Rover Spirit Starts a New Chapter in Red Planet Scientific Studies

After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap have been unsuccessful.The venerable robot's primary task in the next few weeks will be to position

NASA Airborne Radar to Study Quake Faults in Haiti, Dominican Republic

In response to the disaster in Haiti on Jan. 12, NASA has added a series of science overflights of earthquake faults in Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola to a previously scheduled three-week airborne radar campaign to Central America. NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, left NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., on

The Magellanic Stream

Spanning the sky toward the majestic Clouds of Magellan is an unusual stream of gas: the Magellanic Stream. The origin of this gas remains unknown but likely holds a clue to the origin and fate of our Milky Way's most famous satellite galaxies: the LMC and the SMC. Until recently, two leading genesis hypotheses have been considered: that the stream was created by gas stripped off these galaxies

Watch Jupiter Rotate

What would it be like to coast by Jupiter and watch it rotate? This was just the experience of the New Horizons spacecraft as it approached and flew by Jupiter in 2007. Clicking on the image will bring up a movie of what the robotic spacecraft saw. Visible above in the extensive atmosphere of the Solar System's largest planet are bands and belts of light and dark clouds, as well as giant

School kids verify NASA satellite observations

The S'COOL program has been urging students outside to help verify NASA satellite measurements and learn about clouds and climate for 13 years now. Credit: Science Directorate, NASA Langley Research Center Most scientific observations are made by the most sophisticated of instruments. We build miles-long particle accelerators to see the smallest bits of atoms. We send bus-sized satellites all

Made in NASA - JSC Advance

Last weekend my family and I ran in the Houston ½ Marathon and 5k. It was a perfect weekend for a great race and Houston has a great Expo where you can find a bunch of neat gadgets. My daughter, who loves jewelry of any kind, was fascinated by this one booth that was selling a bracelet that was suppose to help increase your balance strength and agility.I was for the most part ignoring the sales

Galaxy Cluster Has Two 'Tails' to Tell

Two spectacular tails of X-ray emission have been seen trailing behind a galaxy using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. A composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 3627 shows X-rays from Chandra in blue, optical emission in yellow and emission from hydrogen light -- known to astronomers as 'H-alpha' -- in red. The optical and H-alpha data were obtained with the Southern Astrophysical Research (

NASA Adds Extensive Data to Open Government Initiative Web Site

NASA has contributed a wide range of scientific data to the new publicly accessible Web site "Data.gov" in accordance with the administration's Open Government Directive issued in Dec. 2009.The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the federal government. Public users may search for information by topic or by accessing the

The First of Many Asteroid Finds for WISE

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid, the first of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light.The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was discovered by WISE Jan. 12. After the mission's sophisticated software picked out the moving object against a background of

2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade -- due to strong cooling of the

Rover Gives NASA an "Opportunity" to View Interior of Mars

NASA's Mars exploration rover Opportunity is allowing scientists to get a glimpse deep inside Mars. Perched on a rippled Martian plain, a dark rock not much bigger than a basketball was the target of interest for Opportunity during the past two months. Dubbed "Marquette Island," the rock is providing a better understanding of the mineral and chemical makeup of the Martian interior. "Marquette

NASA Extends the World Wide Web Out Into Space

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station received a special software upgrade this week - personal access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the ultimate wireless connection.Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro_TJ, from the space station. Previous tweets from

Eclipses in the Shade

Eclipses are everywhere in this shady scene. The picture was taken on the Indian Ocean atoll island of Ellaidhoo, Maldives, on January 15, during the longest annular solar eclipse for the next 1,000 years. Tall palm trees provided the shade. Their many crossed leaves created gaps that acted like pinhole cameras, scattering recognizable eclipse images across the white sands of a tropical

Millennium Annular Solar Eclipse

The Moon's shadow raced across planet Earth on January 15. Observers within the central shadow track were able to witness an annular solar eclipse as the Moon's apparent size was too small to completely cover the Sun. A visually dramatic ring of fire, the annular phase lasted up to 11 minutes and 8 seconds depending on location, the longest annular solar eclipse for the next 1,000 years. This

Children's Patches Tell Toy's Story

For nearly 40 years, NASA astronauts have designed mission patches to symbolize their individual space missions and flight accomplishments. Carrying on this tradition, Disney Parks and NASA launched a search for the most creative mission patch design to honor Buzz Lightyear as America's first and longest-serving space ranger. After serving 15 galactic months aboard the International Space Station

Mission to Jupiter

With its suite of science instruments, Juno will investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map Jupiter's intense magnetic field, measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observe the planet's auroras.Juno’s principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Meets Award-Winning Director James Cameron

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, right, and award-winning writer-director James Cameron, meet at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010. Cameron, who is a former member of the NASA Advisory Council, has had a life-long interest in space and science. The two talked about public outreach and education among other subjects.

Public Invited To Pick Pixels on Mars

The most powerful camera aboard a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars will soon be taking photo suggestions from the public.Since arriving at Mars in 2006, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has recorded nearly 13,000 observations of the Red Planet's terrain. Each image covers dozens of square miles and reveals details as small as a

Cassini Dark Quartet

The Cassini spacecraft gazes at several albedo features on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Left to right are four dark regions: Fensal, Aztlan, Aaru and a part of Senkyo. The bright area Quivira lies near the center of the image, separating Fensal and Aztlan. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across). North on Titan is up and rotated 24

Dust and the NGC 7771 Group

Galaxies of the NGC 7771 Group are featured in this intriguing skyscape. Some 200 million light-years distant toward the constellation Pegasus, NGC 7771 is the large, edge-on spiral near center, about 75,000 light-years across, with two smaller galaxies just below it. Large spiral NGC 7769 is seen face-on to the right. Galaxies of the NGC 7771 group are interacting, making repeated close

Lost Among Rings

Pan is nearly lost within Saturn's rings in this view that captures a small section of the rings from just above the ringplane.Pan (28 kilometers, 17 miles across) appears a small bright dot on the far side of the rings near the middle top of the image. Pan orbits in the Encke Gap of the A ring. See PIA11625 to see Pan casting a shadow on the ring around the time of Saturn's August 2009 equinox.A

The Known Universe

What would it look like to travel across the known universe? To help humanity visualize this, the American Museum of Natural History has produced a modern movie featuring many visual highlights of such a trip. The video starts in Earth's Himalayan Mountains and then dramatically zooms out, showing the Earth's satellites, the Sun, the Solar System, the extent of humanities first radio

NASA Reveals New Batch Of Space Program Artifacts

NASA is inviting eligible education institutions, museums and other organizations to examine and request space program artifacts online. The items represent significant human space flight technologies, processes and accomplishments from NASA's past and present space exploration programs. NASA partnered with the General Services Administration to provide a first-of-its-kind, Web-based,

NASA to Hold Briefing on Advanced Mission to Study Our Sun

NASA is scheduled to host a briefing at 1 p.m. EST, on Thursday, Jan. 21, to discuss the upcoming launch and science of an unprecedented mission to study the sun and its dynamic behavior. The briefing on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, mission will take place in the NASA Headquarters auditorium, located at 300 E St. S.W. in Washington and at the press site at NASA's Kennedy Space

NASA Names New Wallops Flight Facility Director

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named William Wrobel as director of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va., and director of the center's Suborbital and Special Orbital Projects Directorate. This directorate manages the agency's sounding rockets and scientific balloon programs.Wrobel, the assistant associate administrator for launch services

NASA Offers Tranquility Node Satellite Interviews from Launch Pad

Bill Dowdell, NASA Kennedy Space Center's deputy director for International Space Station and spacecraft processing, is available for satellite interviews from 6 to 9 a.m. EST on Friday, Jan. 22.Dowdell will conduct the interviews from Launch Pad 39A, just outside space shuttle Endeavour's payload bay. Tranquility, the next pressurized element bound for the station, will be placed inside

NASA Ames Plays Key Role in Proposed Space Missions

Scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., are contributing to proposed missions to probe the atmosphere and crust of Venus and return a piece of a near-Earth asteroid for analysis on Earth.Ames has a role in two of the winning proposals NASA selected as candidates for the agency's next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system. NASA will select one

Shuttle Education

In Orbiter Processing Facility-3 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, members of the STS-130 crew view a demonstration on the maintenance of space shuttle Endeavour's thermal protection system.From left are: Mission Specialist Kathryn Hire, Commander George Zamka, Mission Specialist Nicolas Patrick and Pilot Terry Virts.

Dark Sand Cascades on Mars

They might look like trees on Mars, but they're not. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost. The above image was taken in 2008 April near the North Pole of Mars. At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter

NASA’S ASTER Instrument Observes Haiti Quake Aftermath

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft captured this simulated natural color image of the Port-au-Prince, Haiti, area, Jan. 14, 2010, two days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the region and caused massive damage and loss of life. While ASTER’s 15-meter (50-foot) resolution is not sufficient to see damaged buildings,

Locating Landslide Risks in Post-Quake Haiti

Landslides are a potential threat for Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake. Mountainous areas surrounding Port-au-Prince may be subject to landslides after the quake shatters the rock substrate and exposes areas to severe erosion. The risk of further erosion and slope failure increases with the subsequent loss of vegetation combined with intense rainfall events that are typical of Haiti’s

Eclipse over the Temple of Poseidon

What's happened to the Sun? The Moon moved to partly block the Sun for a few minutes last week as a partial solar eclipse became momentarily visible across part of planet Earth. In the above single exposure image, meticulous planning enabled careful photographers to capture the partially eclipsed Sun well posed just above the ancient ruins of the Temple of Poseidon in Sounio, Greece.

Atlantis to Orbit

Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description. Pictured above, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off to visit the International Space

New Year Sungrazer

Intense and overwhelming, the direct glare of the Sun is blocked by the smooth occulting disk in this image from the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft. Taken on January 3rd, an extreme ultraviolet image of the Sun to scale, is superimposed at the center of the disk. Beyond the disk's outer boundary is a sungrazer comet, one of the brightest yet seen by SOHO. The comet was discovered (movie link)

Tethys Slips Behind Titan

Saturn's moon Tethys with its prominent Odysseus Crater silently slips behind Saturn's largest moon Titan and then emerges on the other side.Tethys is not actually enshrouded in Titan's atmosphere. Tethys (1062 kilometers, 660 miles across) is more than twice as far from Cassini than Titan (5150 kilometers, 3200 miles across) is in this sequence. Tethys is 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million

Scenes from Two Hemispheres

The stars of a summer night on the left and the winter night sky on the right are the same stars. In fact, both pictures were taken in late December and have similar fields of view. The left panel shows a scene from a beach on Bruny Island off the coast of Tasmania, Australia, while the right panel features the sky over the snowy Alborz Mountains of northern Iran. But if the sky on one side

Star Maker

Galaxies throughout the universe are ablaze with star birth. But for a nearby, small spiral galaxy, the star-making party is almost over.Astronomers were surprised to find that star-formation activities in the outer regions of NGC 2976 have been virtually asleep because they shut down millions of years ago. The celebration is confined to a few die-hard partygoers huddled in the galaxy’s inner

NASA Nominated for Excellence on Twitter

NASA's efforts on Twitter over the past year have been nominated for a "Shorty Award," which honor the best people and organizations on Twitter. These unique awards are for the Twitter community, by the Twitter community. The origins of the name "Shorty Awards" comes from the short, 140-character limit on each tweet sent using Twitter.Twitter is a social media tool that offers a new vehicle for

NASA Revises Cost and Schedule for Displaying Retired Shuttles

NASA has issued a follow-up Request for Information, or RFI, for ideas from education institutions, science museums and other appropriate organizations about the community's ability to acquire and publicly display orbiters after the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program.The original RFI in December 2008 noted that a potential shuttle recipient would have to pay an estimated $42 million for the

Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Releases Annual Report

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, a congressionally mandated group of independent experts established after the 1967 Apollo 1 fire, has released its 2009 annual report.Following the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident, Congress directed the ASAP to submit an annual report to Congress and the NASA administrator documenting the panel’s observations and recommendations. This year’s

NASA Satellite, Natural Hazard Networks Supporting Disaster Recovery

NASA's considerable Earth-observing and data analysis and distribution capabilities have been mobilized to provide information to support disaster recovery efforts in Haiti after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.NASA has tasked two of its space-based, high-resolution instruments to image areas hardest hit by the earthquake. Before-and-after scenes of Port-au-Prince, for example, will be used to

Haiti Earthquake

NASA Satellite, Natural Hazard Networks Supporting Disaster RecoveryThis map posted by the NASA Earth Observatory shows the topography and tectonic influences in the region of the earthquake.› Earth Observatory →NASA's considerable Earth-observing and data analysis and distribution capabilities have been mobilized to provide information to support disaster recovery efforts in Haiti after the

Crew Cleans Up After Spacewalk, Prepares for Soyuz Relocation, Continues Science

Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov and Maxim Suraev tagged up with specialists on the ground on Friday to discuss Thursday’s completed spacewalk. They also stowed their tools and equipment, began recharging the spacesuit batteries and reconfigured cameras.Kotov and Suraev conducted the spacewalk which lasted five hours and 44 minutes. They outfitted the Poisk Mini-Research Module to prepare its docking

Space Shuttle Mission: STS-130 Crew to Kennedy for TCDT

Workers at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A completed the loading of fuel in space shuttle Endeavour's orbital maneuvering system and auxiliary power units.Leak checks will be performed today on the ground umbilical carrier plate quick disconnect, or GUCP. The GUCP is the overboard vent to the pad and the flame stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off.During the weekend, launch pad

Cassini Potato Pair

Pandora and Prometheus, the shepherding moons of the F ring, orbit inside and outside the thin ring.The elongated, potato-like shapes of the two moons are both visible here. Pandora (81 kilometers, 50 miles across) orbits outside the F ring and, with the inner shepherd moon Prometheus, helps to keep the narrow lanes of the F ring in check. The gravity of Prometheus (86 kilometers, 53 miles across

M94: A New Perspective

Beautiful island universe M94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the hunting dogs, Canes Venatici. A popular target for astronomers, the brighter inner part of the face-on spiral galaxy is about 30,000 light-years across. Traditionally, deep images have been interpreted as showing M94's inner spiral region surrounded by a faint, broad ring of stars. But

STS-129 Crew Meets With Members of Congress

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, the STS-129 space shuttle crew and members of the Congressional Black Caucus pose for a group photo at the Capitol Building, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010, in Washington. Back row from left to right: U.S. Rep Donna Edwards (D-MD), U.S. Rep Diane Watson (D-CA), NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, astronauts Leland Melvin, Mike Forman, Robert Satcher, Barry Wilmore,

Infrared Hunt Begins: WISE Starts All-Sky Survey

NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) began its survey of the infrared sky today. The mission will spend nine months scanning the sky one-and-a-half times in infrared light, revealing all sorts of cosmic characters -- everything from near-Earth asteroids to young galaxies more than ten billion light-years away. WISE, which launched Dec. 14, 2009, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in

Resumed Mars Orbiter Observations Yield Stunning Views

Dunes of sand-sized materials have been trapped on the floors of many Martian craters. This view shows dunes inside a crater in Noachis Terra, west of the giant Hellas impact basin in Mars' southern hemisphere. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this view on Dec. 28, 2009. The orbiter resumed making observations in

Land Ho! Huygens Plunged to Titan Surface 5 Years Ago

The Huygens probe parachuted down to the surface of Saturn's haze-shrouded moon Titan exactly five years ago on Jan. 14, 2005, providing data that scientists on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn are still building upon today."Huygens has gathered critical on-the-scene data on the atmosphere and surface of Titan, providing valuable groundtruth to Cassini's ongoing investigations," said Bob

The Spider and The Fly

Bright clusters and nebulae abound in the ancient northern constellation of Auriga. The region includes the open star cluster M38, emission nebula IC 410 with Tadpoles, Auriga's own Flaming Star Nebula IC 405, and this interesting pair IC 417 (lower left) and NGC 1931. An imaginative eye toward the expansive IC 417 and diminutive NGC 1931 suggests a cosmic spider and fly. About 10,000

Bright Layered Deposits

Martian landforms have been shaped by winds, water, lava flow, seasonal icing and other forces over millennia. This view shows color variations in bright layered deposits on a plateau near Juventae Chasma in the Valles Marineris region of Mars. A brown mantle covers portions of the bright deposits. Researchers have found that these bright layered deposits contain opaline silica and iron sulfates.

President Honors Outstanding Early-Career Scientists

Today at the White House, President Obama will honor more than 100 outstanding early career scientists–the latest winners of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, including NASA scientists Benjamin Smith and Joshua K. Willis. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent

This Month in Exploration - January

Visit "This Month in Exploration" every month to find out how aviation and space exploration have changed throughout the years, improving life for humans on Earth and in space. While reflecting on the events that led to NASA's formation and its rich history of accomplishments, "This Month in Exploration" will reveal where the agency is leading us -- to the moon, Mars and beyond.225 Years

The Flame Nebula in Infrared

What lights up the Flame Nebula? Fifteen hundred light years away towards the constellation of Orion lies a nebula which, from its glow and dark dust lanes, appears, on the left, like a billowing fire. But fire, the rapid acquisition of oxygen, is not what makes this Flame glow. Rather the bright star Alnitak, the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion visible just above the nebula, shines

Crystalline

Looking for all the world like a snowflake, this is actually a close up view of sodium chloride crystals. The crystals are in a water bubble within a 50-millimeter metal loop that was part of an experiment in the Destiny laboratory aboard the International Space Station and was photographed by the Expedition 6 crew.

NASA's New Museum Grant Allies Will Make the Universe Accessible to Families From Alaska to Florida

Interactive museum exhibits about climate change, Earth science, and missions beyond Earth are among the projects NASA has selected to receive agency funding. Nine informal education providers from Alaska to New York will share $6.2 million in grants through NASA's Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums.Participating organizations include museums, science centers, Challenger

Asteroid To Fly By Earth Wednesday Is a Natural

Asteroid 2010 AL30, discovered by the LINEAR survey of MIT's Lincoln Laboratories on Jan. 10, will make a close approach to the Earth's surface to within 76,000 miles on Jan. 13 at 12:46 pm Greenwich time (7:46 am EST, 4:46 am PST). Because its orbital period is nearly identical to the Earth's one year period, some have suggested it may be a manmade rocket stage in orbit about the sun. However,

The Astronaut Who Captured a Satellite

In 1984, high above the Earth's surface, an astronaut captured a satellite. It was the second satellite captured that mission. Pictured above, astronaut Dale A. Gardner flies free using the Manned Maneuvering Unit and begins to attach a control device dubbed the Stinger to the rotating Westar 6 satellite. Communications satellite Westar 6 had suffered a rocket malfunction that left it

Jupiter's Moons

On Jan. 7, 1610, Galileo Galilei's improvements to the telescope enabled humanity to see Jupiter's four largest moons for the first time. Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto--the so-called Galilean satellites--were seen by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter in late February 2007. The images have been scaled to represent the true relative

Martian Landform Observations Fill Special Journal Issue

Martian landforms shaped by winds, water, lava flow, seasonal icing and other forces are analyzed in 21 journal reports based on data from a camera orbiting Mars. The research in a January special issue of Icarus testifies to the diversity of the planet being examined by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Examples of the findings

Cassini Returns to Southern Hemisphere of Titan

NASA'S Cassini spacecraft will return to Titan's southern hemisphere on a flyby tomorrow, Jan. 12, plunging to within about 1,050 kilometers (about 670 miles) of the hazy moon's surface. During this pass, the onboard radar instrument will scan Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere, in a quest to learn more about the liquid methane and ethane in the lake and obtain more

A Spherule from the Earth's Moon

How did this spherule come to be on the Moon? When a meteorite strikes the Moon, the energy of the impact melts some of the splattering rock, a fraction of which might cool into tiny glass beads. Many of these glass beads were present in lunar soil samples returned to Earth by the Apollo missions. Pictured above is one such glass spherule that measures only a quarter of a millimeter across.

Andromeda Island Universe

The most distant object easily visible to the eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy - spanning over 200,000 light years - appears as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, details of a bright yellow nucleus and dark winding dust lanes, are revealed in this

The Mystery of the Fading Star

Every 27 years Epsilon Aurigae fades, remaining dim for roughly two years before growing bright again. Since the 19th century, astronomers have studied the mystery star, eventually arguing that Epsilon Aur, centered in this telescopic skyview, was actually undergoing a long eclipse by a dark companion object. But the nature of the companion and even the state of bright star itself could not be

The Tail of the Small Magellanic Cloud

A satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud is wonder of the southern sky, named for 16th century Portuguese circumnavigator Ferdinand Magellan. Some 200,000 light-years distant in the constellation Tucana, the small irregular galaxy's stars, gas, and dust that lie along a bar and extended "wing", are familiar in images from optical telescopes. But the galaxy also has a tail

NASA's WISE Eye Spies First Glimpse of the Starry Sky

Infrared all-sky surveying telescope sends back first images from space.NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has captured its first look at the starry sky that it will soon begin surveying in infrared light. Launched on Dec. 14, WISE will scan the entire sky for millions of hidden objects, including asteroids, "failed" stars and powerful galaxies. WISE data will serve as

NASA Supports the President's Educate To Innovate Campaign With Summer Of Innovation To Bring Students The Universe

NASA has launched an initiative to use its out-of-this-world missions and technology programs to boost summer learning, particularly for underrepresented students across the nation. NASA's Summer of Innovation supports President Obama's Educate to Innovate campaign for excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education.› Transcript: President Obama's Remarks→The

The Spotty Surface of Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse really is a big star. If placed at the center of our Solar System it would extend to the orbit of Jupiter. But like all stars except the Sun, Betelgeuse is so distant it usually appears as a single point of light, even in large telescopes. Still, astronomers using interferometry at infrared wavelengths can resolve the surface of Betelgeuse and reconstructed this image of the red

Nature's Most Precise Clocks May Make "Galactic GPS" Possible

Radio astronomers have uncovered 17 millisecond pulsars in our galaxy by studying unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The astronomers made the discovery in less than three months. Such a jump in the pace of locating these hard-to-find objects holds the promise of using them as a kind of "galactic GPS" to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth.A

Sun Glints Seen from Space Signal Oceans and Lakes

In two new videos from NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft, bright flashes of light known as sun glints act as beacons signaling large bodies of water on Earth. These observations give scientists a way to pick out planets beyond our solar system (extrasolar planets) that are likely to have expanses of liquid, and so stand a better chance of having life.These sun glints are like sunshine glancing off

Station Crew Busy with Spacewalk Preps

The Expedition 22 crew members aboard the International Space Station were busy Thursday with preparations for an upcoming spacewalk. They also continued their regular science, maintenance and exercise activities.Flight Engineers Maxim Suraev and Oleg Kotov installed replaceable environmental and power components in their Russian Orlan spacesuits to prepare them for the six-hour spacewalk

A Roll Cloud Over Uruguay

What kind of cloud is this? A roll cloud. These rare long clouds may form near advancing cold fronts. In particular, a downdraft from an advancing storm front can cause moist warm air to rise, cool below its dew point, and so form a cloud. When this happens uniformly along an extended front, a roll cloud may form. Roll clouds may actually have air circulating along the long

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope Discovers its First Five Exoplanets

NASA's Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.Kepler's high sensitivity to both small and large planets enabled the discovery of the exoplanets, named Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b. The discoveries were announced Monday, Jan. 4, by the members of the Kepler

Massive Black Hole Implicated in Stellar Destruction

New results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Magellan telescopes suggest that a dense stellar remnant has been ripped apart by a black hole a thousand times as massive as the Sun. If confirmed, this discovery would be a cosmic double play: it would be strong evidence for an intermediate mass black hole, which has been a hotly debated topic, and would mark the first time such a black

Comet Halley's Nucleus: An Orbiting Iceberg

What does a comet nucleus look like? Formed from the primordial stuff of the Solar System, comet nuclei were thought to resemble very dirty icebergs. But ground-based telescopes revealed only the surrounding cloud of gas and dust of active comets nearing the Sun, clearly resolving only the comet's coma, and the characteristic cometary tails. In 1986, however, the European spacecraft Giotto

A Force from Empty Space: The Casimir Effect

This tiny ball provides evidence that the universe will expand forever. Measuring slightly over one tenth of a millimeter, the ball moves toward a smooth plate in response to energy fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space. The attraction is known as the Casimir Effect, named for its discoverer, who, 50 years ago, was trying to understand why fluids like mayonnaise move so slowly. Today

Blue Moon Eclipse

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 ended with a Blue Moon and a partial lunar eclipse, as the second Full Moon of December grazed the Earth's shadow on December 31st. The New Year's Eve Blue Moon eclipse was visible throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and parts of Alaska, captured in this two exposure composite in cloudy skies over Saint Bonnet de Mure, France. Playing across the Moon's

Not a Blue Moon

This bright Full Moon was captured on December 2nd, shining above a church overlooking the River Po, in Turin, Italy. It was the first Full Moon in December. Shining on celebrations of New Year's Eve, last night's Full Moon was the second Full Moon of December and so fits the modern definition of a Blue Moon - the second Full Moon in a month. Because the lunar cycle, Full Moon to Full Moon,

Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive

Astronomy Picture of the Day ArchivesAstronomy Picture of the Day Archive 2009Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive 2010

Astronomy Picture of the Day 2009 Archive

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Astronomy Picture of the Day 2009 Archives


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2009 December 31: Dust and the Helix Nebula
2009 December 30: Spitzer's M101
2009 December 29: Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula
2009 December 28: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217
2009

Astronomy Picture Of The Day 2010 Archive

Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive
Astronomy Picture of the Day 2010 Archives


Click Here for Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive 2009
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2010 December 31: Analemma 2010
2010 December 30: Still Life with NGC 2170
2010 December 29: Eclipse at Moonset
2010 December 28: Skylights Over Libya
2010 December 27: One Million