Spirit Beholds Bumpy Boulder

As the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit began collecting images for a 360-degree panorama of new terrain, the rover captured this view of a dark boulder with an interesting surface texture. The boulder is about 40 centimeters (16 inches) tall on Martian sand about 5 meters (16 feet) away from Spirit. It is one of many dark, volcanic rock fragments -- many pocked with rounded holes called vesicles -- littering the slope of "Low Ridge." The rock surface facing the rover is similar in appearance to the surface texture on the outside of lava flows on Earth.

Spirit took this false-color image with the panoramic camera on its 810th sol, or Martian day, of exploring Mars (April 13, 2006).

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Stellar Nursery

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured a glowing stellar nursery within a dark globule that reveals the birth of new protostars, or embryonic stars, and young stars never before seen.

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is an elongated dark globule within the emission nebula IC 1396 in the constellation of Cepheus. Within the globule, a half dozen newly discovered protostars are easily discernible as the bright red-tinted objects, mostly along the southern rim of the globule. These were previously undetected at visible wavelengths due to obscuration by the thick cloud ('globule body') and by dust surrounding the newly forming stars. The newborn stars form in the dense gas because of compression by the wind and radiation from a nearby massive star (located outside the field of view to the left). The winds from this unseen star are also responsible for producing the spectacular filamentary appearance of the globule itself, which resembles that of a flying dragon.

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Storm Clouds Brewing

This mass of storm clouds was observed by Expedition 1 from the International Space Station. The picture was the first Earth observation still image downlinked by the three-man crew, which consisted of flight engineer Sergei Krikalev, Soyuz commander Yuri Gidzenko and mission commander William Shepherd.

Currently, additional imagery taken by Expedition 13 crew members Jeffrey Williams, Pavel Vinogradov and Thomas Reiter has brought the total number of images of Earth taken from station to more than 248,000.

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The Face of Phoebe

Phoebe's true nature is revealed in startling clarity in this mosaic of two images taken during Cassini's flyby on June 11, 2004. This image of Saturn’s moon shows evidence for the emerging view that Phoebe may be an ice-rich body coated with a thin layer of dark material. Small bright craters in the image are probably fairly young features. This phenomenon has been observed on other icy satellites, such as Jupiter’s Ganymede.

When impactors slammed into the surface of Phoebe, the collisions excavated fresh, bright material -- probably ice -- underlying the surface layer. Further evidence for this can be seen on some crater walls where the darker material appears to have slid downwards, exposing more light-colored material. Some areas of the image that are particularly bright -- especially near lower right -- are over-exposed.

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Moon Framed

Earth and its Moon are nicely framed in this image taken from the aft windows of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. Discovery - on mission STS-95 - was flying over the Atlantic Ocean at the time this image was taken. The STS-95 mission also marked the return of pioneering Mercury astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn to space.

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Missing Gas Found in Milky Way

The true abundance in the Milky Way of a heavy, primordial form of hydrogen has eluded scientists for decades, but it turns out that huge quantities of it have been hidden in the dust that is scattered between stars.

The new finding relied on satellite measurements of a type of hydrogen called deuterium and found that its distribution in our galaxy is patchy rather than uniform. It will force big changes in theories about star and galaxy formation, astronomers say.

"Since the 1970s we have been unable to explain why deuterium levels vary all over the place," said Jeffrey Linsky, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "The answer we found is as unsettling as it is exciting."

For More Info: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060821_mystery_monday.html

The Plane of the Ecliptic

The Plane of the Ecliptic is illustrated in this Clementine star tracker camera image which reveals (from right to left) the Moon lit by Earthshine, the sun's corona rising over the Moon's dark limb and the planets Saturn, Mars and Mercury.

The ecliptic plane is defined as the imaginary plane containing the Earth's orbit around the sun. In the course of a year, the sun's apparent path through the sky lies in this plane. The planetary bodies of our solar system all tend to lie near this plane, since they were formed from the sun's spinning, flattened, proto-planetary disk.

This image captures a momentary line-up looking out along this fundamental plane of our solar system.

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Flaming Star

This is a false-color image of the star AE Aurigae (bright source of light near the center of image) embedded in a region of space containing smoke-like filaments of carbon-rich dust grains. Such dust might be hiding deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, and stymieing astronomers' efforts to study star and galaxy formation. NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite has surveyed the local deuterium concentration in the galaxy and found far more than expected. Because deuterium is a tracer of star and galaxy evolution, this discovery has the potential to radically alter theories about how stars and galaxies form.

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Nukuoro Atoll

Located just north of the equator (3.85° North, 154.9° East), this classically shaped atoll is part of the Caroline Islands, which stretch northeast of Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific. (The islands are roughly north of Guadalcanal, and southeast of the Guam and Truk Islands.) Nukuoro Atoll is one of 607 islands that make up the Federated States of Micronesia, a United Nations Trust Territory under U.S. administration.

An atoll is a type of low, coral island found in tropical oceans and consisting of a coral-algal reef surrounding a central depression. The depression may be part of the emergent island, but more typically is a part of the sea (that is, a lagoon).

About 900 people live on Nukuoro, whose lagoon is 6 kilometers (about 3.7 miles) in diameter. Fishing, animal husbandry and agriculture (taro and copra) are the main occupations. Nukuoro is remote and has no airstrip; a passenger boat calls irregularly only once a month. The tiny population speaks its own unique language.

This image was taken by the Expedition 13 crew aboard the International Space Station on May 31, 2006.

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Interstellar Envelope

This gold aluminum cover was designed to protect the Voyager 1 and 2 "Sounds of Earth" gold-plated records from micrometeorite bombardment, but also serves a double purpose in providing the finder a key to playing the record. The explanatory diagram appears on both the inner and outer surfaces of the cover, as the outer diagram will be eroded in time.

Flying aboard Voyagers 1 and 2 are identical records, carrying the story of Earth far into deep space. The 12-inch gold-plated copper discs contain greetings in 60 languages, samples of music from different cultures and eras and natural and man-made sounds from Earth. They also contain electronic information that an advanced technological civilization could convert into diagrams and images.

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Death Valley National Park

At 86 meters (282 feet) below sea level, Death Valley, California, is one of the hottest, driest places on the planet. On average, the area sees only about 5 centimeters (1.96 inches) of rain a year, and summer temperatures routinely soar above 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit). At night, temperatures drop considerably, and many animals in Death Valley are nocturnal as a result. Plants and animals living in this punishing environment have had to adapt to extremes of temperature and aridity.

This image is compiled from observations by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus sensor on the Landsat 7 satellite on June 11 and July 20, 2000. In this image, green indicates vegetation, which increases with altitude. The peaks of Death Valley National Park sport forests of juniper and pine. The dots of brilliant green near the right edge of the image fall outside park boundaries, and probably result from irrigation. On the floor of the valley, vegetation is sparse, yet more than 1,000 different species eke out an existence in the park, some of them sending roots many feet below ground. The varying shades of brown, beige and rust indicate bare ground; the different colors result from varying mineral compositions in the rocks and dirt. Although they appear to be pools of water, the bright blue-green patches in the scene are actually salt pans that hold only a little moisture.

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Stellar Quakes

In December 2004, a neutron star flared up so brightly, it temporarily blinded all the x-ray satellites in space, and lit up the Earth's upper atmosphere. This tremendous blast of energy was from a giant flare created by the neutron star's twisting magnetic field. Objects like this are called magnetars, and they produce magnetic fields trillions of time more powerful than those here on Earth. These fields are so strong they can actually buckle the surface of the neutron star causing these powerful star quakes.

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