In this artist’s impression, a disk of dusty material leftover from star formation girds two young stars like a hula hoop. As the two stars whirl around each other, they periodically peek out from the disk, making the system appear to “blink” every 93 days. Im... More »
This image from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean shows a collection of limestone towers known as the “Lost City.” Alkaline hydrothermal vents of this type are suggested to be the birthplace of the first living organisms on the ancient Earth. Scientists are inte... More »
A former Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist who spent nine years in Pasadena has been named NASA Chief Scientist effective Aug. 25. Planetary geologist Ellen Stofan, who held a number of senior scientist positions in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasade... More »
Scientific authorities on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project announced on Friday that they have now signed a master agreement formalizing project goals and providing a governing framework for the international collaboration. TMT is a partnership among Ca... More »
Engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have devised a method to convert a relatively inexpensive conventional microscope into a billion-pixel imaging system that significantly outperforms the best available standard microscope. Such a sy... More »
New observations from NASA’s NEOWISE project reveal the hidden nature of centaurs, objects in our solar system that have confounded astronomers for resembling both asteroids and comets. The centaurs, which orbit between Jupiter and Neptune, were named after th... More »
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this enhanced-color view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The rover’s tracks are vis... More »
The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover is carried at an angle when the rover’s arm is stowed for driving. Still, the camera is able to record views of the terrain Curiosity is crossing in Gale Crater, and rotating the image 150 degr... More »
The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, located in the Mojave Desert in California, is one of three complexes which comprise NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN provides radio communications for all of NASA’s interplanetary spacecraft and is also... More »
The Day the Earth Smiled: Sneak Preview In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn’s rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science ... More »
As NASA’s Cassini spacecraft turned its imaging cameras to Earth, scientists, engineers and visitors at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., gathered to wave at our robotic photographer in the Saturn system on July 19, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Cal... More »
This picture shows a lab demonstration of the measurement chamber inside the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, an instrument that is part of the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation on NASA’s Curiosity rover. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech A pair of new papers re... More »
