Astronomers estimate that six percent of red dwarfs have a temperate Earth-size planet, as close as 13 light-years away. Image credit: D. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Using publicly available data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, as... More »
This is the orbital trajectory of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). The comet is currently located just inside the orbit of Jupiter. In November 2013, ISON will pass less than 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from the sun’s surface. The fierce heating it exper... More »
The Orion nebula is featured in this sweeping image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The nebula (also catal... More »
Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA will hold a media teleconference at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST), on Thursday, Feb. 7, to discuss an asteroid, 150 feet (45 me... More »
The bit in the rotary-percussion drill of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity left its mark in a target patch of rock called “John Klein” during a test on the rover’s 176th Martian day, or sol (Feb. 2, 2013), in preparation for the first drilling of a rock by the rove... More »
University High School of Irvine, Calif., won the 2013 Los Angeles Regional Science Bowl held at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, on Feb. 2, 2013. University’s team members are: Kevin Lee, Jiho Park, Justin Wang, Carl Lundstedt and Kevin Chen (alter... More »
This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn’s moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA’s Ca... More »
Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass very close to Earth on February 15, so close that it will pass inside the ring ... More »
Frances Arnold, a Caltech bio-engineer, will receive a National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama during an awards ceremony Friday morning in Washington D.C. Arnold will be getting the award for her achievements in synthetic biolog... More »
Storm Head, Meet Tail This set of images from NASA’s Cassini mission shows the evolution of a massive thunder-and-lightning storm that circled all the way around Saturn and fizzled when it ran into its own tail. The storm was first detected on Dec. 5, 2010. Th... More »
This artist’s illustration shows a planetary disk (left) that weighs the equivalent of 50 Jupiter-mass planets. It demonstrates a first-of-its-kind feat from astronomers using the Herschel space observatory. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech A star thought to h... More »
Artist’s rendering of NASA’s ISS-RapidScat instrument (inset), which will launch to the International Space Station in 2014 to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction and help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring. It will be install... More »
