The Herschel Space Observatory has discovered a giant, galaxy-packed filament ablaze with billions of new stars. The filament connects two clusters of galaxies that, along with a third cluster, will smash together in several billion years and give rise to one ... More »
New results from NASA’s NEOWISE survey find that more potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs, are closely aligned with the plane of our solar system than previous models suggested. PHAs are the subset of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) with the closest orbits to... More »
This ultraviolet image of the Andromeda Galaxy (left), taken by GALEX, shows ring-like structures that harbor hot, young, massive stars. Dark blue-grey lanes of cooler dust show up starkly against these bright rings, tracing the regions where star formation is... More »
The Galaxy Next Door At approximately 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy is our Milky Way’s largest galactic neighbor. The entire galaxy spans 260,000 light-years across — a distance so large, it took 11 different Galaxy Evolution Explorer imag... More »
The teams that took the field at the Rose Bowl last Friday afternoon were composed of none other than Caltech’s own Fleming House denizens, past and present. Continuing a tradition started in 2001, the students took the afternoon off to socialize with their fe... More »
Mars Science Laboratory mission team members ran mobility tests on California sand dunes in early May 2012 in preparation for operating the Curiosity rover, currently en route to Mars, after its landing in Mars’ Gale Crater. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Team... More »
This artistically modified image of the local galaxy Arp 220, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, helps illustrate the Herschel results. The bright core of the galaxy, paired with an overlaid artist’s impression of emanating jets, indicate that the central... More »
Technicians prep the OCO-2 instrument for shipping at JPL. The instrument consists of three parallel, high-resolution spectrometers, integrated into a common structure and fed by a common telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Its construction now complete,... More »
NASA’s Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft tested its JunoCam instrument on one of the icons of the night sky – the Big Dipper. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS In England it is known as the “Plough,” in Germany the “Great Cart,” and in Malaysia the “Seven P... More »
Mineral Diversity at Vesta’s South Pole This image, made from data obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, shows the mineral distribution in the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/INAF/MPS/DLR/IDA PASADENA, Calif. ... More »
This image shows an array of geodetic instruments at the surface of Earth and activity that was modeled on the fault below. The yellow colors indicate the highest speeds of slippage between plates along the San Andreas Fault. The reddish colors represent slowe... More »
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove about 12 feet (3.67 meters) on May 8, 2012, after spending 19 weeks working in one place while solar power was too low for driving during the Martian winter. The winter worksite was on the north slope of an outcr... More »
