US News Earthquakes Might Be Feeding Alien Life on Europa

This illustration shows the tidal disruption event named ASASSN-14li, where a star wandering too close to a 3-million-solar-mass black hole was torn apart. The debris gathered into an accretion disk around the black hole.

Scientists Program Life With New DNA Alphabet

Scientists found a way to add to DNA’s language, and could one-day program life by manipulating genetic code.A team reported in the journal Nature that it gave two new base elements of genetic code to a group of microorganisms and got the creatures to use them. The researchers call it an “expanded genetic alphabet.

Alien life may get energy to survive from galactic cosmic rays that penetrate deep below the planets' surface, much like extreme microbes living in hostile locations on Earth. "When you have radiation penetrating deep below the surface, where there might be water on Mars or [Jupiter's moon] Europa

'There may be ALIENS on Europa ' Scientists say Jupiter's moon has key ingredients for LIFE . Europa COULD support ALIEN life -forms, study finds ahead of NASA an San Andreas fault: Earthquake swarm PANICS experts who warn ‘more tremors imminent'. Check us on Google+. Subscribe to our rss feed .

Data from NASA's Swift satellite show that the initial formation of the disk was shaped by interactions among incoming and outgoing streams of tidal debris.

A dark cloud when observed with optical telescopes, the Chamaeleon I region reveals itself as an active hub of star formation in this far-infrared image from ESA’s Herschel space observatory. Only around 550 light-years away in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon, it is one of the closest areas where stars are bursting into life.

A developing filament near the edge of the sun churned and twisted as the rotating sun brought it into clearer view over a day on Nov. 16.

Filaments are cooler and often unstable clouds of particles floating above the sun's surface, which are tethered by magnetic forces. In extreme ultraviolet light, they appear darker than the sun's surface.

US lawmaker: likelihood of 'preemptive war' with North Korea grows

A top Republican lawmaker warned Sunday that the United States moves closer to preemptive war with North Korea every time Pyongyang carries out a missile or nuclear test. North Korea's test launch this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile has sent tensions soaring once again on the Korean peninsula, after a two month lull."If there's an underground nuclear test, then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Senator Lindsey Graham said on CBS' "Face the Nation.

All the conditions for life may be met, somewhere in those dark waters. Europa has held out the promise of alien life since 1979, when Nasa's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past it. Voyager revealed that Europa 's surface is a thick layer of ice.

send two probes to Jupiter's moon Europa in what may be 'our best chance to find alien life ' Europa has the prime conditions for hosting alien life in its large ocean Nasa will send a flyby probe to Europa by 2022 and a lander probe soon after

The bright area to the right of the filament is an active region. The loop that appears behind the filament in the middle of the clip is made of charged particles tracing magnetic field lines.

This computer simulation shows the collision of two black holes, which produces gravitational waves.

WASP-18b is an exoplanet located 325 light-years from Earth. The planet's mass is 10 times that of Jupiter, and it orbits its star once every 23 hours.

A 2017 study found that this planet has a stratosphere that's loaded with carbon dioxide, but has no signs of water.

As the International Space Station circles Earth at an altitude of only 400 km, basic radio technology can be used to communicate with it – as long as it flies within sight of the receiver on the ground.

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli was talking to a school in Villasanta, Italy. Each overhead path allows enough time to answer around 18 questions from schoolchildren. Paolo is on his third mission in space, called Vita.

Earthquake hits Uttarakhand, epicentre Rudraprayag, tremors felt in Delhi-NCR too

Earthquake hits Uttarakhand, epicentre Rudraprayag, tremors felt in Delhi-NCR tooA moderate intensity earthquake jolted Uttarakhand on Wednesday night with tremors being felt as far away as Delhi. The epicentre of the magnitude 5.5 earthquake was Rudraprayag district, while its effects were also felt in adjoining districts such as US Nagar.

Alien Life May Be "Weirder" Than Scientists Think, Report Says. "I'd be shocked if no life existed on Europa ," said Shank, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was not involved in the new study. • Download as Wallpaper. NEWS FEEDS .

Jupiter's moon Europa has all the ingredients thought necessary for life . The icy body may get a visitor from Earth in the near future. This ocean is shielded from harmful radiation, making Europa one of the solar system's best bets to host alien life .

These two images illustrate just how far Cassini traveled to get to Saturn.

On the left is one of the earliest images Cassini took of the ringed planet, captured during the long voyage from the inner solar system.

On the right is one of Cassini's final images of Saturn, showing the site where the spacecraft would enter the atmosphere on the following day.

Dellingr, a shoebox-sized spacecraft built to show that CubeSat platforms could be cost-effective, reliable and capable of gathering highly robust science, was released from the International Space Station on Nov. 20.

This image shows the release of Dellingr, which NASA specifically developed to provide high-quality science data on a small platform.

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission gives us ‘radar vision’ over part of Antarctica’s third-largest island, Thurston Island. The satellite’s radar can ‘see’ through clouds and in the dark, making it a valuable tool for monitoring polar regions which are prone to bad weather and long periods of darkness – such as Antarctica.

The ice-covered island appears grey, showing no change over the three-month period. But changes in sea ice in the upper part of the image appear as speckles of green, red and blue. In the lower part of the image we can see part of the Abbot Ice Shelf appearing in light blue.

Hyderabad man studying in Chicago shot at by assailants, battling for life

Hyderabad man studying in Chicago shot at by assailants, battling for lifeThe victim has been identified as 35-year-old Mohammad Akbar, who is pursuing higher studies in Chicago in Ilinois state of the United States.

First Posted: May 21, 2016 04:47 AM EDT. In recent study, the Jupiter's fourth largest moon " Europa " has vast oceans and warmer weather just like the planet Earth. This indicates that there might be chances of alien life on the said planet.

Missions to look for life on Jupiter's moon Europa may be early casualties as Congress and the White House battle over NASA funding. Here's why. Scientists are eager to learn if Europa 's huge subsurface ocean harbors alien life .

Provided by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A broad hole in the corona was the Sun's dominant feature as shown in this image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The hole is easily recognizable as the dark expanse across the top of the Sun and extending down in each side. Coronal holes are magnetically open areas on the Sun that allow high-speed solar wind to gush out into space. They always appear darker in extreme ultraviolet. This one was likely the source of bright aurora that shimmered for numerous observers, with some reaching down even to Nebraska.

This new picture shows the dwarf galaxy NGC 4625, located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). The image reveals the single major spiral arm of the galaxy, which gives it an asymmetric appearance.

Orbital ATK's Cygnus resupply ship with its cymbal-ike UltraFlex solar arrays approaches the International Space Station's robotic arm Canadarm2 as both spacecraft fly into an orbital sunrise on Nov. 14, 2017. The cargo craft carried almost 7,400 pounds of crew supplies, science experiments, spacewalk gear, station hardware and computer parts. New research will explore the effectiveness of antibiotics on astronauts and observe how plants absorb nutrients in microgravity. Other experiments will deploy CubeSats to explore laser communications and hybrid solar panels.

A rover crawls over rocky terrain on Spain’s Canary Island of Lanzarote, also known as the island of a thousand volcanoes. A drone follows it closely from the sky as the Sun sets. This crawler–flyer combination was part of a test campaign that brought together geology, high-tech survey equipment and space exploration.

US-based climate scientists to take research to France

PARIS — It is a dream come true for U.S.-based climate scientists — the offer of all-expenses-paid life in France to advance their research in Europe instead of in the United States under climate skeptic President Donald Trump, two of the winners say.I have a message for you guys. #ScienceMarch pic.twitter.com/ZnkFIIksdx— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 10, 2017American scientist Camille Parmesan and British scientist Benjamin Sanderson are among the 18 initial winners, including 13 based in the U.S., of French President Emmanuel Macron's "Make Our Planet Great Again" climate grants.

Subscribe to our rss feed . GETTY. Alien life may exist in the Solar System. With NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, boffins are also hoping to study Europa in the hope of finding life . The Big One coming: Huge earthquake recorded on Mid-Atlantic Ridge - fears of aftershocks.

3. Clipper’s primary goal is to find out whether Europa supports life . Artist's rendition of water vapor plumes on Europa . (Scientists have posited that warm water “plumes” might erupt from Europa ’s surface.) This will all help NASA gain a better understanding of Europa .

For five days in November 2017, Pangaea-X mobilised 50 people, four space agencies and 18 organisations in five different locations. The Asguard rover simulated a lunar spacewalk over rough surfaces, navigating by continuously building a 3D model of the environment.

Humans can drive it manually but this robotic explorer will runs mostly in auto mode. The drone hovered gathering high-resolution images and creating 3D models of the terrain.

1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), the interstellar asteroid, is the tiny dot at the centre, above the brighter star. Though actually faint, in this image the asteroid appears bright.

On November 14, 1971, Mariner 9, the first spacecraft to orbit the Red Planet, took this and other images of a Martian shield volcano, approximately 25 miles across at the crater. The images were photographed consecutively with the craft's wide-angle and telephoto lenses. The summit crater and grooves down the flank probably were produced by subsidence flowing subsurface movement of magma. Mariner 9 was also the first spacecraft to orbit another planet and was designed to continue the atmospheric studies begun by Mariners 6 and 7, and mapped more than 70% of the Martian surface.

This artist’s impression shows the temperate planet Ross 128 b, with its red dwarf parent star in the background. This planet, which lies only 11 light-years from Earth, was found by a team using ESO’s unique planet-hunting HARPS instrument. The new world is now the second-closest temperate planet to be detected after Proxima b. It is also the closest planet to be discovered orbiting an inactive red dwarf star, which may increase the likelihood that this planet could potentially sustain life. Ross 128 b will be a prime target for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able to search for biomarkers in the planet's atmosphere.

Port Authority bomber mocked Trump hours before attack

“Trump you failed to protect your nation,” Akayed Ullah, 27, wrote on Facebook early Monday, according to the federal complaint. Investigators scouring Ullah’s Brooklyn home turned up a passport in his name with multiple handwritten notes, including “O AMERICA, DIE IN YOUR RAGE,” the complaint says.The investigators also found metal pipes, Christmas light fragments and screws that matched the items used in the crudely-constructed bomb found at the scene, the complaint says. © Andres Kudacki/AP The pipe bomb failed to detonate fully and Ullah was the only person seriously wounded by the blast.

Check us on Google+. Subscribe to our rss feed . Scientists believe that there may be life on Europa . Alien life in the universe is COMMON but doesn’t last long. ALIEN meteorite ‘unlike anything discovered before’ found on Earth. San Andreas fault: Earthquake swarm PANICS experts who warn ‘more tremors imminent'.

ESO/M. Kornmesser

M-Argo is designed as ESA’s first CubeSat to enter interplanetary space. Studied in the Concurrent Design Facility, ESA’s highly networked facility for designing novel missions, the ‘Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer’, or M-Argo, is a nanospacecraft based on the CubeSat design employing standardised 10 cm cubic units within which electronic boards can be stacked and subsystems attached. M-Argo would be a 12-unit CubeSat – with a 22 x 22 x 34 cm body – that would hitch a ride on the launch of a larger space mission whose trajectory takes it beyond Earth orbit, such as astronomy missions to a Sun–Earth Lagrange point. The CubeSat would then use its own electric thruster to take it into deep space and rendezvous with an asteroid, which it would survey using a multispectral camera and a laser altimeter. Other miniaturised payloads are also being considered.

ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team has identified a total of 83 near-Earth asteroids suitable for a CubeSat rendezvous. The study prioritised spinning bodies of around 50 m diameter as a never-before explored class of asteroid, although the target list also includes larger bodies of up to 300 m. “For now, M-Argo is just a concept, but provides us very valuable information about technology developments that we need to put in place for a flight demonstration in the near future,” comments Roger Walker, overseeing ESA’s Technology CubeSats. “It would cost around a tenth of the smallest deep-space mission to date, democratising space exploration beyond Earth, bringing it into the reach of new actors, in the same way low-Earth orbit has already been opened up by CubeSats.

“Each time we survey a new asteroid, our understanding of these small bodies has been transformed. With such a cost reduction, we could send 10 to 20 CubeSats to scout different asteroids and build up a wide survey of the near-Earth population, getting to know the neighbours better for the purposes of science and identifying potential in-situ resources for future exploitation.”

On Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck along the Iran-Iraq border near Halabjah, Iraq. The earthquake was felt as far away as Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel. Extensive damage and numerous casualties were reported in the area near the epicenter (yellow star on image). The earthquake occurred along the boundary between the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates. This is an earthquake-prone area, and has experienced many deadly earthquakes in the past. In this perspective-view image, bright red areas are crops in fields, pale red on mountain ridges are shrubs and trees, dark gray areas are traces of earlier brush fires, and gray and tan colors are different rock types.

This image shows the sky around the red dwarf star Ross 128 in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin). It was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. Ross 128 appears at the centre of the picture. Close inspection reveals that Ross 128 has a strange multiple appearance as this image was created from photographs taken over a more than forty year period, and the star, which is only 11 light-years from Earth, moved across the sky significantly during this time. Ross 128 is a “quiet” red dwarf star and is orbited by Ross 128 b, an exoplanet with a similar mass and temperature to the Earth.

Davide De Martin/Digitized Sky Survey 2/ESO

In this photo from NASA TV, a new type of U.S. weather satellite, Joint Polar Satellite System 1, intended to improve the accuracy of extended forecasts, sits on a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Nov. 14, 2017. A press release from the base said the planned launch was scrubbed early Tuesday because of an unspecified issue and managers didn't have enough time to resolve it.

The Cygnus spacecraft is pictured after it had been grappled with the Canadarm2 robotic arm by astronauts Paolo Nespoli and Randy Bresnik on Nov. 14, 2017.

Measuring more than 300 000 light-years across, three times the diameter of the Milky Way, this colourful bubble of ionised gas is the biggest to ever have been discovered. The enormous bubble contains 10 individual galaxies and is situated in a particularly dense region of a galaxy group called COSMOS-Gr30, 6.5 billion light-years away from Earth. Targeted due to its high density of galaxies, this group is extremely varied — some galaxies are actively forming stars while others are passive; some are bright while others are dim; some are massive and others are tiny.

This record-breaking bubble was discovered and studied in detail thanks to the incredible sensitivity of the MUSE instrument, mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Operating in visible wavelengths, MUSE combines the capabilities of an imaging device with the measuring capacity of a spectrograph, creating a unique and powerful tool that can shed light on cosmological objects that would otherwise remain in the dark.

ESO/T. Contini (IRAP, Toulouse)/B. Epinat (LAM, Marseille)

In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), The Orbital ATK Antares rocket, with the Cygnus spacecraft onboard, launches from Pad-0A on Nov. 12, 2017 at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. Orbital ATK's eighth contracted cargo resupply mission with NASA to the International Space Station will deliver approximately 7,400 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory and its

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image seems to sink into the screen, plunging the viewer into the dark depths of the early Universe. Massive galaxy clusters — such as the subject of this image, Abell 1300 — help us to better understand the cosmos. They are essentially giant natural telescopes, magnifying the light from any galaxies sitting behind them and helping us peer further back in time.

This bizarre kind of time travel is possible due to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, whereby the gravitational influence of a massive object such as Abell 1300 acts like a lens, bending the very fabric of space around it and thus causing more distant light to move in a curved path. To the observer, the source of the light — a background object such as a primordial galaxy, for example — appears both distorted and magnified. The lensing power of massive clusters has helped us to discover some of the most distant known galaxies in the Universe. Hubble has observed this phenomenon many times; see a selection of images here.

See Jupiter's southern hemisphere in beautiful detail in this new image taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced view captures one of the white ovals in the "String of Pearls," one of eight massive rotating storms at 40 degrees south latitude on the gas giant planet.

Daphnis, one of Saturn’s small ring-embedded moons, is seen here kicking up waves as it orbits within a gap between rows of icy ring particles. The image was taken by the international Cassini mission, which recently concluded its incredible 13-year odyssey in the Saturn system. Daphnis is just 8 km across, but its gravity is powerful enough to disrupt the tiny particles of the A-ring that mark the edge of a gap in the rings called the Keeler Gap. As the moon moves through the Keeler Gap, wave-like features are created in both the horizontal and vertical planes.

Three wave crests of diminishing size can be seen here in the wake of the moon’s passage. In each subsequent crest, the shape of the wave evolves as the ring particles within the crests collide with one another. Zooming in towards the tiny moon reveals a faint, thin strand of ring material that almost appears to have been directly ripped out of the A-ring by Daphnis.

This is how the newly discovered belts of dust around the closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri, may look. ALMA observations revealed the glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun. The data also hint at the presence of an even cooler outer dust belt and indicate the presence of an elaborate planetary system. These structures are similar to the much larger belts in the Solar System and are also expected to be made from particles of rock and ice that failed to form planets.

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli marked his 100th day in space for the Vita mission on Sunday,  November 5, along with fellow Expedition-51/52 crew mates Randy Bresnik of NASA and Sergey Ryazansky of Roscosmos. The trio were launched to the International Space Station on Soyuz MS-05 on July 28,  2017, from Baikonur Cosmodrome. In 100 days Paolo has conducted numerous experiments and technology demonstrations, had calls with schools and most notably His Holiness Pope Francis, and captured stunning images from space, including the many hurricanes ravaging the Atlantic and the solar eclipse across the US. Paolo, Randy and Sergey are set to return to Earth on 14 December.

The real monster black hole is revealed in this image from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array of colliding galaxies Arp 299. In the center panel, the NuSTAR high-energy X-ray data appear in various colors overlaid on a visible-light image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The panel on the left shows the NuSTAR data alone, while the visible-light image is on the far right. Before NuSTAR, astronomers knew that the each of the two galaxies in Arp 299 held a supermassive black hole at its heart, but they weren't sure if one or both were actively chomping on gas in a process called accretion. The new high-energy X-ray data reveal that the supermassive black hole in the galaxy on the right is indeed the hungry one, releasing energetic X-rays as it consumes gas.

In this image, X-rays with energies of 4 to 6 kiloelectron volts are red, energies of 6 to 12 kiloelectron volts are green, and 12 to 25 kiloelectron volts are blue.

The ‘ghostly green’ was created by reflecting a floodlight off the station’s 35 m-diameter deep-space antenna and structure. The station routinely communicates with spacecraft orbiting Mars as well as ESA’s Gaia and XMM observatory missions. In future, it will link up with BepiColombo at Mercury and the Euclid astronomical observatory. Since August, the station has been operating in part on a new solar power system, which, together with a local water recycling system, is helping to boost the station’s sustainability and reduce its environmental impact.

The universe contains some truly massive objects. Although we are still unsure how such gigantic things come to be, the current leading theory is known as hierarchical clustering, whereby small clumps of matter collide and merge to grow ever larger. The 14-billion-year history of the universe has seen the formation of some enormous cosmic structures, including galaxy groups, clusters, and superclusters — the largest known structures in the cosmos. This particular cluster is called Abell 665. It was named after its discoverer, George O. Abell, who included it in his seminal 1958 cluster catalog. Abell 665 is located in the well-known northern constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). This incredible image combines visible and infrared light gathered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope using two of its cameras: the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3. Abell 665 is the only galaxy cluster in Abell’s entire catalog to be given a richness class of 5, indicating that the cluster contains at least 300 individual galaxies. Because of this richness, the cluster has been studied extensively at all wavelengths, resulting in a number of fascinating discoveries — among other research, Abell 665 has been found to host a giant radio halo, powerful shockwaves, and has been used to calculate an updated value for the Hubble constant (a measure of how fast the Universe is expanding).

Jupiter's intense northern and southern lights, or auroras, behave independently of each other according to a new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray and ESA's XMM-Newton observatories. The team found that the hot spots had very different characteristics. The X-ray emission at Jupiter's south pole consistently pulsed every 11 minutes, but the X-rays seen from the north pole were erratic, increasing and decreasing in brightness — seemingly independent of the emission from the south pole.

Two Russian spacecraft enjoy a ride over the Alps in this image taken from the International Space Station. On the left is the Soyuz MS-05 that brought ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli and fellow crew mates NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik and cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky to the Station in July. On the right is the Russian cargo vehicle Progress 68P, which docked at the Station with fresh supplies in mid-October. Both vehicles will return to Earth in December.

Expedition 53 Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency (ESA) photographed cloudy skies over Sudan during an International Space Station flyover on Oct. 22, 2017. Nespoli shared the image with his followers on social media on Nov. 6.

Artist's impression of the planet NGTS-1b, the first to be found using the NGTS system at ESO's Paranal Observatory. This planet is a hot Jupiter, at least as large as the Jupiter in the Solar System, but with around 20% less mass. It is very close to its star – just 3% of the distance between Earth and the Sun – and orbits the star every 2.6 days, meaning a year on NGTS-1b lasts two and a half days.

This sequence of images shows the sun from its surface to its upper atmosphere all taken at about the same time (Oct. 27, 2017). The first shows the surface of the sun in filtered white light; the other seven images were taken in different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. Note that each wavelength reveals somewhat different features. They are shown in order of temperature from the first one at 6,000 degree C. surface out to about 10 million degrees C. in the upper atmosphere. Yes, the sun's outer atmosphere is much, much hotter than the surface. Scientists are getting closer to solving the processes that generate this phenomenon.

One of the most beautiful sights on Earth, the northern and southern lights are auroras that shimmer and dance through the sky at our planet’s poles and high latitudes. These phenomena are caused as charged particles stream inwards from the Solar System, colliding and interacting with particles at the outer edges of our atmosphere. These beautiful light shows are experienced by bodies throughout the cosmos, such as exoplanets, various stars and other quickly rotating bodies.

This image shows a striking aurora weaving its way across northern Canada, showcasing vivid ribbons of pink, green and blue. It was taken from orbit by ESA astronaut Tim Peake on 20 January 2016, during his stay on the International Space Station.

This view was photographed looking northeast from a point just north of Vancouver; the Canadian Rockies and Banff and Jasper national parks lie in the foreground with very few lights visible, while the bright patches mark the locations of (from left to right) Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary. The most active part of the aurora lies over Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada.

Brilliant blue stars litter the southern sky and the galactic bulge of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, hangs serenely above the horizon in this spectacular shot of ESO’s Paranal Observatory.

This image was taken atop Cerro Paranal in Chile, home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). In the foreground, the open dome of one of the four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes can be seen. The four Auxiliary Telescopes can be utilised together, to form the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

The plane of the Milky Way is dotted with bright regions of hot gas. The very bright star towards the upper left corner of the frame is Antares — the brightest star in Scorpius and the fifteenth brightest star in the night sky.

Jupiter experiences intense auroras that rage constantly, created as charged particles from the Sun and the Jovian moon Io stream towards the gas giant and interact with its atmosphere. A new study has revealed that the planet’s northern and southern lights behave and pulse independently of one another—an unexpected finding given the behaviour of Earth’s auroras, which tend to mirror one another (when they brighten at the north pole, they generally brighten at the south pole too). This image, from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows such an aurora on Jupiter. It combines two separate sets of observations—one of the polar aurora itself, photographed in the ultraviolet in June 2016, and an optical view of the full disc of Jupiter, taken in April 2014.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is chock-full of galaxies. Each glowing speck is a different galaxy, except the bright flash in the middle of the image which is actually a star lying within our own galaxy that just happened to be in the way. At the center of the image lies something especially interesting, the center of the massive galaxy cluster called WHL J24.3324-8.477, including the brightest galaxy of the cluster.

The Universe contains structures on various scales — planets collect around stars, stars collect into galaxies, galaxies collect into groups, and galaxy groups collect into clusters. Galaxy clusters contain hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. Dark matter and dark energy play key roles in the formation and evolution of these clusters, so studying massive galaxy clusters can help scientists to unravel the mysteries of these elusive phenomena.

This infrared image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 as part of an observing program called RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey). RELICS imaged 41 massive galaxy clusters with the aim of finding the brightest distant galaxies for the forthcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to study. Such research will tell us more about our cosmic origins.

Lightning captured in a photograph by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli from on board the International Space Station. Paolo’s third and last mission to the Space Station is named Vita, which means “life” in Italian, and reflects the experiments Paolo will run and the philosophical notion of living in outer space – one of the most inhospitable places for humans.

Reflected sunlight is the source of the illumination for visible wavelength images such as the one above. However, at longer infrared wavelengths, direct thermal emission from objects dominates over reflected sunlight. This enabled instruments that can detect infrared radiation to observe the pole even in the dark days of winter when Cassini first arrived at Saturn and Saturn's northern hemisphere was shrouded in shadow.

This artist’s concept shows a black hole with an accretion disk -- a flat structure of material orbiting the black hole – and a jet of hot gas, called plasma.

This annotated view labels the major galaxies around NGC 1316, a lenticular galaxy that is both in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace) and in the Fornax Cluster. This astonishingly deep view of the cluster was captured by the VLT Survey Telescope as part of the Fornax Deep Survey.

ESO/A. Grado & L. Limatola

This colourful image is a ‘chromosphere flash spectrum’ captured during the total solar eclipse that occurred across the United States on 21 August 2017. It was taken by ESA’s expedition team who monitored the eclipse from Casper, Wyoming. During an eclipse, when the Moon temporarily obscures the overwhelming light from the Sun’s photosphere, astronomers can make unique measurements. This includes analysing the normally invisible red hue of the chromosphere, the layer of the Sun’s atmosphere directly above the turbulent surface of the photosphere. 

Such an image can be obtained with the last and first light of the solar limb just before and after the eclipse totality, respectively, giving rise to the name ‘flash’ spectrum as the measurements have to be completed in a matter of seconds. At this moment the Sun’s emission can be split into a spectrum of colours, showing the fingerprint of different chemical elements. The flash spectrum shown here was produced by the very first solar limb observable after the totality. The exposure to capture this image was exactly 1/30 s. An image of the eclipsed Sun is produced at left and the spectrum of each point of the Sun superposed at the right. 

The strongest emission is due to hydrogen, including red hydrogen-alpha emission at far right, and blue and purple to the left. In between, the bright yellow corresponds to helium, an element only discovered in a flash spectrum captured during the 18 August 1868 total eclipse, although it was then unknown what it was. Nearly three decades later the element was discovered on Earth and helium is now known to be the second most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen.

Saturn's graceful lanes of orbiting ice -- its iconic rings -- wind their way around the planet to pass beyond the horizon in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. And diminutive Pandora, scarcely larger than a pixel here, can be seen orbiting just beyond the F ring in this image.

Also in this image is the gap between Saturn's cloud tops and its innermost D ring through which Cassini would pass 22 times before ending its mission in spectacular fashion in Sept. 15, 2017. Scientists scoured images of this region, particularly those taken at the high phase (spacecraft-ring-Sun) angles, looking for material that might pose a hazard to the spacecraft.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 19 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 12, 2017. Pandora was brightened by a factor of 2 to increase its visibility.

At around 2,200 kilometers in diameter, Hellas Planitia is the largest visible impact basin in the Solar System, and hosts the lowest elevations on Mars' surface as well as a variety of landscapes. This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) covers a small central portion of the basin and shows a dune field with lots of dust devil trails. In the middle, we see what appears to be long and straight "scratch marks" running down the southeast (bottom-right) facing dune slopes. If we look closer, we can see these scratch marks actually squiggle back and forth on their way down the dune. These scratch marks are linear gullies. 

Just like on Earth, high-latitude regions on Mars are covered with frost in the winter. However, the winter frost on Mars is made of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) instead of water ice. We believe linear gullies are the result of this dry ice breaking apart into blocks, which then slide or roll down warmer sandy slopes, sublimating and carving as they go.

The linear gullies exhibit exceptional sinuosity (the squiggle pattern) and we believe this to be the result of repeated movement of dry ice blocks in the same path, possibly in combination with different hardness or flow resistance of the sand within the dune slopes. Determining the specific process that causes the formation and evolution of sinuosity in linear gullies is a question scientists are still trying to answer. What do you think causes the squiggles?

As firefighters continue to work toward full containment of the rash of wildfires burning in Northern California, a new image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite shows the growing fire scar on the landscape. In this ASTER image, acquired Oct. 21, 2017, vegetation is red, while burned areas appear dark gray. The image covers an area of 38 by 39 miles (60.5 by 63 kilometers) and is located near 38.5 degrees north, 122.4 degrees west.

With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on Terra. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and data products.

The layered sedimentary deposits inside the giant canyons of Mars have puzzled scientists for decades. These light toned deposits have fine, horizontal laminations that are unlike the rugged rim rock of the Valles Marineris as seen by NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO). Various ideas for the origin of the layered sediments have suggested lake deposits, wind blown dust and sand, or volcanic materials that erupted after the canyon was formed, and possibly filled with water.

One particular layered deposit, called Ceti Mensa, attracted attention because its deep red color in images collected by the Viking Orbiter mission during the 1970s. Located in west Candor Chasma in the north of the Valles Marineris, Ceti Mensa is an undulating plateau that rises 3 kilometers above the canyon floor and is bounded by steep scarps up to 1.5 kilometers in height. Deep red hues are on the west-facing scarp in particular. The red tint may be due to the presence of crystalline ferric oxide, suggesting that the material may have been exposed to heat or water, or both.

Spectral measurements by the Mars Express OMEGA and MRO CRISM instruments confirm the presence of hydrated sulfate salts, such as gypsum and kieserite . These minerals are important for two reasons. On Earth, they typically form in wet environments, suggesting that the deposits in Ceti Mensa may have formed under water. On Mars, these deposits could be valuable to future Martian colonists as fertilizer for growing crops.

In a view of the colorful west-facing scarp of Ceti Mensa, we see the interior layers of the deposit, giving us a window into the past history of the sediments as they accumulated over time. We also see layers that were previously too small to view, and a surface that is thoroughly fractured, eroded into knobs, and partially covered by young dark sand dunes.

A small eruption blew a bright, disjointed stream of plasma into space. The source of the blast was just out of sight beyond the edge of the sun. Images from SOHO's coronagraph instruments show a bright loop of material heading away from the sun near this same area. The video, taken in extreme ultraviolet light, covers just two hours of activity.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover conducted a test on Oct. 17, 2017, as part of the rover team's development of a new way to use the rover's drill. This image from Curiosity's front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Hazcam) shows the drill's bit touching the ground during an assessment of measurements by a sensor on the rover's robotic arm.

Curiosity used its drill to acquire sample material from Martian rocks 15 times from 2013 to 2016. In December 2016, the drill's feed mechanism stopped working reliably. During the test shown in this image, the rover touched the drill bit to the ground for the first time in 10 months. The image has been adjusted to brighten shaded areas so that the bit is more evident. The date was the 1,848th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars.

In drill use prior to December 2016, two contact posts -- the stabilizers on either side of the bit -- were placed on the target rock while the bit was in a withdrawn position. Then the motorized feed mechanism within the drill extended the bit forward, and the bit's rotation and percussion actions penetrated the rock. A promising alternative now under development and testing -- called feed-extended drilling -- uses motion of the robotic arm to directly advance the extended bit into a rock. In this image, the bit is touching the ground but the stabilizers are not. Compare that to the positioning of the stabilizers on the ground in a 2013 image of the technique used before December 2016.

In the Sol 1848 activity, Curiosity pressed the drill bit downward, and then applied smaller sideways forces while taking measurements with a force/torque sensor on the arm. The objective was to gain understanding about how readings from the sensor can be used during drilling to adjust for any sideways pressure that might risk the bit becoming stuck in a rock. While rover-team engineers are working on an alternative drilling method, the mission continues to examine sites on Mount Sharp, Mars, with other tools.

In this image from video made available by NASA, astronaut Joe Acaba performs a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. Acaba was barely outside an hour when he had to replace one of his safety tethers. Spacewalking astronauts always have more than one of these crucial lifelines in case one breaks. They also wear a jetpack in case all tethers fail and they need to fly back to the space station.

The Copernicus Sentinel-1A satellite brings us over part of the Sagaing Division in northwest Myanmar, and along the border with India. Snaking through the image is the Chindwin River, which breached its banks during a period of severe flooding in 2015. Monsoon rains beginning that July caused multiple rivers in the region to overflow, causing widespread damage and affecting up to a million people.

This image was created using two passes by Sentinel-1’s radar: one before the flooding on 20 March 2015 and the other during the event on 4 September 2015. Combining them shows changes between the images, such as the inundation of some 111 000 hectares of land on either sides of the river bank appearing in red.

ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Jupiter's moon Amalthea casts a shadow on the gas giant planet in this image captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft. The elongated shape of the shadow is a result of both the location of the moon with relation to Jupiter in this image as well as the irregular shape of the moon itself.

Juno performed its eighth close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 2,397 miles (3,858 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of 17.6 degrees. Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager. The image has been rotated so that the top of the image is actually the equatorial regions while the bottom of the image is of the northern polar regions of the planet.

This image, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows what happens when two galaxies become one. The twisted cosmic knot seen here is NGC 2623 — or Arp 243 — and is located about 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Cancer (The Crab).

ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took two images of Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons, within 10 minutes of each other on March 23, 2008. This is the first, taken from a distance of about 6,800 kilometers (about 4,200 miles). It is presented in color by combining data from the camera's blue-green, red, and near-infrared channels.

The illuminated part of Phobos seen in the image is about 21 kilometers (13 miles) across. The most prominent feature in the images is the large crater Stickney in the lower right. With a diameter of 9 kilometers (5.6 miles), it is the largest feature on Phobos.

The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite saw the temperature at the top of Hurricane Ophelia as the storm approached the British Isles.

Ophelia has since been downgraded from a hurricane to a storm.

The brightness temperature of the clouds at the top of the storm, some 12–15 km above the ocean, range from about –50°C near the eye of the storm to about 15°C at the edges.

ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission found evidence of a toxic hybrid ice in a wispy cloud high above the south pole of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

This view of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is among the last images the Cassini spacecraft sent to Earth before it plunged into the giant planet’s atmosphere.

The finding is a new demonstration of the complex chemistry occurring in Titan’s atmosphere—in this case, cloud formation in the giant moon’s stratosphere—and part of a collection of processes that ultimately helps deliver a smorgasbord of organic molecules to Titan’s surface.

NASA astronaut Joe Acaba photographed Puerto Rico from the cupola of the International Space Station. Sharing the image with his followers on social media, he wrote, "Finally a chance to see the beautiful island of Puerto Rico from @Space_Station. Continued thoughts throughout the recovery process."

This illustration shows the hot, dense, expanding cloud of debris stripped from two neutron stars just before they collided. Within this neutron-rich debris, large quantities of some of the universe's heaviest elements were forged, including hundreds of Earth masses of gold and platinum.

This represents the first time scientists detected light tied to a gravitational-wave event, thanks to two merging neutron stars in the galaxy NGC 4993, located about 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra. Learn more about this phenomenon.

This artist’s impression shows two tiny but very dense neutron stars at the point at which they merge and explode as a kilonova. Such a very rare event is expected to produce both gravitational waves and a short gamma-ray burst, both of which were observed on 17 August 2017 by LIGO–Virgo and Fermi/INTEGRAL respectively. Subsequent detailed observations with many ESO telescopes confirmed that this object, seen in the galaxy NGC 4993 about 130 million light-years from the Earth, is indeed a kilonova. Such objects are the main source of very heavy chemical elements, such as gold and platinum, in the Universe.

University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

Diffuse, water-ice clouds, a hazy sky and a light breeze. Such might have read a weather forecast for the Tharsis volcanic region on Mars taken by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.

Clouds, most likely of water-ice, and atmospheric haze in the sky are coloured blue/white in this image.

Below, 630 km west of the volcano Arsia Mons, the southernmost of the Tharsis volcanoes, outlines of ancient lava flows dominate the surface. The dark streaks are due to the action of wind on the dark-coloured basaltic sands, while redder patches are wind blown dust. A handful of small impact craters can also be seen.

ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A large coronal hole stands out as the most obvious feature. The dark structure, shaped kind of like the Pi symbol, spreads across much of the top of the sun. Though one cannot tell from this image and video clip in false-color extreme ultraviolet light, it is spewing high-speed solar wind particles into space and has been doing this all week. It is likely that these charged particles have been interacting with Earth's atmosphere and generating many aurora displays in regions near the poles the past several days.

Saturn's moon Dione is captured in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, half in shadow and half in light. Sinuous canyons carve interconnected paths across the moon's icy landscape. Subtle variations in brightness hint at differences in composition, as well as the size and shape of grains in Dione's surface material, or regolith.

This view looks toward the side of Dione that faces away from Saturn. North is up and rotated 59 degrees to the right.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 224,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) from Dione. Image scale is 1.4 mile (2.2 kilometers) per pixel.

This artist’s impression shows two tiny but very dense neutron stars at the point at which they merge and explode as a kilonova. Such a very rare event is expected to produce both gravitational waves and a short gamma-ray burst, both of which were observed by LIGO–Virgo and Fermi/INTEGRAL respectively. Subsequent detailed observations with many ESO telescopes confirmed that this object, seen in the galaxy NGC 4993 about 130 million light-years from the Earth, is indeed a kilonova. Such objects are the main source of very heavy chemical elements, such as gold and platinum, in the Universe.

ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

Artist’s illustration of two merging neutron stars. The rippling space-time grid represents gravitational waves that travel out from the collision, while the narrow beams show the bursts of gamma rays that are shot out just seconds after the gravitational waves. Swirling clouds of material ejected from the merging stars are also depicted. The clouds glow with visible and other wavelengths of light.

NSF/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet

This wide-field image generated from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 shows the sky around the galaxy NGC 4993. This galaxy was the host to a merger between two neutron stars, which led to a gravitational wave detection, a short gamma-ray burst and an optical identification of a kilonova event.

ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2

This artist’s impression shows two tiny but very dense neutron stars at the point at which they merge and explode as a kilonova. Such a very rare event is expected to produce both gravitational waves and a short gamma-ray burst, both of which were observed by LIGO–Virgo and Fermi/INTEGRAL respectively. Subsequent detailed observations with many ESO telescopes confirmed that this object, seen in the galaxy NGC 4993 about 130 million light-years from the Earth, is indeed a kilonova. Such objects are the main source of very heavy chemical elements, such as gold and platinum, in the Universe.

ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a thermal view of the clouds in hurricane Ophelia as it lashed Ireland. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission core satellite provided a look at the rainfall that was affecting the Emerald Isle.

The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite captured this image of smoke from wildfires in California on October 9, 2017. 

ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

This artist's rendering shows a giant exoplanet causing small bodies to collide in a disk of dust.

A study in The Astronomical Journal finds that giant exoplanets with long-period orbits are more likely to be found around young stars that have a disk of dust and debris than those without disks. The study focused on planets more than five times the mass of Jupiter. The astronomers are conducting the largest survey to date of stars with dusty debris disks, and finding the best evidence yet that giant planets are responsible for keeping that material in check.

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli took this stunning image of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik and Mark Vande Hai during last week’s spacewalk.

During this excursion, the duo replaced part of the Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm. The spacewalk took just under seven hours and saw the astronauts not only complete their main task but also accomplish some ‘get-ahead’ tasks.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is launched from the Space Launch Complex-4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Oct. 9, 2017.

Ten new satellites for Iridium Communications Inc. have been carried into orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from California. The booster lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base before dawn Monday and its first stage successfully returned from space and set down on a landing platform floating in the Pacific Ocean as the second stage went on to deploy the satellites in orbit.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) shows one possible place where sand grains are being produced on Mars today. Discovered in images from the Context Camera, this region exhibits dark material that is being eroded from dark layers in the bedrock of a semicircular depression near the boundary of the Southern highlands and the Northern lowlands. Downslope lineations support the notion that these dark sediments are derived locally, and did not accumulate here by coincidence because of the winds.

The grains of sand that make up sand dunes on Earth and Mars have a hazardous existence because of the way that they travel. Wind-blown sand is lifted above the surface of each planet before crashing onto the ground and bouncing in a sequence of repeated hops, a process called saltation. Sand grains can also roll along the ground as they are blown by the wind, and they are also jostled by other sand gains that are similarly flying across the surface.

All of these repeated impacts tend to wear down the sand grains, smoothing them into a more spherical shape and breaking off small fragments that supply the vast dust deposits of Mars. This process (known as comminution) ultimately destroys sand grains and limits the length of time that the particles exist. The fact that we see active sand dunes on Mars today requires that sand particles must be resupplied to replace the grains that are lost over time. Where are the modern day sources of sand on Mars?

Mercury, the innermost planet of our Solar System is a grey, barren world to our human eyes. In stark contrast, this map shows a portion of the surface in a patchwork of colour, each shade corresponding to a different type of geological feature.

The image is an excerpt from a detailed geological map that is the first complete geological survey of this region made using data from NASA’s Messenger mission, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015. It covers a section in the planet’s northern hemisphere known to planetary geologists as the Victoria Quadrangle, and is centred on about 45ºW / 45ºN. From impact craters in various states of degradation (dark red/green/yellow/beige) to smooth volcanic plains (pink/peach) and rougher plains materials (browns), the scene captures billions of years of rich geological history. For scale, the large crater just right of centre is about 150 km wide. 

In total, 867 craters larger than 5 km are mapped in this image – the full Victoria Quadrangle contains 1789. Of those, 519 are larger than 20 km (268 in this particular section), and for those the pattern of the ejected material is mapped and classified as well. Mapping the density and characteristics of craters helps to determine the relative age of a surface: in general, the more craters, the older the surface.

The map also indicates surface features such as hollows, pits, faults and wrinkle ridges, which were imaged in high resolution by Messenger, many identified for the first time. (For a full description of the annotations see the complete geological map of this region.) For example, Messenger discovered hollows that appear to be young and unique to Mercury, and may be due to a sublimating material weakening parts of the surface such that it collapses.

This 2.5-kilometer diameter crater observed by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been significantly altered from the usual bowl-shaped appearance we associate with craters. Material has covered significant portions of the ejecta and filled in the crater. This fill material has since been subject to erosion -- like boulders weathering out of the slopes -- and the crater rim is also highly irregular.

This crater is located in Elysium Planitia, an area dominated by volcanic processes. It is likely that the crater fill material is volcanic in origin, and possible that the rim was etched by lava, either flowing into the crater or spilling over after the crater filled completely. However, there are also signs of erosion by wind, like the parallel ridges in the rim breaches and between high-standing regions of the crater fill. It is likely that the current appearance of this crater is due to a combination of surface processes.

On Sept. 1, 2017, the La Tuna Canyon fire began in the foothills north of Los Angeles. By the time it was contained, it became one of the biggest wildfires in the history of the city in terms of sheer acreage. The fire burned several structures and resulted in a large number of evacuations. The fire could be seen over a large area, from the Hollywood Burbank airport (left side of image), to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Rose Bowl (right side of image). In this image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, vegetation is depicted in red (golf courses are particularly prominent), and the burned area is in dark gray. The image was acquired Oct. 7, 2017, covers an area of approximately 8 by 13 miles (13.5 by 20.5 kilometers), and is located at 34.2 degrees north, 118.2 degrees west.

With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on Terra. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and data products.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Rover (MRO) has observed two types of wind (aeolian) features in Proctor Crater: large, dark features that are sand dunes, made up of basaltic particles, and smaller, light-toned ripples that we call "TAR," or "transverse aeolian ridges." The origin of the TARs is a mystery. They might be dust deposits, or perhaps coarse grained ripples that are coated in bright dust.

These TARs are less than 10 meters tall, and are much smaller than the sand dunes that reach impressive heights of over 130 meters. In other places on Mars, TARs are generally older than sand dunes, but here in Proctor Crater, it is not so obvious. How can we tell which came first, the TARs or the dunes? The dunes are situated on top of the TARs, and with this information, we can say the dunes are clearly the younger formations here in Proctor Crater.

Fortunately, HiRISE has a tool that can solve this riddle. By taking stereo images of the same region from two different locations, we can estimate the topography of the region by measuring the displacement of surface features from one picture to the other. The result is a quantitative estimate of the local surface topography, called a digital terrain model. The dunes are situated on top of the TARs, and with this information, we can say the dunes are clearly the younger formations here in Proctor Crater.

Geologists aren't quite sure what to make of the dark splotch in the middle of this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) -- one of several similar dark splotches that extend east and west for over 100 kilometers. From measurements made in infrared, this and other dark splotches have what we call "high thermal inertia," meaning that it heats up and cools down slowly. Scientists use thermal inertia to assess how rocky, sandy, or dusty a place is. A higher thermal inertia than the surrounding area means it's less dusty.

Wavy, banded patterns in the dark splotch (possibly due to cross bedding from sand dunes that once occupied the area) were lithified into sandstone, and then eroded away. These clues could help geologists figure out what's going on there.

The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over the Antarctic Peninsula and the adjacent Larsen Ice Shelf, from which a massive iceberg broke off in July. The image has been manipulated, so clouds appear pink while snow and ice are blue to help us differentiate between them. The only land clearly visible is the tip of the Peninsula in the upper left, while sea ice covers the Weddell Sea to the right. The image shows the iceberg near the centre.

The A68 berg had been jostling back and forth against the ice shelf, but more recent satellite imagery revealed that the gap between the berg and the shelf is widening – possibly drifting out to sea. A68 is about twice the size of Luxembourg and with its calving has changed the outline of the Antarctic Peninsula forever – about 10% of the area of the Larsen C Ice Shelf has been removed.

This color-enhanced image of Jupiter and two of its largest moons -- Io and Europa -- was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the gas giant planet. Closer to the planet, the Galilean moon of Io can be seen at an altitude of 298,880 miles (481,000 kilometers) and at a spatial scale of 201 miles (324 kilometers) per pixel. In the distance (to the left), another one of Jupiter's Galilean moons, Europa, is visible at an altitude of 453,601 miles (730,000 kilometers) and at a spatial scale of 305 miles (492 kilometers) per pixel.

The Eridania basin of southern Mars is believed to have held a sea about 3.7 billion years ago, with seafloor deposits likely resulting from underwater hydrothermal activity. This graphic shows estimated depths of water in that ancient sea.

A recent estimate of the total water volume of the ancient Eridania sea is about 50,000 cubic miles (210,000 cubic kilometers), about nine times the total volume of North America's Great Lakes. The map covers an area about 530 miles (850 kilometers) wide.

The reference bar (Figure 1) indicates color coding of depth, from red, at right, showing depth of about 300 feet (100 meters) to black showing depth more than 10 times that depth. This graphic was included in a 2017 report "Ancient hydrothermal seafloor deposits in Eridania basin on Mars" in Nature Communications.

Vice President Mike Pence delivers opening remarks during the National Space Council's first meeting, on Oct. 5, 2017 at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. The National Space Council, chaired by Pence, heard testimony from representatives from civil space, commercial space, and national security space industry representatives.

Now being fitted with its state-of-the-art instruments, ESA’s Solar Orbiter is set to provide new views of our star, in particular providing close-up observations of the Sun’s poles. Following its launch in February 2019 and three-year journey using gravity swingbys at Earth and Venus, Solar Orbiter will operate from an elliptical orbit around the Sun. At its closest it will approach our star within 42 million kilometres, closer than planet Mercury. An artist’s impression of Solar Orbiter in front of the stormy Sun is depicted here. The image of the Sun is based on one taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. It captures the beginning of a solar eruption that took place on 7 June 2011. At lower right, dark filaments of plasma arc away from the Sun. During this particular event, it watched the plasma lift off, then rain back down to create ‘hot spots’ that glowed in ultraviolet light.

This illustration depicts a hypothetical uneven ring of dust orbiting KIC 8462852, also known as Boyajian's Star or Tabby's Star. Astronomers have found the dimming of the star over long periods appears to be weaker at longer infrared wavelengths of light and stronger at shorter ultraviolet wavelengths. Such reddening is characteristic of dust particles and inconsistent with more fanciful "alien megastructure" concepts, which would evenly dim all wavelengths of light.

Taking an image of the International Space Station as it passes in front of the Sun, Moon or planets is a popular pastime for astrophotographers. It requires planning, patience and a measure of luck. The camera must be set up at the right time in the right place to capture the Space Station as it flies past at 28 800 km/h. At such speeds the photographer has only seconds to capture the transit and if any clouds block the view it has to wait for another opportunity weeks later. This photograph was taken by the astronomy club at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid in 2013. Although there were clear skies, a bird flew overhead in the 1.2 seconds it took the Station to pass in front of the Sun.

Three distinct active regions with towering arches above them rotated into view over a three-day period (Sept. 24-26, 2017). In extreme ultraviolet light, charged particles that are spinning along the ever-changing magnetic field lines above the active regions make the lines visible. To give some sense of scale, the largest arches rose up many times the size of Earth.