What created this unusual mountain? There is a new theory. Ahuna Mons is the largest mountain on the largest known asteroid in our Solar System, Ceres, which orbits our Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars andJupiter. Ahuna Mons, though, is like nothing that humanity has ever seen before. For... Continue Reading →
What's happening in and around the Cave Nebula? To help find out, NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope looked into this optically-dark star-forming region in four colors of infrared light. The Cave Nebula, cataloged as Sh2-155, is quite bright in infrared, revealing details not only of internal pillars of... Continue Reading →
When did these big galaxies first begin to dance? Really only four of the five of Stephan's Quintet are locked in a cosmic tango of repeated close encounters taking place some 300 million light-years away. The odd galaxy out is easy to spot in this... Continue Reading →
In this image, numerous sweeping arcs seem to congregate at various bright regions. You may wonder: What is being shown? Air traffic routes? Information moving around the global internet? Magnetic fields looping across active areas on the Sun? In fact,... Continue Reading →
The scientists used large radio telescopes and ultraviolet cameras on a NASA spacecraft to better understand the exotic but poorly understood "fourth state of matter." Known as plasma, this matter could hold the key to developing safe, clean and efficient... Continue Reading →
The Moon is shrinking as its interior cools, getting more than about 150 feet (50 meters) skinnier over the last several hundred million years. Just as a grape wrinkles as it shrinks down to a raisin, the Moon gets wrinkles... Continue Reading →
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter hit a dizzying milestone: It completed 60,000 loops around the Red Planet. On average, MRO takes 112 minutes to circle Mars, whipping around at about 2 miles per second (3.4 kilometers per second). Since entering orbit... Continue Reading →
Blue Moon is a relatively large lunar lander that's designed to deliver science payloads, moon rovers and even astronauts to the lunar surface. It can also deploy small satellites into lunar orbit as a "bonus mission" on the way, Bezos... Continue Reading →
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is an alluring sight in southern skies. But this deep and detailed telescopic view, over 10 months in the making, goes beyond what is visible to most circumnavigators of planet Earth. Spanning over 5 degrees or 10 full moons, the... Continue Reading →
