Stonehenge

Apart from the mechanical devices made of metal, wood or ivory, some early astronomers relied on massive masonry structures for astronomical observations. Among the oldest such structures is the megalithic ruin known as Stonehenge in England. Stonehenge was constructed of 56 individual segments and was possibly used as a method of determining several astronomical events.

 Investigators over the last 100 years have revealed that Stonehenge was build in several stages from 2800-1800 BC. It seems to have been designed to allow for observation of astronomical phenomena - summer and winter solstices, eclipse and more. The stone pillars may have been constructed so that the alignment of the sun, with respect to the pillars, would allow astronomers to determine the beginnings and mid points of the seasons. Stonehenge may have been used as a tool to determine the position of the moon throughout the year, roughly predicting the occurrence of eclipses.

Asteroid Zips By Orion Nebula

This image shows the potentially hazardous near-Earth object 1998 KN3 as it zips past a cloud of dense gas and dust near the Orion nebula. NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting portion of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission, snapped infrared pictures of the asteroid, seen as the yellow-green dot at upper left. Because asteroids are warmed by the sun to roughly room temperature, they glow brightly at the infrared wavelengths used by WISE.

Astronomers use infrared light from asteroids to measure their sizes, and when combined with visible-light observations, they can also measure the reflectivity of their surfaces. The WISE infrared data reveal that this asteroid is about .7 mile (1.1 kilometers) in diameter and reflects only about 7 percent of the visible light that falls on its surface, which means it is relatively dark.

View From Mars Orbiter Showing Curiosity Rover at 'Shaler'

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 visible extending from the landing site, "Bradbury Landing," in the left half of the scene. Two bright, relatively blue spots surrounded by darker patches are where the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's landing jets cleared away reddish surface dust at the landing site. North is toward the top. For scale, the two parallel lines of the wheel tracks are about 10 feet (3 meters) apart.

NASA's Spitzer Telescope Celebrates 10 Years in Space

Ten years after a Delta II rocket launched NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, lighting up the night sky over Cape Canaveral, Fla., the fourth of the agency's four Great Observatories continues to illuminate the dark side of the cosmos with its infrared eyes.

What is Hubble Constant?

Q 236: Question of the Day - 16 April 2013 (Week 16)

What is Hubble Constant?

Answer To Question 235

A235: The horizon is an imaginary circle that delimits the sky and the Earth, or an extension of the plane of the observer (at an altitude of 0 degrees).

Hints of Dark Matter Possibly Seen

These illustrations, taken from computer simulations, show a swarm of dark matter clumps around our Milky Way galaxy. Image released July 10, 2012.

CREDIT: J. Tumlinson (STScI)

Crater's Central Pit | Space Wallpaper

This cool space wallpaper shows a perspective view of a 50 km diameter crater in Thaumasia Planum. The image was made by combining data from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express with digital terrain models. The image was taken on Jan. 4, 2013 during orbit 11467, and shows a close up view of the central ‘pit’ of this crater, which likely formed by a subsurface explosion as the heat from the impact event rapidly vapourised water or ice lying below the surface.

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Detecting and Tracking of asteroids

An infrared sensor that could improve NASA's future detecting and tracking of asteroids and comets has passed a critical design test.

Jonckheere 900

The object in this image is Jonckheere 900 or J 900, a planetary nebula — glowing shells of ionized gas pushed out by a dying star. Discovered in the early 1900s by astronomer Robert Jonckheere, the dusty nebula is small but fairly bright, with a relatively evenly spread central region surrounded by soft wispy edges.

Hubble Catches Dusty Detail in Elliptical Galaxy NGC 2768

The soft glow in this image is NGC 2768, an elliptical galaxy located in the northern constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). NGC 2768 appears here as a bright oval on the sky, surrounded by a wide, fuzzy cloud of material.

What is horizon?

Q 235: Question of the Day - 15 April 2013 (Week 16)

What is horizon?

Auroramax

Canada's automated aurora camera tweeted this photo on March 17, 2013

Answer To Question 234

A234: The heliopause is the boundary of the heliosphere of the Sun in which the solar wind's density decreases greatly (and its speed also declines). The location of this transition region is unknown, but must be at more than 50 AU from the Sun.

Russian Cargo Craft Departs

An unpiloted Russian Progress cargo ship departed the International Space Station early Monday, clearing the way for the arrival of the next Russian space freighter. 

What is Heliopause?

Q 234: Question of the Day - 12 April 2013 (Week 15)

What is Heliopause?

Answer To Question 233

A233: The HD (Henry Draper) number is an identifying number assigned to the strs in the Henry Draper catalog. In this system, every star is classified by its stellar spectrum. This sytem is named for the astronomer Henry Draper, but was cataloged by Annie J. Cannon (225,300 stars), and later extended by Margaret W. Mayall. For example, the star Vega is HD 172167 (the spectral type is not in the HD number).

Sunspot Beauty

JP Brahic took this photo from France on April 5, 2013. He used a refractor Astro-Physics 155mm F/D 8.5 and a Bassler ACA1300 camera with filter H-Alpha 1A ° to capture the image.CREDIT: JP Brahic

Spring Fling: Sun Emits a Mid-Level Flare

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of an M6.5 class flare at 3:16 EDT on April 11, 2013. This image shows a combination of light in wavelengths of 131 and 171 Angstroms. Credit: NASA/SDO.

Ice Cloud Heralds Fall at Titan's South Pole

The change of seasons on Titan is creating new cloud patterns at Titan's south pole. Here, a combination of red, green and blue images taken by the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows a vortex over the south pole in natural color. A more recent ice cloud, detectable only at infrared wavelengths, also has formed over this pole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/GSFC

SEXTANT: Navigating by Cosmic Beacon

Imagine a technology that would allow space travelers to transmit gigabytes of data per second over interplanetary distances or to navigate to Mars and beyond using powerful beams of light emanating from rotating neutron stars. The concept isn't farfetched. In fact, Goddard astrophysicists Keith Gendreau and Zaven Arzoumanian plan to fly a multi-purpose instrument on the International Space Station to demonstrate the viability of two groundbreaking navigation and communication technologies

What is HD (Henry Draper)?

Q 233: Question of the Day - 09 April 2013 (Week 15)

What is HD (Henry Draper)?

Answer To Question 232

A232: A heavy-metal star is an unusual type of giant star. Heavy-metal stars include barium (Ba II) stars (a type of late giant star) and S stars (a type of red giant).

Saturn in the Sky

Credit: Andrew KwonAndrew Kwon took this image of Saturn on April 4, 2013 from his backyard observatory in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Sun-Sized Stars Outside Milky Way Seen In X-Rays For First Time | Video

It's International Dark Sky Week

Photographer Justin Ng (Facebook.com/justinngphoto) captured the cones of Mount Bromo, Mount Semeru and Mount Batok during sunset and into the night.CREDIT: Justin Ng (Facebook.com/justinngphoto)

It's International Dark Sky Week, an event designed to raise awareness about the negative, star-dulling effects of light pollution.

Kepler's Supernova

This composite of images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the remnant of Kepler's supernova in low (red), intermediate (green) and high-energy (blue) X-rays. The background is an optical star field taken from the Digitized Sky Survey. The distance to the object is uncertain, with estimates ranging from 13,000 to 23,000 light-years, but recent studies favor the maximum range. This image spans 12 arcminutes or about 80 light-years at the greatest distance.Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NCSU/M.Burkey et al.; optical: DSS

How Asteroid Mining Could Work (Infographic)

Source SPACE.com: 

What is heavy-metal star?

Q 232: Question of the Day - 08 April 2013 (Week 15)

What is heavy-metal star?

Answer To Question 231

A231: A full moon appears as an entire circle in the sky; it is illuminated by the Sun and from theEarth, we see its entire daytime side. A full moon occurs once each lunar month, when the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun.

Dust from Mars Drilling - Tailings and Discard Piles

This image shows the first holes into rock drilled by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, with drill tailings around the holes plus piles of powdered rock collected from the deeper hole and later discarded after other portions of the sample had been delivered to analytical instruments inside the rover. The image was taken by the telephoto-lens camera of the rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument in early afternoon of the 229th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (March 29, 2013). The site is on a patch of flat rock called "John Klein" in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Mars' Gale Crater. 

What is Full Moon?

Q 231: Question of the Day - 06 April 2013 (Week 14)

What is Full Moon?

Answer To Question 230

A 230: Free fall is a state that occurs while in orbit around a planet. In free fall, things appear to weightless. During free fall, the orbiting object falls toward the planet the exact same amount as the planet's surface curves beneath the object; the object seems to be continually falling toward the planet but never reaches it.

Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System,

Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System, with hundreds of volcanoes, some erupting lava fountains up to 250 miles high. However, concentrations of volcanic activity are significantly displaced from where they are expected to be based on models that predict how the moon's interior is heated, according to NASA and European Space Agency researchers.

Hubble Sees Light and Dust in a Nearby Starburst Galaxy

Visible as a small, sparkling hook in the dark sky, this beautiful object is known as J082354.96+280621.6, or J082354.96 for short. It is a starburst galaxy, so named because of the incredibly (and unusually) high rate of star formation occurring within it.

What is Free Fall?

Q 230: Question of the Day - 05 April 2013 (Week 14)

What is Free Fall?

Answer To Question 229

A229: Fossa are long, narrow, shallow depressions on the surface of a planet.

NASA Celebrates Four Decades of Plucky Pioneer 11

Forty years ago, on April 5, 1973, a small, ambitious spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, heading towards the third-brightest point of light in the night sky. Following in the footsteps of its sister craft, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 was intended as a backup for the dangerous mission. Pioneer 11’s mission was only planned to last 21 months – just long enough to reach Jupiter – but in reality, the spacecraft continued functioning for decades after the end of its nominal mission.

Dead Star Acts Like Magnifying Glass

This artist's concept depicts a dense, dead star called a white dwarf crossing in front of a small, red star. The white dwarf's gravity is so great it bends and magnifies light from the red star. 

Europa Global Views in Natural and Enhanced Colors

This color composite view combines violet, green, and infrared images of Jupiter's intriguing moon, Europa, for a view of the moon in natural color (left) and in enhanced color designed to bring out subtle color differences in the surface (right). The bright white and bluish part of Europa's surface is composed mostly of water ice, with very few non-ice materials. In contrast, the brownish mottled regions on the right side of the image may be covered by hydrated salts and an unknown red component. The yellowish mottled terrain on the left side of the image is caused by some other unknown component. Long, dark lines are fractures in the crust, some of which are more than 3,000 kilometers (1,850 miles) long.

What is Fossa?

Q 229: Question of the Day - 04 April 2013 (Week 14)

What is Fossa?

Answer To Question 228

A228: First light is a term that refers to the earliest light emitted when the first galaxies were born. The first light occurred long after the Big Bang happened. The Big Bang occurred roughly 15 billion years ago, but the Universe was dark until the first light came millions of years after the Big Bang, after the smooth distribution of matter following the Big Bang coalesced into clumps, eventually forming galaxies.

Potential Dark Matter Discovery a Win for Space Station Science

If nature is kind, the first detection of dark matter might be credited to the International Space Station soon.Today (April 3), researchers announced the first science results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a $2 billion cosmic-ray particle detector mounted on the exterior of the football-field-size International Space Station. The instrument has observed a striking pattern of antimatter particles called positrons that may turn out to be a product of collisions between dark matter particles.

Dark Matter Mystery

Source SPACE.com

SL’s Parachute Flapping in the Wind

This sequence of seven images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows wind-caused changes in the parachute of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft as the chute lay on the Martian ground during months after its use in safe landing of the Curiosity rover. 

Supernova SN UDS10Wi

This is a Hubble Space Telescope view of supernova SN UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson that exploded over 10 billion years ago. The small box in the top image pinpoints SN Wilson's host galaxy in the CANDELS survey. The image is a blend of visible and near-infrared light. The three bottom images, taken in near-infrared light demonstrate how the astronomers found the supernova. The image at far left shows the host galaxy without SN Wilson. The middle image, taken a year earlier, reveals the galaxy with SN Wilson. The supernova cannot be seen because it is too close to the center of its host galaxy. To detect the supernova, astronomers subtracted the left image from the middle image to see the light from SN Wilson, shown in the image at far right. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Riess (STScI and JHU), and D. Jones and S. Rodney (JHU)

Into the Labyrinth

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum); Image mosaic assembled by Bill DunfordWednesday, April 3, 2013: This mosaic shows part of the Noctis Labyrinthus region, ‘Labyrinth of the Night,’ on Mars. The region lies west of the immense gash of Valles Marineris. Scientists think the uneven region may have developed by volcanic activity in the neighboring region of Tharsis, stretching the Martian crust and fracturing it. Bill Dunford composed the mosaic using scenes available in the Mars Express image archive.

J 900, a Planetary Nebula

The object in this image is Jonckheere 900 or J 900, a planetary nebula — glowing shells of ionized gas pushed out by a dying star. Discovered in the early 1900s by astronomer Robert Jonckheere, the dusty nebula is small but fairly bright, with a relatively evenly spread central region surrounded by soft wispy edges.

Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment

NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite has been providing data on the sun's irradiance for 10 years. SORCE measures electromagnetic radiation produced by the sun and the power per unit area of that energy on the Earth's surface.

Titan Upfront

The colorful globe of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, passes in front of the planet and its rings in this true color snapshot from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. 

The north polar hood can be seen on Titan (3200 miles, 5150 kilometers across) and appears as a detached layer at the top of the moon here. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ring plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 21, 2011 at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Titan. Image scale is 9 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel on Titan. 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

What is First Light?

Q 228: Question of the Day - 01 April 2013 (Week 14)

What is First Light?

Answer To Question 227

A227: Extra galactic means outside of, or beyond, our galaxy (the Milky Way Galaxy).

What is Extra-Galactic?

Q 227: Question of the Day - 30 March 2013 (Week 13)

What is Extra-Galactic?

Answer To Question 226

A226: An epoch is a division of a geologic period; it is the smallest division of geologic time, lasting several million years.

Hubble Sees J 900 Masquerading as a Double Star

The object in this image is Jonckheere 900 or J 900, a planetary nebula — glowing shells of ionized gas pushed out by a dying star. Discovered in the early 1900s by astronomer Robert Jonckheere, the dusty nebula is small but fairly bright, with a relatively evenly spread central region surrounded by soft wispy edges.

Green Meteorite May Be from Mercury, a First

This green meteorite that landed in Morocco in 2012 could be from Mercury. CREDIT: Stefan Ralew/sr-meteorites.de 

Scientists may have discovered the first meteorite from Mercury.The green rock found in Morocco last year may be the first known visitor from the solar system's innermost planet, according to meteorite scientist Anthony Irving, who unveiled the new findings this month at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The study suggests that a space rock called NWA 7325 came from Mercury, and not an asteroid or Mars.

New Crew Aboard Station After Express Flight

The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft carrying three new Expedition 35 crew members docked with the International Space Station’s Poisk module at 10:28 p.m. EDT Thursday, completing its accelerated journey to the orbiting complex in less than six hours. 

NASA's Swift Sizes Up Comet ISON

Astronomers from the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) and Lowell Observatory have used NASA's Swift satellite to check out comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), which may become one of the most dazzling in decades when it rounds the sun later this year.

Mars beckons ISRO, orbiter taking shape

This file photo made available by NASA shows Mars photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope on the planet's closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years

The mother of all Indian space designs to date, Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM for now, is shaping up at a feverish pace at the satellite assembly centre here. It has a hit or miss date to keep. The earliest once-in-26-months window of opportunity opens in October.

What is an Epoch?

Q 226: Question of the Day - 29 March 2013 (Week 13)

What is an Epoch?

Answer To Question 225

A225: An Ephemeris is a table listing the spatial coordinates of celestial bodies and spacecraft as a function of time.

Bluish Color in Broken Rock in 'Yellowknife Bay'

The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity showed researchers interesting internal color in this rock called "Sutton_Inlier," which was broken by the rover driving over it. The Mastcam took this image during the 174th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Jan. 31, 2013). The rock is about 5 inches (12 centimeters) wide at the end closest to the camera. This view is calibrated to estimated "natural" color, or approximately what the colors would look like if we were to view the scene ourselves on Mars. The inside of the rock, which is in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Gale Crater, is much less red than typical Martian dust and rock surfaces, with a color verging on grayish to bluish. 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ASU

Variation in Subsurface Water In 'Yellowknife Bay'

The image, at lower left, is annotated to show where the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took measurement on a rock outcrop (Spot 39) and on loose soil (Spot 40) within the "Yellowknife Bay' area of Mars' Gale Crater.

View From Camera Not Used During Curiosity's First Six Months on Mars

This view of Curiosity's left-front and left-center wheels and of marks made by wheels on the ground in the "Yellowknife Bay" area comes from one of six cameras used on Mars for the first time more than six months after the rover landed. The left Navigation Camera (Navcam) linked to Curiosity's B-side computer took this image during the 223rd Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (March 22, 2013). The wheels are 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter. 

Churning Out Stars

W3 is an enormous stellar nursery about 6,200 light-years away in the Perseus Arm, one of the Milky Way galaxy’s main spiral arms, which hosts both low- and high-mass star formation. In this image from the Herschel space observatory, the low-mass forming stars are seen as tiny yellow dots embedded in cool red filaments, while the highest-mass stars -- with greater than eight times the mass of our sun -- emit intense radiation, heating up the gas and dust around them and appearing here in blue. 

What is Ephemeris?

Q 225: Question of the Day - 28 March 2013 (Week 13)

What is Ephemeris?

Answer To Question 224

A224: Earthshine is the faint light that is reflected from the Earth onto the dark part of the moon.

Herbig-Haro 110

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of Herbig-Haro 110, a geyser of hot gas flowing from a newborn star as seen in this beautiful space wallpaper. HH 110 appears different from most other Herbig-Haro objects: in particular, it appears on its own while they usually come in pairs. Astronomers think it may be a continuation of another object called HH 270, after it has been deflected off a dense cloud of gas. This image was released July 3, 2012.

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage team (STScI/AURA)

Global View of Iapetus' Dichotomy

These two global images of Iapetus show the extreme brightness dichotomy on the surface of this peculiar Saturnian moon. The left-hand panel shows the moon's leading hemisphere and the right-hand panel shows the moon's trailing side. While low and mid latitudes of the leading side exhibit a surface almost as dark as charcoal, broad tracts of the trailing side are almost as bright as snow. The dark terrain covers about 40 percent of the surface and is named Cassini Regio. The names of the bright terrain are Roncevaux Terra (north) and Saragossa Terra (south).

Bright Moons

The Cassini spacecraft observes three of Saturn's moons set against the darkened night side of the planet. 

Saturn is present on the left this image but is too dark to see. Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is closest to Cassini here and appears largest at the center of the image. Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) is to the right of Rhea. Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) is to the left of Rhea, partly obscured by Saturn.

What is Earthshine?

Q 224: Question of the Day - 27 March 2013 (Week 13)

What is Earthshine?

Answer To Question 223

A223: The Doppler shift (or Doppler Effect) is an increase or decrease in wavelength as the object emitting the wave moves relative to the observer. For example, a train whistle seems to be higher in pitch when the train is approaching you (the waves are compressed, shortening the wavelength), and lower in pitch when it is traveling away from you (the waves are elongated, lengthening the wavelength). The same thing happens with light waves when the light source is coming or going relative to us. For example, when a star is travelling away from Earth, its light appears redder (the light waves are elongated, lengthening the wavelength); this is called the red shift. The expansion of the universe was discovered when E. Hubble observed that the light from almost all other galaxies was red-shifted. The Doppler effect was named for Johann Christian Doppler (November 29, 1803-March 17, 1853), who first realized that it existed (1842).

Magnetometer

MAVEN’s dual magnetometers will allow scientists to study the interaction between the solar wind and the Martian atmosphere, giving us a better understanding of how Mars has evolved from a warm, wet climate to the cold, arid one we see today.

Moon and Asteroids Share Cosmic History

Scientists have now discovered that studying meteorites from the giant asteroid Vesta helps scientists understand the event known as the "Lunar Cataclysm," when a repositioning of the gas giant planets destabilized a portion of the asteroid belt and triggered a solar-system-wide bombardment. Previously, researchers had only lunar samples to work with. Scientists are now using a class of meteorites known as howardite, eucrite and diogenite meteorites, that are connected to Vesta to study the lunar cataclysm, providing about three times more samples to analyze.

The left-hand mosaic of the far side of the moon is based on data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. On the right is an image of the giant asteroid Vesta from data obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. The insets show thin sections of the lunar sample 10069-13 and eucrite NWA1978. Image credit: NASA/GSFC/ASU/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA 

Webb Telescope

A full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope was built by the prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, to provide a better understanding of the size, scale and complexity of the observatory. The model is constructed mainly of aluminum and steel, weighs 12,000 lb., and is approximately 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and 40 feet tall. The model requires 2 trucks to ship it and assembly takes a crew of 12 approximately four days.Credit: Bobby Bradley/NASA

Dragon Spacecraft Returns to Earth

SpaceX has confirmed its Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:36 p.m. EDT a few hundred miles west of Baja California, Mexico, marking a successful end to the second mission contracted by NASA to deliver and return science investigations and other cargo to and from the International Space Station.

Investigations included among the returned cargo could aid in food production during future long-duration space missions and enhance crop production on Earth.

What is Doppler Shift?

Q 223: Question of the Day - 25 March 2013 (Week 13)

What is Doppler Shift?

Answer To Question 221

A221: Docking is when two spacecraft join together in space.

Meteorites Revealing Secrets of Russian Fireball

Scientists studying small pieces of the meteor that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15 are working to glean new insights into the rare impact by a space rock.

What is Docking?

Q 221: Question of the Day - 23 March 2013 (Week 12)

What is Docking?

Answer To Question 220

A220: NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) is an international network of antennas that communicate with spacecraft and perform radio astronomy and radar astronomy observations.

Cosmic Microwave Background: Big Bang Relic Explained (Infographic)

Source SPACE.com

Variation in Water Content in Martian Subsurface Along Curiosity's Traverse

This set of graphs shows variation in the amount and the depth of water detected beneath NASA's Mars rover Curiosity by use of the rover's Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument at different points along the distance the rover has driven, in meters.

Phobos: Facts About Martian Moon

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this image of the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, from a distance of about 6,800 km (about 4,200 miles).
CREDIT: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Facts about Phobos:

• Radius of moon: 6.9 miles (11.1 km)
• Semi-major axis around Mars (distance from planet's center): 5,826 miles (9,376 km)
• Closest approach: 5,738 miles (9,234 km)
• Farthest approach: 5,914 miles (9,518 km) 
• Orbit eccentricity: 0.0151
• Orbit inclination: 1.075 degrees
• Time to make one orbit: 7.65 hours
• Mass: 1.0659 x 10^16 kg
• Density: 1.872 g/cm^3
• Surface gravity: 0.0057m/s^2
• Escape velocity: 25 mph (41 km/h)

Hubble Digs Up Galactic Glow Worm

This charming and bright galaxy, known as IRAS 23436+5257, was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It is located in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia, which is named after an arrogant, vain, and yet beautiful mythical queen.