Gaia discovers its first supernova

Gaia discovers its first supernova

European Space Agency ESA Space News Update

European Space Agency ESA Space News Update

ScienceCasts: Re-thinking an Alien World

ScienceCasts: Fruit Flies on the International Space Station

Neutron stars at odds

Neutron stars at odds

HUBBLE LOOKS INTO SPACE AND FINDS IT INTERESTING

FROM:  NASA 

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a variety of intriguing cosmic phenomena. Surrounded by bright stars, towards the upper middle of the frame we see a small young stellar object (YSO) known as SSTC2D J033038.2+303212. Located in the constellation of Perseus, this star is in the early stages of its life and is still forming into a fully-grown star. In this view from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys(ACS) it appears to have a murky chimney of material emanating outwards and downwards, framed by bright bursts of gas flowing from the star itself. This fledgling star is actually surrounded by a bright disk of material swirling around it as it forms — a disc that we see edge-on from our perspective. However, this small bright speck is dwarfed by its cosmic neighbor towards the bottom of the frame, a clump of bright, wispy gas swirling around as it appears to spew dark material out into space. The bright cloud is a reflection nebula known as [B77] 63, a cloud of interstellar gas that is reflecting light from the stars embedded within it. There are actually a number of bright stars within [B77] 63, most notably the emission-line star LkHA 326, and it nearby neighbor LZK 18. These stars are lighting up the surrounding gas and sculpting it into the wispy shape seen in this image. However, the most dramatic part of the image seems to be a dark stream of smoke piling outwards from [B77] 63 and its stars — a dark nebula called Dobashi 4173. Dark nebulae are incredibly dense clouds of pitch-dark material that obscure the patches of sky behind them, seemingly creating great rips and eerily empty chunks of sky. The stars speckled on top of this extreme blackness actually lie between us and Dobashi 4173. European Space Agency Credit: ESA/NASA

Hang out with Rosetta

Hang out with Rosetta

Week In Images

Week In Images

Update on Galileo launch injection anomaly

Update on Galileo launch injection anomaly

INTEGRAL catches dead star exploding in a blaze of glory

INTEGRAL catches dead star exploding in a blaze of glory

Galileo liftoff

Galileo liftoff

Light of life

Light of life

Mars Deep down

Mars Deep down

THE 'BONANZA KING' AND MARS

FROM:  NASA

The pale rocks in the foreground of this fisheye image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover include the "Bonanza King" target under consideration to become the fourth rock drilled by the Mars Science Laboratory mission.  No previous mission has collected sample material from the interior of rocks on Mars. Curiosity delivers the drilled rock powder into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover. Curiosity's front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Hazcam), which has a very wide-angle lens, recorded this view on Aug. 14, 2014, during the 719th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars.  The view faces southward, looking down a ramp at the northeastern end of sandy-floored "Hidden Valley." Wheel tracks show where Curiosity drove into the valley, and back out again, earlier in August 2014.  The largest of the individual flat rocks in the foreground are a few inches (several centimeters) across.  For scale, the rover's left front wheel, visible at left, is 20 inches (0.5 meter) in diameter.  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover and the rover's Navcam. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

ESA and CNES experts ready for Galileo’s first orbits

ESA and CNES experts ready for Galileo’s first orbits