NASA-International Space Station

This astronaut photograph shows the Calabria region of southern Italy--the toe of Italy's "boot"--outlined by the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas to the southeast and northwest, correspondingly. The water appears nearly mirror-like due to sunlight. This happening is caused by sunlight reflecting off the water surface directly back towards the observer aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS was situated over northwestern Romania, to the northeast of Calabria, when this image was taken.

The Calabrian Peninsula appears shortened and distorted due to the intense sideways viewing angle from the ISS. Such a viewpoint is termed oblique, as opposed to a nadir view, in which the astronaut is looking directly downwards towards the Earth's surface from the ISS. This highly oblique analysis also highlights two distinct cloud patterns over the Calabrian interior. Patchy, highly textured cumulus clouds are there at lower altitudes, while grey altostratus clouds are stretched out by prevailing winds at higher altitudes. The Strait of Messina, just visible at image upper right, marks the border between the coastline of Italy and the island of Sicily.

An astonishing view of Saturn from NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made Time Magazine's 2009 "Year in Pictures."The photo, released in September and dubbed "The Rite of Spring," was the first up close view from a spacecraft from Earth of Saturn's equinox, when the sun's disk is openly overhead at Saturn's equator. That sun angle illuminates the gas giant's eminent rings edge-on, opening up a new perspective.

As Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco tells Time, "The geometry discovered structures and phenomena in the rings we had never seen before. We saw this famous embellishment spring from two dimensions into three, with some ring structures soaring as high as the Rocky Mountains. It made me sense blessed." The spectacle occurs twice during each orbit Saturn makes around the sun, which takes about 10,759 Earth days, or about 29.7 Earth years. Earth experiences a similar equinox occurrence twice a year; the autumnal equinox will happen Sept. 22, when the sun will shine directly over Earth's equator.

For about a week, scientists used the Cassini orbiter to look at puffy parts of Saturn's rings trapped in white glare from the low-angle lighting. Scientists have identified about vertical clumps sticking out of the rings in a handful of places, but they could not directly measure the height and breadth of the undulations and ridges until Saturn's equinox exposed their shadows. "It's similar to putting on 3-D glasses and seeing the third dimension for the first time," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is amongst the most important events Cassini has shown us."

Time isn't the only journal recognizing NASA for outstanding imagery this year:

• The Boston Globe selected four NASA images for its three-part gallery, together with the launch of Ares 1-X.

• National Geographic's "Top Ten Space Pictures" of the year showcases pictures of Mars, Saturn and colorful views of the cosmos from Hubble and Chandra.

• The Wall Street Journal marks the passing of aeronautics pioneer Richard T. Whitcomb in the "Remembrances" part of its photo retrospective.

• USA Today features the December launch of WISE.

• Britain's Telegraph Web site offers a year in space gallery with numerous images from Hubble and other NASA spacecraft.

• Popular Science features NASA a dozen times in its gallery "The Year's Most Amazing Scientific Images," together with an Ares rocket test and a shot from NASA photographer Bill Ingalls of the April landing of the Soyuz spacecraft with the Expedition 18 crew from the International Space Station.

NASA has chosen three proposals as candidates for the agency's next space venture to an additional celestial body in our solar system. The ultimate project selected in mid-2011 may provide a better understanding of Earth's formation or perhaps the origin of life on our planet.

Like a whirl of shiny flakes dazzling in a snow globe, Hubble caught this glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13, one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky. This glittering metropolis of stars is simply found in the winter sky in the constellation Hercules and can even be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

M13 is home to over 100,000 stars and located at a distance of 25,000 light-years. These stars are packed so intimately together in a ball, approximately 150 light-years across, that they will spend their entire lives whirling around in the cluster. Near the core of this cluster, the density of stars is about a hundred times greater than the density in the neighborhood of our sun. These stars are so packed that they can, at times, slam into each other and even form a new star, called a "blue straggler."

The brightest reddish stars in the cluster are ancient red giants. These aging stars have stretched to many times their original diameters and cooled. The blue-white stars are the hottest in the cluster. Globular clusters can be found spread largely in a vast halo around our galaxy. M13 is one of nearly 150 known globular clusters immediate our Milky Way galaxy.

Globular clusters have some of the oldest stars in the universe. They probably formed before the disk of our Milky Way, so they are older than nearly all other stars in our galaxy. Studying globular clusters therefore tells us regarding the history of our galaxy. This image is a composite of archival Hubble data taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

In a major breakthrough, astronomers at NASA have revealed the most distant galaxies using the latest technique, redshift. The galaxies are found to have redshift of around 10.

‘Redshift’ is the method of measuring the distance of the object using the light shift mechanism. According to the technique, the more distant an object, the more its light is shifted to the red light region and hence the greater the redshift.

Previously, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope had prepared the deepest image ever of the Universe using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The researchers are also taking the clue from different resources like taking the photographs of the full moon. This could help the scientists in understanding the mystery of the evolution of the universe.

The other distant celestial object having the most redshift is the ‘gamma ray burst’, which has a redshift of 8.2. It was discovered in April this year. According to astronomer Garth Illingworth at the University of California, at present there are about three galaxies with redshifts of around 10. They were supposed to be existed at an early stage of evolution.

For years, astronomers have been confused by the fact that our solar system is crossing a cloud of interstellar hell. One that shouldn’t be there at all. Intergalactic plot to keep us isolated from a cosmic event? Voyager got the answer.

Using data from Voyager, they have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system. This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together ”The Fluff” and solves the long standing puzzle of how it can exist at all.

The Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had formerly suspected. This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to oppose destruction.

The Voyagers are not really inside the Local Fluff. But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it.

At least, that’s what NASA’s Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University Merav Opher says in the issue of Nature. I lean to the intergalactic plot to keep our primitive world from entering the Federation of Advanced Civilizations. That, or Ming of Mongo trying to crush our puny arses.

It’s ironic how the whole thing works. Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere protects us from the Sun’s magnetic field and radiation. Then, the Fluff is not destroying us thanks to the Sun’s magnetic field and the solar winds, which is what form the 10 billion kilometer wide heliosphere.

Though there are no plans to examine whether Saturn's moon Titan has a Santa Claus, NASA's Cassini will zoom close to Titan's north pole this weekend.

The flyby, which brings Cassini to within about 960 kilometers (600 miles) of the Titan surface at 82 degrees north latitude, will occur the evening of Dec. 27 Pacific time, or soon after midnight Universal Time on Dec. 28.

The encounter will facilitate scientists to gather more detail on how the lake-dotted north polar region of Titan changes with the seasons. Scientists will be using high-resolution radar to scan the large and several lakes in the north polar region for shape-shifting in size and depth. The ion and neutral mass spectrometer team will take baseline measurements of the atmosphere to compare with the moon's south polar region when Cassini flies by that area on Jan. 12. Cassini will also be collecting pictures for a mosaic of a bright region called Adiri, where the Huygens probe landed nearly five years ago.

Cassini will have released the Huygens probe exactly five years and three days before this latest flyby. Huygens began its expedition down to Titan on the evening of Dec. 24, 2004 California time, or early Dec. 25 Universal Time, and reached the surface Jan. 14, 2005.

Cassini last flew by Titan on Dec. 11, 2009 California time, or Dec. 12 Universal Time. Although this latest flyby is dubbed "T64," scheduling changes early in the orbital tour have made this the 65th targeted flyby of Titan.

Launched Dec. 20, 1999, the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Satellite (AcrimSat) monitors the total amount of the sun's energy reaching Earth. It is this energy, called total solar irradiance, that creates the winds, heats the land and drives ocean currents. Some scientists theorize a significant fraction of Earth's warming may be solar in origin due to small increases in the sun's total energy output since the last century. By measuring incoming solar radiation, climatologists are using AcrimSat to improve their predictions of climate change and global warming over the next century.

For more information on AcrimSat, see: http://acrim.jpl.nasa.gov/.

• Study confirms theories that Earth's liquid outer core is slowly "stirred" in a series of regularly occurring waves of motion that last for decades.


• Measurements of Earth's magnetic field from observatory stations on land and ships at sea were combined with satellite data to determine common patterns of movement within Earth's core.


• The findings give scientists new insights into Earth's internal structure, the mechanisms that generate its magnetic field, and its geology.


• Earth's magnetic field shields us from harmful solar radiation and has many practical applications, ranging from navigation to archaeology.

"Terra firma." It's Latin for "solid Earth." Most of the time, at least from our perspective here on the ground, Earth seems to be just that: solid. Yet the Earth beneath our feet is actually in constant motion. It moves through time and space, of course, along with the other objects in the universe, but it moves internally as well. The powerful forces of wind, water and ice constantly erode its surface, redistributing Earth's mass in the process. Within Earth's solid crust, faulting literally creates and then moves mountains. Hydrological changes, such as the pumping of groundwater for use by humans, cause the ground beneath us to undulate. Volcanic processes deform our planet and create new land. Landslides morph and scar the terrain. Entire continents can even rise up, rebounding from the weight of massive glaciers that blanketed the land thousands of years ago.

Indeed, the outermost layers of the celestial blue onion that is Earth-its crust and upper mantle-aren't very solid at all. But what happens if we peel back the layers and examine what's going on deep within Earth, at its very core? Obviously, Earth's core is too deep for humans to observe directly. But scientists can use indirect methods to deduce what's going on down there. A new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, by Jean Dickey of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. and co-author Olivier deViron of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, University Paris Diderot, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, has confirmed previous theoretical predictions that the churning cauldron of molten metals that make up Earth's liquid outer core is slowly being stirred by a very complex but predictable series of periodic oscillations. The findings give scientists unique insights into Earth's internal structure, the strength of the mechanisms responsible for generating Earth's magnetic field and its geology.

Peeling Back the Onion

In order to better understand what's going on inside our planet, it helps to first get a lay of the land, so to speak.

Earth has several distinct layers, each with its own properties. At the outermost layer of our planet is the crust, which comprises the continents and ocean basins. Earth's crust varies in thickness from 35 to 70 kilometers (22 to 44 miles) in the continents and 5 to 10 kilometers (3 to 6 miles) in the ocean basins. The crust is mainly composed of alumino-silicates.

Next comes the mantle. The mantle is roughly solid, though very slow motion can be observed inside of it. It is about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) thick, and is separated into an upper and lower mantle. It is here where most of Earth's internal heat is located. Large convective cells in the mantle circulate heat and drive the movements of Earth's tectonic plates, upon which our continents ride. The mantle is mainly composed of ferro-magnesium silicates.

Earth's innermost layer is the core, which is separated into a liquid outer core and a solid inner core. The outer core is 2,300 kilometers (1,429 miles) thick, while the inner core is 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) thick. The outer core is mainly composed of a nickel-iron alloy (liquid iron), while the inner core is almost entirely composed of a pure solid iron body.

Earth's "Magnetic" Personality

Scientists believe Earth's magnetic field results from movements of molten iron and nickel within its liquid outer core. These flows, which are caused by interactions between Earth's core and its mantle, are neither even, nor evenly distributed. The electrical currents generated by these flows result in a magnetic field, which is similarly uneven, moves around in location and varies in strength over time. Earth's magnetic field is also slightly tilted with respect to Earth's axis. This causes Earth's geographic north and south poles to not line up with its magnetic north and south poles--they currently differ by about 11 degrees.

In just the last 200 million years alone, Earth's magnetic poles have actually reversed hundreds of times, with the most recent reversal taking place about 790,000 years ago. Scientists are able to reconstruct the chronology of these magnetic pole reversals by studying data on the spreading of the seafloor at Earth's mid-oceanic ridges. Unlike the doomsday scenario popularized by Hollywood in the movie "2012," however, such reversals don't occur over days, but rather on geologic timescales spanning hundreds to thousands of years-very short in geologic time but comparatively long in human time. The time span between pole reversals is even longer, ranging from 100,000 to several million years.

Earth's magnetic field is essential for life on Earth. Extending thousands of kilometers into space, it serves as a shield, deflecting the constant bombardment of charged particles and radiation known as the solar wind away from Earth. These solar winds would otherwise be fatal to life on Earth. At Earth's poles, the perpendicular angle of the magnetic field to Earth there allows some of these particles to make it into our atmosphere. This results in the Northern Lights in the northern hemisphere and the Southern Lights in the southern hemisphere.

Here on the ground, Earth's magnetic field has many practical applications to our everyday lives. It allows people to successfully navigate on land and at sea, making it a critical tool for commerce. Hikers use it to find their way. Archaeologists use it to deduce the age of ancient artifacts such as pottery, which, when fired, assumes the magnetic field properties that were present at the time of its creation. Similarly, the field of paleomagnetism uses magnetism to give scientists glimpses into Earth's remote past. In addition, geophysicists and geologists use geomagnetism as a tool to investigate Earth's structure and changes taking place in the Earth.

Getting to the Core of the Matter

Since Earth's liquid core is the primary source of Earth's magnetic field, scientists can use observations of the magnetic field at Earth's surface and its variability over time to mathematically calculate and isolate the approximate motions taking place within the core.

That's what Dickey and deViron did. They combined measurements of Earth's magnetic field taken by observatory stations on land and ships at sea dating back to 1840 with those of the Danish Oersted and German CHAMP geomagnetic satellite missions, both of which were supported by NASA investments. These measurements were then used as inputs for a complex model that employs statistical time series analyses to determine how fast liquid iron is flowing within Earth's core.

"Although we do not observe the core directly, it's amazing how much we can learn about Earth's interior using magnetic field observations," said Dickey.

In order to approximate the flow of liquid in the core, the scientists visualized its motion as a set of 20 rigid cylinders, each rotating about a common point that represents Earth's axis. "Imagine that each cylinder is slowly rotating at a different speed, and you'll get a sense of the complex churning that's taking place within Earth's core," Dickey said.

The scientists analyzed the data to identify common patterns of movement among the different cylinders. These patterns represent how momentum and energy are transferred from the liquid core-mantle interface inward through the liquid core toward the inner core with diminishing amplitudes.

Their analyses isolated six slow-moving oscillations, or waves of motion, occurring within the liquid core. The oscillations originated at the boundary between Earth's core and its mantle and traveled inward toward the inner core with decreasing strength. Four of these oscillations were robust, occurring at periods of 85, 50, 35 and 28 years. Since the scientist's data set goes back to 1840, the recurrence period of the longest oscillation (85 years) is less well determined than the other oscillations. The last two oscillations identified were weaker and will require further study.

The 85- and 50-year oscillations are consistent with a 1997 study by researchers Stephen Zatman and Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., who used a different analysis technique. A later purely theoretical study by Harvard researcher Jon Mound and Bruce Buffett of the University of Chicago in 2006 showed that there should be several oscillations of this type; their predicted periods agree with the first four modes identified in Dickey and deViron's study.

"Our satellite-based results are in excellent agreement with the previous theoretical and other studies in this field, providing a strong confirmation of the existence of these oscillations," said Dickey. "These results will give scientists confidence in using satellite measurements in the future to deduce long-term changes taking place deep within our restless planet."

From Star Wars' forest moon of Endor to Pandora, the alien moon in Avatar, habitable moons have become a staple of science fiction. And now Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger reckons the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) should be able to identify anything that might be lurking out there, by studying their atmospheres and detecting key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor.

"If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade," said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).For obvious reasons, most exoplanets discovered so far are gas giants, which can't serve as homes for life as we know it. But the rocky moons which orbit them are a different matter.

"Alien moons orbiting gas giant planets may be more likely to be habitable than tidally locked Earth-sized planets or super-Earths," said Kaltenegger. "We should surely keep them in mind as we work toward the ultimate goal of finding alien life."NASA's Kepler mission looks for planets that cross in front of their host stars. Once they have found an alien Jupiter, astronomers can search for orbiting moons by examining variations in the transit duration of the gas giant.

Kaltenegger calculated what situation are best for examining the atmospheres of alien moons. She found that alpha Centauri A, the system featured in Avatar, would be an brilliant target."Alpha Centauri A is a bright, nearby star very similar to our Sun, so it gives us a strong signal" Kaltenegger explained. "You would only need a handful of transits to find water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and methane on an Earth-like moon such as Pandora."

"If the Avatar movie is correct in its vision, we could exemplify that moon with JWST in the near future," she added.

Ominous black smoke rose over California's high desert on a crisp, cold December morning in 1962, and there was no symbol of a parachute. Della Mae Bowling, the pilot's office secretary at NASA's Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, was crying as fire trucks raced across the enormous expanse of Rogers Dry Lake in the direction of the crash scene. But Bowling and others were to learn that what might have been a dreadful tragedy turned out instead to be a triumph of piloting skill.

Several years former, NASA had acquired a production Lockheed F-104A for use as a research aircraft. On April 13, 1959, Neil Armstrong ferried the supersonic jet from Lockheed's Palmdale, Calif., facility to NASA's Flight Research Center, where it was equipped with special instrumentation and re-designated as a JF-104A. It primarily served as a launch platform for parachute test vehicles and experimental sounding rockets. Later, it was used for mission support, pilot expertise and as a chase plane for other research aircraft. In all, seven NASA pilots flew the airplane 249 times.

On Dec. 20, 1962, NASA research pilot Milton O. Thompson was programmed to evaluate weather conditions over Mud Lake, Nev., in preparation for the launch of an X-15 rocket plane over that area a few hours later. Weather flights were critical because go/no-go decisions were based on real-time comments made along the planned flight path.

Thompson strapped himself into the JF-104A cockpit, taxied to the runway, took off to the northeast and climbed to cruising altitude. Visibility was clear all along his route. Upon returning to Edwards, Thompson configured the airplane so he could practice simulated X-15 landings on the clay surface of Rogers Dry Lake.

During his first approach he cut throttle, extended speed brakes and began a steep, descending turn toward a runway marked on the lakebed's surface. Decelerating, he lowered the flaps and held 300 knots indicated airspeed as he dove toward the airstrip. The jet lost altitude at a rate of 18,000 feet per minute until he leveled off at 800 feet, lit the afterburner and climbed away.

During his second approach, Thompson noticed the airplane was rolling to the left. He applied full right aileron and rudder but failed to stop the motion. Seeing his airspeed dropping rapidly, he advanced the throttle to full and relit the afterburner. As his speed increased to 300 knots the roll ceased, leaving the airplane in a 90-degree left bank. Thompson increased his speed to 350 knots to gain more control effectiveness and began to troubleshoot the problem.

Guessing that the airplane was experiencing an asymmetric control condition – either flaps or speed brakes – he repeatedly cycled the roll and yaw dampers, flap-selector switch and speed brakes. He verified that both flaps indicated "up" and visually examined the exterior of the aircraft using his rear-view mirrors. The leading-edge flaps appeared to be up and locked but he couldn't see the trailing-edge flaps. Thompson knew he was in serious trouble and wasn't sure he could land safely. It slowly dawned on him that he might have to eject.

In a last-ditch effort, Thompson radioed NASA-1 – the Flight Operations office – and urgently asked for fellow research pilot Joe Walker, who was suiting up for his X-15 mission.

"Trouble?" Walker asked.

"Right, Joe," said Thompson, "I'm running out of right aileron."

After a brief discussion, Walker decided one of the flaps might be locked in the down position and suggested that Thompson cycle the flap lever again. Thompson tried this and immediately knew it was a mistake, as the airplane started to roll rapidly. He soon realized the situation was hopeless.

"She's going, Joe!" he called.

After four complete rolls, Thompson ejected while inverted. He felt a terrible pain in his neck as the seat's rocket motor blasted him free of the airplane. His body was whipped by air blast, and he began to tumble wildly. After rocket burnout, he separated from the seat but soon realized he was still holding onto the ejection handle. His parachute opened promptly as soon as he released his grip.

Floating gently down from 18,000 feet, Thompson saw the airplane plummet nose-first into the desert and explode on the Edwards bombing range. He was breathing rapidly and felt lightheaded and slightly breathless. After several failed attempts to activate his bailout oxygen bottle, he unfastened his mask and breathed the thin, but fresh, air. He landed softly, gathered up his parachute, and walked to a nearby road.

At NASA-1, the mood was grim. Thompson hadn't had time to inform anyone that he was ejecting and nobody saw his parachute. Their faces bearing shock and tears, NASA employees stared at the column of thick, black smoke rising in the distance.

NASA Flight Operations chief Joe Vensel hopped in a car and sped across the lakebed toward the crash site, expecting the worst. To his surprise, he found Thompson waiting calmly by the roadside, apparently unharmed.

An investigation revealed that the accident had most likely been the result of an electrical malfunction in the left trailing-edge flap. The investigating board, headed by Donald R. Bellman, gave Thompson high marks for his actions.

"Throughout the emergency," the board's report read, "the pilot showed superior skill and judgment, which contributed materially to his own safety and to the understanding of the causes of the aircraft loss."

The European Space Agency has unveiled images taken by the Herschel space telescope of a stellar nursery that was shrouded in dust until now. The cloud, located 1,000 light years away in the constellation Aquila, the eagle, contains about 700 clumps of gas and dust in the course of becoming stars.

ESA astronomers say about 100 of these condensations are protostars, stars in the concluding stages of forming but not yet undergoing nuclear fusion.The image shows an area of space 65 light years across. No earlier infrared space telescope has been able to penetrate the dense clouds of dust that hide the stellar nursery from view.

The Herschel telescope contains more receptive infrared instruments than any previous telescope, the ESA says.

The image was taken Oct. 24, combining data from two dissimilar instruments on Herschel. The two bright spots in the image are caused by newborn stars that make the hydrogen gas around them shine The stellar nursery image is the first one released from the ESA's Online Showcase of Herschel Images, a library of the telescope's best images, due to go live Wednesday.

The Herschel Space Observatory was launched May 15 along with the Planck space telescope. The mirror the Herschel relies on to draw and focus light is the largest ever launched into space, with a diameter of 3.5 meters, almost 1½ times as large as the mirror on the Hubble space telescope.

The James Webb infrared space telescope, a joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency planned to go into space in 2012, will have a 6.5-metre mirror.

These two supernova leftovers are part of a new study from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory that shows how the shape of the remnant is connected to the way the progenitor star exploded. In this study, a team of researchers examined the shapes of 17 supernova remnants in both the Milky Way galaxy and a neighbor galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The results exposed that one category of supernova explosion, known as "Type Ia," generated a very symmetric, circular remnant. This type of supernova is thought to be caused by a thermonuclear bang of a white dwarf, and is often used by astronomers as a "standard candle" for measuring cosmic distances. The image in the right panel, the so- called Kepler supernova remnant, represents this type of supernova.

On the other hand, remnants tied to the "core collapse" family of supernova explosions were particularly more asymmetric, which is seen in the morphology of the G292.0+1.8 remnants (left). The research team calculated asymmetry in two ways: how spherical or elliptical the supernova remnant was and how much one side of the remnant mirrors its opposite side. In G292, the asymmetry is subtle but can be seen in elongated features defined by the brightest emission (colored white).

Out of the 17 supernova remnants sampled, ten were independently classified as the core-collapse variety, while the left over seven of them were classified as Type Ia. One of these, a remnant known as SNR 0548-70.4, was a bit of an "oddball". This one was measured a Type Ia based on its chemical abundances, but has the asymmetry of a core- collapse remnant.

NASA's Cassini Spacecraft has captured the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan, confirming the existence of liquid on the part of the moon dotted with many large, lake-shaped basins.

Cassini scientists had been looking for the sparkle, also known as a specular reflection, since the spacecraft began orbiting Saturn in 2004. But Titan's northern hemisphere, which has more lakes than the southern hemisphere, has been obscure in winter darkness. The sun only began to in a straight line illuminate the northern lakes recently as it approached the equinox of August 2009, the start of spring in the northern hemisphere. Titan's misty atmosphere also blocked out reflections of sunlight in the majority wavelengths. This unexpected image was captured on July 8, 2009, using Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

In 2008, Cassini scientists using infrared data established the presence of liquid in Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in Titan's southern hemisphere. But they were still looking for the smoking gun to confirm liquid in the northern hemisphere, where lakes are also larger. Katrin Stephan, of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin, an associate member of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team, was processing the initial image and was the first to see the glint on July 10th.

"I was instantly excited because the glint reminded me of an image of our own planet taken from orbit around Earth, showing a reflection of sunlight on an ocean," Stephan said. "But we also had to do more work to make sure the glint we were seeing wasn't lightning or an erupting volcano."Team members at the University of Arizona, Tucson, processed the image further, and scientists were able to compare the new image to radar and near-infrared-light images acquired from 2006 to 2008.

They were able to compare the reflection to the southern shoreline of a lake called Kraken Mare. The extensive Kraken Mare covers about 400,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), an area larger than the Caspian Sea, the largest lake on Earth. It is located around 71 degrees north latitude and 337 degrees west latitude.

The finding shows that the shoreline of Kraken Mare has been steady over the last three years and that Titan has an ongoing hydrological cycle that brings liquids to the surface, said Ralf Jaumann, a visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team member who leads the scientists at the DLR who work on Cassini. Of course, in this case, the liquid in the hydrological cycle is methane rather than water, as it is on Earth."These results remind us how exceptional Titan is in the solar system," Jaumann said. "But they also show us that liquid has a universal control to shape geological surfaces in the same way, no matter what the liquid is."

The Cassini-Huygens assignment is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was planned, urbanized and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

A man-made spacecraft has measured a minus 249 degree Celsius spot on the Earth's moon in a bid to identify the coldest place in the Solar System. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has calculated temperatures at the southwestern edge of the floor of the moon's Hermite Crater. The findings show the temperature of the environment reached as low as minus 249 degrees Celsius.

"The moon has one of the most extreme thermal environments of anybody in the Solar System," said Professor David Paige of the University of California in Los Angeles. It is believed that such an environment could conceal volatile substances that require extremely cold temperatures for storage during extended periods.

“These regions are cold enough to trap a wide range of compounds such as water, carbon dioxide, and various organic molecules,” Paige said. NASA plans to use the information to design shelters and operating procedures for future human excursions to the moon.

Just in time for the holidays: a Hubble Space Telescope picture postcard of hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most meticulous view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood.

The gigantic, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Numerous of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years.

The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years. The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can determine individual stars, giving astronomers significant information about the stars' birth and evolution.

The brilliant stars are carving deep cavities in the adjacent material by unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light, and hurricane-force stellar winds (streams of charged particles), which are etching away the persistent hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born. The image reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys, as well as a dark region in the center that roughly looks like the outline of a holiday tree. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, the brilliant stars can also help create a consecutive generation of offspring. When the winds hit dense walls of gas, they create shocks, which may be generating a new wave of star birth.

The movement of the LMC around the Milky Way may have triggered the enormous cluster's formation in several ways. The gravitational tug of the Milky Way and the companion Small Magellanic Cloud may have compressed gas in the LMC. Also, the pressure resulting from the LMC plowing through the Milky Way's halo may have condensed gas in the satellite. The cluster is a rare, nearby example of the many super star clusters that formed in the distant, early universe, when star birth and galaxy contacts were more frequent. Previous Hubble observations have shown astronomers that super star clusters in faraway galaxies are omnipresent.

The LMC is situated 170,000 light-years away and is a member of the Local Group of Galaxies, which also includes the Milky Way.The Hubble observations were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most gigantic stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in visible light in the Kuiper Belt, a enormous ring of icy debris that is surrounding the outer rim of the solar system just beyond Neptune, NASA said.

The object found by Hubble is only 3,200 feet across and a massive 4.2 billion miles away. The smallest Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) seen before in reflected light is roughly 30 miles across, or 50 times larger.

This is the first observational proof for a population of comet-sized bodies in the Kuiper Belt that are being ground down through collisions. The Kuiper Belt is therefore collisionally developing, meaning that the region's icy content has been modified over the past 4.5 billion years.

The object detected by Hubble is so faded, at 35th magnitude; it is 100 times dimmer than what the Hubble can see directly, according to NASA.

The US space agency released seven years of carbon emissions data that link swiftly accelerated global warming to increased humidity, a move well-timed to quell growing controversy about data connected to global warming. As world leaders prepared to meet Friday in Copenhagen at the end of two weeks of slow negotiations on climate change, NASA researchers in Pasadena, California, said that the data on carbon dioxide had been "extensively validated."

The information was collected by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft. It measures carbon dioxide concentrations 5 to 12 kilometers above Earth's surface and tracks its movement, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.

Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said AIRS observations established climate model predictions that as the climate warms, the atmosphere would become more humid, thus more than doubling the warming effect of increased carbon dioxide.

"The suggestion of these studies is that, should greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current course of increase, we are almost certain to see Earth's climate warm by several degrees Celsius in the next century unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in Earth's climate system," Dessler said in a NASA statement.

NASA did not say why it chose this meticulous time to release its seven years of data.

Technology firm Cisco Systems and the NASA space agency launched a $100 million plan on to monitor the earth's resources, aiming to improve transparency of national commitments under a new climate treaty.

World leaders and ministers from more than 190 countries are meeting this week, trying to agree the outline of a new climate pact to thrive the Kyoto Protocol. Proof of compliance with many commitments under a fresh deal, for example to cut carbon emissions and preserve forests, will depend on more sophisticated data monitoring than available now.

The aim of the Planetary Skin Institute is to help existing public and private, academic and government institutions contribute to their data and analysis, for example through new online resources."A lot of information is accessible but it's highly fractured, in a thousand different formats and a thousand different places," said Cisco's Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio.

"Over the next three years we need at least $100 million to make it work. We have commitments of over half (and) expect to hit the goal in the next month."The non-profit joint venture would intend to improve monitoring of carbon, food systems and water scarcity.

For example it could incorporate existing satellite-based and ground monitoring measurements of the carbon locked in rainforests. That may make it simpler for tropical countries to claim rewards for storing forest carbon as proposed under a new climate deal. A global network would be made up of seven hubs in Brazil, India, China, Africa, Japan, the European Union and the United States.

"At this rate, the glacier could disappear entirely over the next few decades," said the scientist, who heads a team of scientists who have been studying Yulong Mountain since 1999 for the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, a government-run think tank.

Melting waters from the Tibetan Plateau's glaciers feed many of Asia's longest rivers, including the Yangtze, Mekong and Ganges, which provide water to more than 1 billion people."There are so many cracks in the ice that it could become hazardous soon for us to continue our work on the mountain," said scientist Du Jiankuo, who is part of the team working at Yulong.

Yao Tandong, one of China's leading glaciologists, warned last year in the journal Nature that two-thirds of the country's glaciers might be gone by 2050, and has said that "the full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will ultimately lead to an ecological catastrophe."

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, lifted off over the Pacific Ocean on its way to map the entire sky in infrared light. A Delta II rocket carrying the spacecraft launched at 6:09 a.m. PST (9:09 a.m. EST) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The rocket deposited WISE into a polar orbit 326 miles above Earth.

"WISE thundered overhead, lighting up the pre-dawn skies," said William Irace, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "All systems are looking excellent, and we are on our way to considering the whole infrared sky improved than ever before."

Engineers acquired a indication from the spacecraft via NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System just 10 seconds after the spacecraft separated from the rocket. Approximately three minutes later, WISE re-oriented itself with its solar panels facing the sun to produce its own power. The next major event occurred about 17 minutes later. Valves on the cryostat, a chamber of super-cold hydrogen ice that cools the WISE instrument, opened. Because the instrument sees the infrared, or heat, signatures of objects, it must be kept at chilly temperatures. Its coldest detectors are less than minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit.

"WISE needs to be colder than the substance’s it's observing," said Ned Wright of UCLA, the mission's principal investigator. "Now we're ready to see the infrared glow from hundreds of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies."

With the spacecraft stable, cold and communicating with mission controllers at JPL, a month-long checkout and calibration is in progress. WISE will see the infrared colors of the whole sky with sensitivity and resolution far better than the last infrared sky survey, performed 26 years ago. The space telescope will spend nine months scanning the sky once, then one-half the sky a second time. The major mission will end when WISE's frozen hydrogen runs out, about 10 months after launch.

After two delays, NASA is planned to launch an unmanned orbiting observatory that promises to greatly enhance, and considerably change, humanity's understanding of the heavens.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is likely to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif., between 9:09 and 9:23 a.m. Eastern time. From its eventual orbit 325 miles above earth, it will start a blitz of picture-taking with equipment of unprecedented sensitivity. WISE will map the heavens on four infrared channels, frequencies of long-wave radiation that are unseen to the human eye and many telescopes.

Mission managers have implemented a plan to totally resolve the anomaly. This plan includes removing and replacing a suspect component on Friday, Dec. 11, allowing the Delta II to be prepared for Monday’s launch attempt. The current weather forecast calls for an 80 percent chance of suitable weather during the launch window.

WISE will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will discover hidden cosmic objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies.

New views of Saturn's moon Iapetus go with papers that detail how reddish dust swept up on the moon's orbit around Saturn and migrating ice can explicate the bizarre, yin-yang-patterned surface.

The papers, led by Cassini scientists Tilmann Denk and John Spencer, appeared online in the magazine Science on Dec. 10, 2009.

The new image in the left-hand panel of PIA11690 shows the most nearly absolute view to date of Iapetus' charcoal-dark leading hemisphere. The right-hand panel, which had been released formerly, shows the trailing hemisphere, where wide swaths are covered by bright ice. The new three-panel image PIA11689 uses false-color views in increasing levels of contrast to reveal the reddish dust that overlays the bright-dark pattern. Minimal improvement was applied to the left panel, with increasing contrast added to the middle and right-hand images.

A galaxy located billions of light-years away is imposing the attention of NASA''s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and astronomers around the globe. The galaxy is now the brightest source in the gamma-ray sky more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer.

Astronomers identify the object as 3C 454.3, an active galaxy located 7.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. But even among active galaxies, it is extraordinary.

"We are looking right down the barrel of a particle jet powered by the galaxy's super massive black hole," said Gino Tosti at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Perugia, Italy. "Some change within that jet but we don't know what is probably responsible for these flares."

Blazars, like many active galaxies, emit oppositely directed jets of particles traveling close to the speed of light when matter falls toward their central super massive black holes. What makes a blazar so bright in gamma rays is its direction: One of the jets happens to be aimed straight at us.

Most of the time, the brightest persistent source in the gamma-ray sky is the Vela pulsar, which at a distance of about 1,000 light-years lies virtually next door.

According to Massimo Villata at Italy''s Torino Observatory, 3C 454.3 also is flaring at radio and visible wavelengths, if less noticeably. "In red light, the blazar brightened by more than two and a half times to magnitude 13.7, and it is also very bright at high radio frequencies."

This composite image of data from three different telescopes shows an enduring collision between two galaxies, NGC 6872 and IC 4970. X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown in purple, while Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared data is red and optical data from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) is colored red, green and blue.

Astronomers think that super massive black holes exist at the middle of most galaxies. Not only do the galaxies and black holes seem to co-exist, they are actually inextricably linked in their evolution. To better understand this symbiotic relationship, scientists have turned to rapidly growing black holes so-called active galactic nucleus (AGN) to study how they are affected by their galactic environments.

The latest data from Chandra and Spitzer show that IC 4970, the small galaxy at the top of the image, contains an AGN, but one that is deeply cocooned in gas and dust. This means in optical light telescopes, like the VLT, there is little to see. X-rays and infrared light, however, can enter this veil of material and reveal the light show that is generated as material heats up before falling onto the black hole (seen as a bright point-like source).

Despite this obscuring gas and dust around IC 4970, the Chandra data propose that there is not enough hot gas in IC 4970 to fuel the growth of the AGN. Where, then, does the food supply for this black hole come from? The answer lies with its partner galaxy, NGC 6872. These two galaxies are in the process of undergoing a crash, and the gravitational attraction from IC 4970 has probably pulled over some of NGC 6872's deep reservoir of cold gas (seen prominently in the Spitzer data), providing a new fuel supply to power the giant black hole.

The cosmic rays have the potential to harm astronauts, spacecraft

Cosmic rays are very-high-energy particles that originate in explosions of enormous stars elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. They travel at nearly the speed of light and strike the Earth from every direction.

People on Earth are not in risk from the rays since the planet is enclosed by a defensive shield created by its atmosphere and magnetic field and activity on the sun, which creates a hard-to-penetrate bubble called the heliophere of wind and magnetic field around the solar system.

When the rays hit earth's atmosphere, they produce the radioactive beryllium-10 isotope, which is conserved in year-by-year layers of polar ice when it settles out of the atmosphere and is enclosed by snow.

Those ice cores show that in about 1700 the cosmic rays concentration was more than twice as high as it was during most of the space era. So we may be recurring to the levels of past centuries.

While a sign of the zodiac may have provided the name for the meteor shower, scientists have recognized the source as something more concrete. "We do know that the origin of the Geminids is a Near-Earth object called 3200 Phaeton," said Yeomans. "It is possibly the remains of a comet that has burned off its ices after eons looping throughout the solar system. Phaeton has a trail of pebble and dust-sized debris that stream out behind it. Once every mid-December, Earth's orbit carries it into this stream of debris."

Since all other meteors showers are due to the sand-sized particles from active comets, it seems sensible to assume that Phaeton is, or at least was, a comet. However, Phaeton has revealed no cometary activity, so it is classified as an asteroid the only asteroid to have an associated meteor shower.

"It is important to note that the orbits of Earth and Phaethon itself will not overlap," added Yeomans. "There is no chance the two will meet. But the result of our planet flying through its debris field is an occasion for science and the chance to see Mother Nature at her best."

This year the peak of the Geminids is predictable at the night of December 13/14 (9:10 pm PST/12:10 am EST/05:10 UT), coinciding with a nearly perfect new moon. Many tens of meteors per hour will be visible in the few nights surrounding those dates.

Although the image might just look like a series of lights to the untrained eye, NASA said 12 scientific papers have previously been submitted by those who studied the data contained in the image. It's entirely possible that this invention will shed more light on galaxy formation and the universe's history.

The camera was installed in May by NASA spacewalking astronauts as part of a mission to promote and restore the aging telescope.

Hubble is an association between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope.

The object, known as GJ 758 B, might be either a large planet or a "failed star," also known as a brown dwarf. The faint companion to the Sun-like star GJ 758 is expected to be 10 to 40 times as massive as Jupiter and is a "near neighbor" in our Milky Way galaxy, hovering a mere 300 trillion miles from Earth.

Also known as HiCIAO, it is part of a new generation of instruments particularly made to discover faint objects near a bright star by masking its far more intense light. They also employed a method known as angular differential imaging to capture the images.

"It's astonishing how quickly this instrument has come online and burst into the forefront," said Marc Kuchner, an exoplanet scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who was not concerned in the work.

"It looks very promising," said Christian Thalmann, one of the team's guide scientists. If it should turn out to be a second companion, he said, that would make both B and C more probable to be young planets rather than old brown dwarfs, because two brown dwarfs in such close propinquity would not remain steady for such a long period of time.

Astronomers have revealed a new kind of cosmic explosion that seems to have originated from an extremely massive star one that's over 200 times the size of our own sun.

Scientists first discovered SN2007bi, the supernova in question, in 2007, and were instantly puzzled. It finally faded just recently. "It was much brighter, and it was bright for an extremely long time," said researcher Paolo Mazzali, of the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, in the report. "We could watch this thing almost two years after it was discovered, where you normally don't see anything anymore."

The resultant explosion was about 50 to 100 times brighter than a distinctive supernova and rewrites what astronomers knew about star formation. 2N2007bi has turned out to be a pair-instability supernova, which releases protons so vigorous that they generate pairs of electrons and their anti-matter opposites, positrons, the report said. The two meet, eradicate each other, and cause the star itself to collapse, "igniting its oxygen core in a runaway nuclear explosion that eats up the whole star."

A ruddy nebula reflects the light from an enormous, nearby star in this latest image released by the Hubble Space Telescope’s operators.

The Iris Nebula is a bit mystifying. It’s not sizzling enough to emit its own light, like some nebulae do. Instead, the Iris reflects light from the star, HD 200775, which is 10 times as immense as the sun, most nebulae of this type are blue-tinged, but as you can see, it’s apparently reddish. Why?

By studying the dust’s concerto, astronomers have revealed that the filaments above and to the left of the image’s center are red because of an anonymous chemical, likely hydrocarbon based. They’re now working to figure out what the accurate compound is.

The study of objects like the Iris, which is situated about 1,400 light-years away in the Cephelus constellation, have come a long way since Sir William Herschel first discovered it in 1794. Not only can the Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys provide marvelous detail, but Hubble’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer can be used to examine the chemical makeup of celestial bodies.

Zoomed out beyond, the composite image below shows precisely why the Iris Nebula is so named.

Like Earth and other planets, Saturn's orbit is not completely circular, but is instead somewhat elliptical and oblique. Because of this, during its southern summer, Titan is about 12 percent nearer to the sun than during the northern summer. As a result, northern summers are extensive and subdued; southern summers are short and extreme.

"Like Earth, Titan has tens-of-thousands-of-year variations in climate driven by orbital motions," Aharonson said. On Earth, these variations, well-known as Milankovitch cycles, are associated to changes in solar radiation, which concern global redistribution of water in the form of glaciers, and are believed to be responsible for ice-age cycles. "On Titan, there are long-term climate cycles in the worldwide movement of methane that make lakes and carve lake basins. In both cases we discover a record of the process embedded in the geology," he added.

"We may have established an example of long-term climate change, similar to Milankovitch climate cycles on Earth, on another object in the solar system," he said.