From Dream to Discovery: Inside NASA Engineering - Video

Experience the challenges of the next generation of space exploration in this brand-new Planetarium show.

By using exciting real-life projects like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the show highlights the extreme nature of spacecraft engineering and the life cycle of a space mission, from design and construction to the rigors of testing, launch, and operations.

Blast off and take the voyage with NASA!

Scientists' research supports discovery mission into Asteroid cores

Dr. Richard S. Miller’s research could influence future asteroid mining operations and how we might deal with an impending strike.

Future asteroid mining operations and how we deal with an impending strike could be influenced by research on a potential NASA mission that's being done by team that includes a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) scientist.

"If you identify an asteroid coming toward us, how you deal with it could depend on its density and structure," says Dr. Richard S. Miller, a UAH physics professor.

"Likewise, if this technique pans out, you could imagine sending out a specialized telescope to determine what the densities and interior structure of various asteroids are, then decide on the basis of that information what ones to mine."

Little is now known about asteroid interior density and composition. Are they uniform or are they what astrophysicists call differentiated bodies, having denser and less-dense areas?

"Asteroids are time capsules of the early solar system," Dr. Miller says.

"We know about their surface properties and we can also infer the mass of some asteroids. But what we want to do is actually probe the interior of asteroids and determine information about their structure, are there interior density gradients, what is the composition, is it solid or like Swiss cheese, and do they have cores or not? Is it a pile of rubble?

It turns out this structure can tell us a great deal about the conditions present during the early epochs of solar system formation and its evolution."

To find that out, the team's scientists will be borrowing imaging technology concepts developed for medicine and high-energy physics.

They are developing a mission concept to probe asteroids using a technique similar to human computerized tomography (CT) scans.

Dr. Miller is a co-investigator in a collaborative effort with the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), NASA's Johnson Space Center, the Universities Space Research Association's Arecibo Observatory (Arecibo/USRA) and the University of Houston to do the fundamental research and design that could lead to such a mission.

Led by principal investigator Dr. Tom Prettyman, senior scientist at PSI, the group has $500,000 in funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase II program.

The team's two-year proposal, "Deep Mapping of Small Solar System Bodies with Galactic Cosmic Ray Secondary Particle Showers," is one of only five projects selected for funding.

Other funded collaborators include Dr. Steven Koontz, NASA Johnson Space Center; Dr. Michael Nolan, Arecibo/USRA; Dr. Lawrence Pinsky, University of Houston; and Dr. Mark Sykes, PSI.

By detecting the number of muons that pass through the object at left, scientists can discover and measure the size of its core, shown reconstructed at right. 

Credit: Richard S. Miller / UAH

The team proposes using ever-present cosmic rays to perform its measurements.

All objects in space are constantly bombarded by these particles, which are thought to be the remnants of massive supernovas and are primarily protons. On Earth, the atmosphere breaks them up and shields us from direct hits.

"In space, on contact with dense matter like the moon's surface or other airless planetary bodies, they interact within the first few centimeters of depth and create a shower of particles," Dr. Miller says.

Studying those interactions has provided us surface knowledge of asteroids. "But cosmic rays also contain muons, which are particles similar to electrons, but which can go a lot farther into the asteroid, in some cases up to one kilometer."

The idea is to position a telescope to orbit the asteroid and measure the number and trajectories of the muons passing through it.

"Muons are like an SUV," says Dr. Miller. "Once they are moving it is not easy to knock them off their course."

An asteroid composed of varying densities of material would return a different pattern than one with a single density, just as a CT scan differentiates between densities of structures in the body.

Likewise, if an asteroid has a denser core, it will stop muons from passing through and the telescope will detect the change.

That process is called muon tomography and is well understood. Developed in the 1950s, it was even used in the 1960s by Luis Alvarez to map the Pyramid of Chephren.

"What's different about a CT scan is that instead of using cosmic rays and muons to determine densities, a CT scan uses x-rays," Dr. Miller says.

To mature the concept, the scientists must first solve a number of fundamental challenges. They'll be using computer modeling to work on:

• Detailed estimates of the particle signatures, including muons and other radiations that will be present in deep space and in the neighbourhood of any asteroids;
• Doing the initial work on the muon telescope's design and operation. There are competing ideas, and the team will evaluate a variety of performance tradeoffs; 
• The development and implementation of advanced algorithms for asteroid structure reconstruction;
• Establishing the preliminary outlines of how a proposed NASA mission would be conducted, its feasibility and making predictions of the ultimate science return. 

"What it has to do is detect those muons and give us a direction they are coming from," Dr. Miller says of the telescope, but getting to that goal involves tradeoffs.

For example, the bigger the area the telescope can scan as it orbits, the less time it will take to get results encompassing an entire asteroid being studied.

But the greater the telescope's size, the more resources will be involved to launch the mission. Also, to tell where the muons are coming from, the telescope will have to be able to tell directional "up" from "down."

Dr. Miller says he was already exploring using muons to probe asteroids when he attended a conference and found that PSI's Dr. Prettyman was working on the same thing.

"This is a good story of how you had two independent groups who were both looking at the same idea," Dr. Miller says, "and we have joined forces to make a stronger project."

Spitzer Space telescope Image: Stars Forming Inside Serpent constellation

Serpens Cloud Core (Infrared)

Spitzer spotted this star nursery in the Serpens constellation.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/2MASS

A NASA space telescope has peeled back the dusty veil around the Serpent constellation to reveal a cluster of newborn stars.

The baby stars were spotted by NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope in the Serpens Cloud Core, a stellar nursery that is home to one of the youngest collections of stars astronomers have observed in the Milky Way.

It's about 750 light-years away from Earth and is part of the snake-shaped Serpens (or "Serpent") constellation.

The new view combines 82 images taken over more than 16 hours by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which has been scanning the cosmos in non-visible, infrared light for the last decade.

Serpens Cloud Core (Optical)

The image also incorporates observations from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), an infrared survey of the whole sky that was completed in 2001 using ground-based telescopes.

The newborn stars appear in red, orange and yellow, and a cloud of excess gas is shown in blue.

Clouds of dust shroud the Serpens Cloud Core, hiding its star nursery in visible wavelengths of light (the only kind of light humans can see), but an infrared telescope like Spitzer can reveal unseen cosmic objects by collecting longer, invisible wavelengths of light in the infrared spectrum.

Still, the dark patch on the left side of the center of the image shows a spot cloaked in so much dust that the infrared wavelengths were blocked.

The Serpens Cloud Core interests astronomers because it contains only small stars, and does not include any of the giant bright stars found in many other star-forming regions in the Milky Way, such as the Orion nebula.

The Earth's own sun is a medium-sized star, and astronomers are still unsure if it formed in a small star-forming region like Serpens or a large star-forming region like Orion.

SpaceX: Inside Elon Musk's Dragon V2 Spaceship (Video)

In an event worthy of a Hollywood premiere, billionaire inventor Elon Musk unveiled – quite literally – his new manned Dragon Version 2 spacecraft Thursday night (May 29).

The SpaceX plant is located in the old Northrop Grumman facility, adjacent to the Hawthorne Municipal Airport but you'd never guess it upon entering.

While the place was dressed for the occasion, it is clearly a stunning workplace, especially for an aerospace company.

The bars were staffed and libations flowed freely. Hors d' oeuvres were everywhere. The crowd, an assemblage of VIPs, current and future customers and reporters numbered many hundreds.

Employees were also well represented, recognizable by their event-specific black polo shirts with a celebration of Dragon V2 emblazoned across the front and back.

Dance club lighting and music with a thumping beat completed the festive atmosphere. Anticipation built until about 7:30 p.m., when, to loud applause and rock-concert cheers, Musk took to the stage wearing a velvet blazer and a broad smile.

"Welcome, everyone, to Hawthorne, headquarters of Space Exploration Technologies," Musk began. "We are here to unveil Dragon Version 2…"



"When we first created Dragon Version 1, we didn't really know how to create a spacecraft; we had never designed a spacecraft before."

He said that this first version of the craft had a conventional approach to landing, using parachutes to splash down off the California coast.

"An important step from that is to land anywhere, on land, propulsively," Musk said. "That's one of the things Dragon Version 2 will be able to do."

He described the landing accuracy of the new system to be equivalent to that of a helicopter. "That's something that a modern spaceship should be able to do."

After a few more comments, and after a classic launch countdown accompanied by disco lighting, he gestured to the curtained stage behind him, and the cover fluttered away to more applause, cheers and whistles.

There, in picture-perfect lighting and with a foggy mist rolling out from underneath, was the Dragon Version 2.

Comparison to the first version was easy and immediate since the first Dragon to return from orbit was hung overhead, scarred sides and heat shield clearly visible.

Version 2 is markedly larger, sports three large windows on and to each side of the hatch, and, most remarkably, four landing legs sprouting from the bottom.

The manned version of SpaceX's Dragon capsule will land using thrusters on Earth, as shown in this artist illustration. 

Credit: SpaceX 

Musk narrated a portion of his unveiling inside the Dragon Version 2 spacecraft, May 29, 2014. The control panel in front of him swings up and completely out of the way for easy entrance and egress. 

Credit: Rod Pyle

Water Leak Inside SpaceX Dragon Capsule After Splashdown

SpaceX's Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on May 18, 2014 after about one month in space.

Credit: SpaceX

Water was discovered in the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Dragon spacecraft that recently returned to Earth from a month-long stay at the international space station, but so far as NASA knew May 21, none of the agency’s cargo was damaged.

The presence of water in the spacecraft, which splashed down May 18 after a month-long mission to the station “did not cause us any impacts that we know of,” Dan Hartman, deputy program manager for the International Space Station, said in a webcast briefing from the Johnson Space Center in Houston May 21.

Some early return cargo had already been rushed back to Houston by May 21, and the rest of Dragon’s cache was due to arrive May 23, Hartman said during the briefing.

SpaceX spokeswoman Emily Shanklin did not reply to emails requesting comment May 21 and May 22.

Hartman said SpaceX will investigate the cause of the water incursion at its rocket test facility in McGregor, Texas, where all Dragon spacecraft are taken for postmission processing.

Dragon returned from the space station May 18, splashing down about 480 kilometers off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, according to a NASA press release issued that day. The spacecraft arrived May 20 at the Port of Long Beach in California, Hartman said.

News that water had been discovered in Dragon was first reported by Aviation Week and Space Technology.

The cargo-delivery mission just completed was the third of 12 that SpaceX owes NASA under the $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract the Hawthorne, California-based company signed in 2008 to haul 20 metric tons of cargo to station through 2015.

NASA plans to extend that contract to cover deliveries through 2018, and to issue a follow-on Commercial Resupply Services contract for deliveries through at least 2020. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., NASA’s other contract cargo hauler, are well positioned to get the follow-on contracts.

NASA Chandra: Inside the Flame Nebula - NGC 2024

Image credit: X-ray: NASA /CXC /PSU /K.Getman, E.Feigelson, M.Kuhn & the MYStIX team; Infrared:NASA /JPL-Caltech

Stars are often born in clusters, in giant clouds of gas and dust.

Astronomers have studied two star clusters using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes and the results show that the simplest ideas for the birth of these clusters cannot work, as described in our latest press release.

This composite image shows one of the clusters, NGC 2024, which is found in the center of the so-called Flame Nebula about 1,400 light years from Earth.

In this image, X-rays from Chandra are seen as purple, while infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are coloured red, green, and blue.

A study of NGC 2024 and the Orion Nebula Cluster, another region where many stars are forming, suggest that the stars on the outskirts of these clusters are older than those in the central regions.

This is different from what the simplest idea of star formation predicts, where stars are born first in the center of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust when the density is large enough.

The research team developed a two-step process to make this discovery. First, they used Chandra data on the brightness of the stars in X-rays to determine their masses.

Next, they found out how bright these stars were in infrared light using data from Spitzer, the 2MASS telescope, and the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT).

By combining this information with theoretical models, the ages of the stars throughout the two clusters could be estimated.

According to the new results, the stars at the center of NGC 2024 were about 200,000 years old while those on the outskirts were about 1.5 million years in age.

In Orion, the age spread went from 1.2 million years in the middle of the cluster to nearly 2 million years for the stars toward the edges.

NASA Cassini: Ocean inside Saturn's Icy Moon, Enceladus

Gravity measurements by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network suggest that Saturn's moon Enceladus, which has jets of water vapor and ice gushing from its south pole, also harbours a large interior ocean beneath an ice shell, as this illustration depicts.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network have uncovered evidence Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a large underground ocean of liquid water, furthering scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes.

Researchers theorized the presence of an interior reservoir of water in 2005 when Cassini discovered water vapor and ice spewing from vents near the moon's south pole.

The new data provide the first geophysical measurements of the internal structure of Enceladus, consistent with the existence of a hidden ocean inside the moon.

Findings from the gravity measurements are in the Friday April 4 edition of the journal Science.

"The way we deduce gravity variations is a concept in physics called the Doppler Effect, the same principle used with a speed-measuring radar gun," said Sami Asmar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., a coauthor of the paper.

"As the spacecraft flies by Enceladus, its velocity is perturbed by an amount that depends on variations in the gravity field that we're trying to measure. We see the change in velocity as a change in radio frequency, received at our ground stations here all the way across the solar system."

The gravity measurements suggest a large, possibly regional, ocean about 6 miles (10 kilometers) deep, beneath an ice shell about 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) thick.

The subsurface ocean evidence supports the inclusion of Enceladus among the most likely places in our solar system to host microbial life.

Before Cassini reached Saturn in July 2004, no version of that short list included this icy moon, barely 300 miles (500 kilometers) in diameter.

"This then provides one possible story to explain why water is gushing out of these fractures we see at the south pole," said David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, one of the paper's co-authors.

Cassini has flown near Enceladus 19 times. Three flybys, from 2010 to 2012, yielded precise trajectory measurements.

The gravitational tug of a planetary body, such as Enceladus, alters a spacecraft's flight path.

Variations in the gravity field, such as those caused by mountains on the surface or differences in underground composition, can be detected as changes in the spacecraft's velocity, measured from Earth.

The technique of analyzing a radio signal between Cassini and the Deep Space Network can detect changes in velocity as small as less than one foot per hour (90 microns per second).

With this precision, the flyby data yielded evidence of a zone inside the southern end of the moon with higher density than other portions of the interior.

The south pole area has a surface depression that causes a dip in the local tug of gravity. However, the magnitude of the dip is less than expected given the size of the depression, leading researchers to conclude the depression's effect is partially offset by a high-density feature in the region, beneath the surface.

"The Cassini gravity measurements show a negative gravity anomaly at the south pole that however is not as large as expected from the deep depression detected by the onboard camera," said the paper's lead author, Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome.

"Hence the conclusion that there must be a denser material at depth that compensates the missing mass: very likely liquid water, which is seven percent denser than ice. The magnitude of the anomaly gave us the size of the water reservoir."

There is no certainty the subsurface ocean supplies the water plume spraying out of surface fractures near the south pole of Enceladus, however, scientists reason it is a real possibility.

The fractures may lead down to a part of the moon that is tidally heated by the moon's repeated flexing, as it follows an eccentric orbit around Saturn.

Much of the excitement about the Cassini mission's discovery of the Enceladus water plume stems from the possibility that it originates from a wet environment that could be a favorable environment for microbial life.

"Material from Enceladus’ south polar jets contains salty water and organic molecules, the basic chemical ingredients for life," said Linda Spilker, Cassini's project scientist at JPL.

"Their discovery expanded our view of the 'habitable zone' within our solar system and in planetary systems of other stars. This new validation that an ocean of water underlies the jets furthers understanding about this intriguing environment."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Astronomers find faint strings of galaxies inside empty space

A simulation of the ‘Cosmic Web’ showing clusters of galaxies and a void in the middle of the image, where Dr Alpaslan and team discovered tendrils of galaxies. 

Credit: Cunnama, Power, Newton and Cui (ICRAR).

Australian astronomers have shown galaxies in the vast empty regions of the Universe are actually aligned into delicate strings in research published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A team of astronomers based at The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has found short strings of faint galaxies in what were previously thought to be extremely empty parts of space.

The Universe is full of vast collections of galaxies that are arranged into an intricate web of clusters and nodes connected by long strings.

This remarkably organized structure is often called the 'cosmic web', with busy intersections of galaxies surrounding vast spaces, empty of anything visible to us on Earth.

"The spaces in the cosmic web are thought to be staggeringly empty," said Dr Mehmet Alpaslan, who led the research.

"They might contain just one or two galaxies, as opposed to the hundreds that are found in big clusters."

These huge, empty regions are called voids, and for years, astronomers have been trying to understand the small population of galaxies that inhabit them.

Using data from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, Alpaslan and his colleagues found that the small number of galaxies inside these voids are arranged in a new way never seen before.


"We found small strings composed of just a few galaxies penetrating into the voids, a completely new type of structure that we've called 'tendrils'," said Alpaslan.

To discover tendrils, the GAMA team created the largest ever galaxy census of the southern skies using observations from the Anglo-Australian Telescope in NSW, Australia.

"Our new catalogue has looked deeper into space and mapped each patch of sky up to ten times to make sure it's as thorough as possible," said Dr Aaron Robotham from The University of Western Australia node of ICRAR.

"We weren't sure what we'd find when we looked at voids in detail, but it was amazing to find so many of these tendrils lurking in regions that have previously been classified as empty," said Robotham.

"This means that voids might be much smaller than we previously thought, and that galaxies that were previously thought to be in a void might just be part of a tendril," said Alpaslan.

The GAMA team plan to catalogue more tendrils for further study as their detailed map of the Universe expands.  

More Information: 'Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Fine laments of galaxies detected within voids' arxiv.org/pdf/1401.7331.pdf

ESA Gaia: Secured inside its fairing

ESA’s billion-star surveyor Gaia, less than a week from launch, is now tucked up inside the fairing that will protect it during the first few minutes of ascent into space.

Last week, Gaia was loaded with the propellants it will need to journey to its ‘L2’ destination, a gravitationally stable location 1.5 million km away from Earth, from where it will survey our Milky Way galaxy.

After fuelling, it was mounted on the Soyuz adapter and added to the Fregat upper stage, which will boost Gaia towards L2.

Meanwhile, the basic assembly of Soyuz – the boosters, core stage and third stage – has been completed in its integration building.

In the coming days, the Soyuz lower stages and the upper assembly containing Gaia will be transported to the launch pad and mated.

Launch is scheduled for 9:12:19 GMT (10:12:19 CET) on 19 December.

NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): Untangling motion inside the Sun

Observations by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory show a two-level system of circulation inside the sun. 

Such circulation is connected to the flip of the sun's north and south magnetic poles that occurs approximately every 11 years. 

Credit: Stanford University

Using an instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, called the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), scientists have overturned previous notions of how the sun's writhing insides move from equator to pole and back again, a key part of understanding how the dynamo works.

Modeling this system also lies at the heart of improving predictions of the intensity of the next solar cycle.

Using SDO, scientists see a performance of explosions and fountains on the solar surface. Shots of solar material leap into the air.

Dark blemishes called sunspots grow, combine and disappear as they travel across the sun's face. Bright loops of charged particles – captured by magnetic fields dancing around the sun – hover in the atmosphere.

This dynamic display is all powered by a complex, ever-changing magnetic current inside the sun known as the dynamo.

This magnetic system flips approximately every 11 years, with magnetic north and magnetic south switching poles.

This process is an integral part of the sun's progression toward a pinnacle of solar activity, known as solar maximum.

The team's recent results show that, instead of a simple cycle of flow moving toward the poles near the sun's surface and then back to the equator, the material inside the sun shows a double layer of circulation, with two such cycles on top of each other.

The results appear online in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on Aug. 27, 2013.

"For decades people have known that the solar cycle depends on the poleward flow or material, changing the magnetic fields from one cycle to the next," said Philip Scherrer, principal investigator for HMI at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif.

"We mapped out what we believed to be the flow pattern in the 1990s, but the results didn't quite make sense."

Since the mid-1990s researchers have been observing movement inside the sun using a technique called helioseismology.

The technique makes use of the fact that waves course across the sun, back and forth, oscillating with an approximately five minute period.

Such waves are similar to the seismic waves that spread out under the ground during an earthquake. By monitoring the oscillations seen at the surface of the sun, scientists can gather information about the material through which the waves traveled, including what the material is made of and how fast and in what direction it is moving.

More information: iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/774/2/L29/pdf/2041-8205_774_2_L29.pdf

Inside the ESA Cupola: NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy captures the Earth

Inside the Cupola, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, an Expedition 36 flight engineer, uses a 400mm lens on a digital still camera to photograph a target of opportunity on Earth some 250 miles below him and the International Space Station. 

Cassidy has been aboard the orbital outpost since late March and will continue his stay into September. 

 Image Credit: NASA

NASA Tracking Space Debris inside International Space Station Safety Zone

Sunlight glints off the International Space Station with the blue limb of Earth providing a dramatic backdrop in this photo taken by an astronaut on the shuttle Endeavour just before it docked after midnight on Feb. 10, 2010 during the STS-130 mission.

CREDIT: NASA

NASA is keeping a close eye on two pieces of space junk expected to whiz by the International Space Station in back-to-back passes, and the station may even have to dodge the orbital debris.

The drifting space flotsam includes the remains of a Russian Cosmos satellite and a leftover chunk of an old Indian rocket.

The Russian satellite debris will creep close to the space station on Thursday morning (Sept. 27), with the Indian rocket remnant zooming by on Friday, NASA officials reported.

As a precaution, NASA and its Russian partners began planning for a possible "debris avoidance maneuver" on Thursday morning that would steer the station clear of both pieces of space debris.

The maneuver, if ultimately required, would fire the thrusters on a European cargo ship currently docked at the station for just over two minutes to move the station clear of the space junk.

NASA and its partners traditionally order a debris avoidance maneuver when a piece of space junk is expected to pass so close that it enters a safety perimeter shaped like a pizza box that extends just over 15 miles (25 kilometers) around the space station, and a half-mile (0.75 km) above and below the orbiting lab.

NASA spokesman Rob Navias of the Johnson Space Center, home to the agency's space station Mission Control center, reported the two space debris fragments being tracked now will come just inside that safety zone.

Navias said the avoidance maneuver would be performed at 8:12 a.m. EDT (1218 GMT) on Thursday, if ultimately required.

It is possible that additional tracking of the space junk may allow station flight controllers to call off the maneuver, he added.

The Russian satellite debris will make its closest approach to the space station on Thursday at 10:42 a.m. EDT (1432 GMT), with the Indian rocket debris passing by on Friday at 1:47 a.m. EDT (0547 GMT), he added.

At no time will the station's three-person Expedition 33 crew be in danger, NASA officials said. The station is currently home to NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

NASA WISE image - Reflection Nebula inside the Pi Scorpii

Gripped in the claw of the constellation Scorpius, sits the reflection nebula DG 129, a cloud of gas and dust that reflects light from nearby, bright stars.

This infrared view of the nebula was captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Viewed in visible light, this portion of the sky seems somewhat unremarkable but in infrared light, a lovely reflection nebula is revealed.

DG 129 was first catalogued by a pair of German astronomers, named Johann Dorschner and Josef Gürtler, in 1963.

Much like gazing at Earth-bound clouds, it is fun to use your imagination when looking at images of nebulae. Some people see this nebula as an arm and hand emerging from the cosmos. If you picture the "thumb" and "forefinger" making a circle, it is as though you are seeing a celestial "okay" sign.

The bright star on the right with the greenish haze is Pi Scorpii. This star marks one of the claws of the scorpion in the constellation Scorpius. It is actually a triple-star system located some 500 light-years away. Perhaps a cross-species celestial handshake is imminent?

The colours used in this image represent different wavelengths of infrared light. The image was constructed from frames taken after WISE ran out of some of the coolant needed to chill its infrared detectors and began to warm up.

The WISE detector sensitive to 22-micron light has become too warm to produce good images, but the three shorter wavelength detectors continue to crank out over 7,000 pictures of the sky every day, like the ones that make up this picture.

Blue represents infrared radiation at 3.4 microns, while green represents light with a wavelength of 4.6 microns. Red represents 12-micron infrared light.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind

The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind

Henry the schnoodle just did a remarkable thing. Understanding a pointed finger may seem easy, but consider this: while humans and canines can do it naturally, no other known species in the animal kingdom can. Consider too all the mental work that goes into figuring out what a pointed finger means: paying close attention to a person, recognising that a gesture reflects a thought, that another animal can even have a thought. Henry, as Kivell affectionately admits, may not be "the sharpest knife in the drawer," but compared to other animals, he's a true scholar.