A small, but complex mass of solar plasma gyrated and spun about over the course of 40 hours above the surface of the sun on Sept. 1-3, 2015. It was stretched and pulled back and forth by powerful magnetic forces in ... Read More
25
Sep2015
24
Aug2015
Last week, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) fired its 300th laser target shot in fiscal year (FY) 2015, meeting the year’s goal more than six weeks early. In comparison, the facility completed 191 target shots in FY 2014. Located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the NIF is ... Read More
14
Jul2015
After a decade-long journey through our solar system, our New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto today, about 7,750 miles above the surface -- roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India ... Read More
02
Jul2015
NASA's Cassini probe, which has been in orbit around Saturn for over a decade, just sent back a handful of gorgeous images of the planet's rocky moon Dione. The picture above, taken on Wednesday, shows a close-up of Dione's surface with the bright rings of Saturn peeking out from ... Read More
02
Jul2015
The Sun sure has been acting up lately. Early this morning it let loose with yet another in a veritable string of flares — gargantuan explosions of radiation and solar material — many of them pointed toward Earth.
Solar material ... Read More
02
Jul2015
On Earth, we’re used to seeing a crescent moon—so much so that we barely pay attention to it. But imagine seeing three crescent moons at the same time. This is what NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured on March 25, 2015.
The rare image shows three of Saturn’s 62 moons: Titan (the largest ... Read More
30
Jun2015
The smooth blue sphere of the National Ignition Facility's (NIF) target chamber bristles with diagnostics—nuclear, optical and X-ray instruments that together provide some 300 channels for experimental data. These diagnostics provide vital information to help NIF scientists understand how well an experiment performed.... Read More
27
May2015
On April 28, 2015, a very large "solar prominence" erupted from the Sun, resulting in these awesome images recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Eruptions like this are actually quite common, and often very beautiful. The prominence itself (also sometimes known as ... Read More
27
May2015
The surface of Rhea has been sculpted largely by impact cratering, each crater a reminder of a collision sometime in the moon's history. On more geologically active worlds like Earth, the craters would be erased by erosion, volcanoes or tectonics. But on quieter worlds like Rhea, the craters remain until ... Read More
08
May2015
Luxel's LUXFilm® Polyimide, Aluminum and Palladium filters crashed into the surface of Mercury today at 8,750 mph; the end of a very successful mission.
MESSENGER was launched on August 3, 2004, and it began orbiting Mercury on ... Read More