Category Astronomy/Space

10 arcmin x 10 arcmin field showing luminosity (top) and temperature (bottom) maps of Abell 3888 before (left) and after (right) point source removal. The color scale in the luminosity map is set so that white corresponds to the maximum cluster flux. The point source is 100 times brighter than this level. The scale in the temperature map ranges from 2 to 10 keV. Credit: Andersson, K. et al., 2009

Perspective views of (top) the floor of a basin where Rodriguez and others propose in this investigation that shallow lakes could have formed within the last few tens of millions of years, and (below) the floor of a proposed Martian analog high mountain lake in the Tibetan plateau, where Rodriguez will conduct a field investigation this coming summer. The arrows in both panels identify similar ridges that surround the basin’s floor. In the Tibetan lake case, the ridges are thought to form as sediments are pushed outwards by the freezing waters. These types of ridges might be diagnostic shoreline feature of lakes that formed under extremely cold and dry Martian conditions...

This artist’s impression shows the super-Earth 55 Cancri e in front of its parent star. Using observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and new analytic software scientists were able to analyse the composition of its atmosphere. It was the first time this was possible for a super-Earth. 55 Cancri e is about 40 light-years away and orbits a star slightly smaller, cooler and less bright than our Sun. As the planet is so close to its parent star, one year lasts only 18 hours and temperatures on the surface are thought to reach around 2000 degrees Celsius. Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

The Chelyabinsk superbolide flew over the Urals early on the morning of February 15, 2013. Credit: Alex AlishevskikhThe Chelyabinsk superbolide flew over the Urals early on the morning of February 15, 2013. Credit: Alex Alishevskikh