A strange formation that resembles a bear’s face was captured on the surface of the Red Planet by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter last month.
Two perfectly placed craters make up the eyes, a hill with a “V-shaped collapse structure” makes up the nose, and a circular fracture pattern forms the head, according to the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, which controls the orbiter’s camera.
“The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater,” the lab explained. “Maybe the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?”
The University of Arizona released this photo of a formation on the surface of Mars that resembles a bear’s face. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona)
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which lifted off from Earth in 2005, is just one of multiple spacecrafts NASA is using to explore the Red Planet.
NASA MARS ROVER DISCOVERS WEIRD STRING-LIKE OBJECT THAT GOES VIRAL
Last year, the Curiosity rover snapped a photo of what appears to be a door carved into the otherworldly landscape. The internet went wild with speculation, but the Curiosity team later clarified that it’s just “a natural geologic feature.”
NASA’s Curiosity rover took a photograph of what appears to be a door on Mars last year. (NASA)
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NASA retired the InSight Mars lander after four years on the planet last month after it ran out of power.
Perseverance, NASA’s other rover on the Red Planet, has been collecting rock samples with its robotic arm and exploring Mars’ landscape since 2021.
Paul Best is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Story tips and ideas can be sent to Paul.Best@fox.com and on Twitter: @KincaidBest.
The European Space Agency has released its image of the month for January, and it is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a stunning shot from the Webb Space Telescope.
At the bottom of the image is LEDA 2046648, a spiral galaxy over one billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules. Behind LEDA is a field of more distant galaxies, ranging from spiral shapes to pinpricks of light in the distant universe.
Webb launched from French Guiana in December 2021; its scientific observations of the cosmos began in July. Webb has imaged distant galaxies, exoplanets, and even shed new light on worlds in our local solar system.
Though this image was only just released, it was taken during the commissioning process for one of Webb’s instruments, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), according to an ESA release. While NIRISS was focused on a white dwarf—the core remnant of a star—Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) turned its focus to LEDA 2046648 and its environs in the night sky.
One of Webb’s primary objectives in looking at the distant universe is to better understand how the first stars and galaxies formed. To that end, the telescope is looking at some of the most ancient light in the universe, primarily through its instruments NIRCam and MIRI.
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The image does contains hundreds of light sources our eye can perceive, but the infrared data from which the image was formed certainly records many more galaxies.
Webb’s deep field imagery is what enables scientists to see some of the most ancient light in the universe, often capitalizing on gravitational lensing (the magnification of distant light due to the gravitational warping of spacetime) to see particularly ancient sources.
Though this shot of LEDA 2046648 is not a deep field, it evokes a similar feeling: awe, at the huge scale of the cosmos, and (if only briefly) the realization that our minds can only comprehend a fraction of it.
More: Zoom in on Webb Telescope’s Biggest Image Yet
The European Space Agency has released its image of the month for January, and it is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a stunning shot from the Webb Space Telescope.
At the bottom of the image is LEDA 2046648, a spiral galaxy over one billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules. Behind LEDA is a field of more distant galaxies, ranging from spiral shapes to pinpricks of light in the distant universe.
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Webb launched from French Guiana in December 2021; its scientific observations of the cosmos began in July. Webb has imaged distant galaxies, exoplanets, and even shed new light on worlds in our local solar system.
Though this image was only just released, it was taken during the commissioning process for one of Webb’s instruments, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), according to an ESA release. While NIRISS was focused on a white dwarf—the core remnant of a star—Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) turned its focus to LEDA 2046648 and its environs in the night sky.
One of Webb’s primary objectives in looking at the distant universe is to better understand how the first stars and galaxies formed. To that end, the telescope is looking at some of the most ancient light in the universe, primarily through its instruments NIRCam and MIRI.
The image does contains hundreds of light sources our eye can perceive, but the infrared data from which the image was formed certainly records many more galaxies.
Webb’s deep field imagery is what enables scientists to see some of the most ancient light in the universe, often capitalizing on gravitational lensing (the magnification of distant light due to the gravitational warping of spacetime) to see particularly ancient sources.
Though this shot of LEDA 2046648 is not a deep field, it evokes a similar feeling: awe, at the huge scale of the cosmos, and (if only briefly) the realization that our minds can only comprehend a fraction of it.
More: Zoom in on Webb Telescope’s Biggest Image Yet
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Perseverance’s Three Forks Sample Depot Selfie: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took a selfie with several of the 10 sample tubes it deposited at a sample depot it is creating within an area of Jezero Crater nicknamed “Three Forks.” Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Ten sample tubes, capturing an amazing variety of Martian geology, have been deposited on
Throughout its science campaigns, the rover has been taking a pair of samples from rocks the mission team deems scientifically significant. One sample from each pair taken so far now sits in the carefully arranged depot in the “Three Forks” region of Jezero Crater. The depot samples will serve as a backup set while the other half remain inside Perseverance, which would be the primary means to convey samples to a Sample Retrieval Lander as part of the campaign.
NASA Sample Retrieval Lander: This illustration shows a concept for a proposed NASA Sample Retrieval Lander that would carry a small rocket (about 10 feet, or 3 meters, tall) called the Mars Ascent Vehicle to the Martian surface. After being loaded with sealed tubes containing samples of Martian rocks and soil collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, the rocket would launch into Mars orbit. The samples would then be ferried to Earth for detailed analysis. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mission scientists believe the igneous and sedimentary rock cores provide an excellent cross-section of the geologic processes that took place in Jezero shortly after the crater’s formation almost 4 billion years ago. The rover also deposited an atmospheric sample and what’s called a “witness” tube, which is used to determine if samples being collected might be contaminated with materials that traveled with the rover from Earth.
The titanium tubes were deposited on the surface in an intricate zigzag pattern, with each sample about 15 to 50 feet (5 to 15 meters) apart from one another to ensure they could be safely recovered. Adding time to the depot-creation process, the team needed to precisely map the location of each 7-inch-long (18.6-centimeter-long) tube and glove (adapter) combination so that the samples could be found even if covered with dust. The depot is on flat ground near the base of the raised, fan-shaped ancient river delta that formed long ago when a river flowed into a lake there.
“With the Three Forks depot in our rearview mirror, Perseverance is now headed up the delta,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at
WATSON Documents Final Tube Dropped at ‘Three Forks’ Sample Depot: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover dropped the last of 10 tubes at the “Three Forks” sample depot on Jan. 28, 2023, the 690th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Next Science Campaign
Passing the Rocky Top outcrop represents the end of the rover’s Delta Front Campaign and the beginning of the rover’s Delta Top Campaign because of the geologic transition that takes place at that level.
“We found that from the base of the delta up to the level where Rocky Top is located, the rocks appear to have been deposited in a lake environment,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at Caltech. “And those just above Rocky Top appear to have been created in or at the end of a Martian river flowing into the lake. As we ascend the delta into a river setting, we expect to move into rocks that are composed of larger grains – from sand to large boulders. Those materials likely originated in rocks outside of Jezero, eroded and then washed into the crater.”
Perseverance’s ‘Three Forks’ Sample Depot Map: This map shows where NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover dropped each of its 10 samples – one half of every pair taken so far – so that a future mission could pick them up. After five weeks of work, the sample depot was completed Jan. 24, 2023, the 687th day, or sol, of the mission. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One of the first stops the rover will make during the new science campaign is at a location the science team calls the “Curvilinear Unit.” Essentially a Martian sandbar, the unit is made of sediment that eons ago was deposited in a bend in one of Jezero’s inflowing river channels. The science team believes the Curvilinear Unit will be an excellent location to hunt for intriguing outcrops of sandstone and perhaps mudstone, and to get a glimpse at the geological processes beyond the walls of Jezero Crater.
More About the Mission
One of the key objectives for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will analyze the planet’s geology and past climate, lay the foundation for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to gather Martian rock and soil samples.
Later NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
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As a NASA orbiter turned its camera to the Martian surface, the face of a bear seemed to be looking back.
A camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, called the High Resolution Imaging Experiment, or HiRISE, captured an image of the unusual geological feature in December.
A circular fracture pattern on the Martian surface shapes the head, while two craters resemble eyes. A V-shaped collapsestructure creates the illusion of the nose of a bear.
The circular fracture might be due to the settling of a deposit on top of a buried impact crater that had been filled in with lava or mud. The noselike feature is possibly a volcanic vent or a mud vent.
The University of Arizona, which developed the camera with Ball Aerospace, shared the image on January 25.
The photo is reminiscent of another celestial “face” glimpsed by a NASA space observatory in October 2022, when the sun appeared to smile due to dark spots called coronal holes.
And last March, the Curiosity rover spotted a rock formation that resembled a flower on Mars.
The HiRISE camera has been taking images of Mars since 2006, when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter began circling the red planet. The powerful camera was designed to capture detailed images of the Martian surface, including features as small as 3 feet (1 meter).
The orbiter circles Mars every 112 minutes, flying from about 160 miles (255 kilometers) above the south pole to 200 miles (320 kilometers) over the north pole.
The spacecraft and its suite of instruments help NASA scientists study the Martian atmosphere, weather and climate, and how they change over time. The orbiter searches for evidence of water, ice and complex terrain and scouts future landing sites for other missions.
Most recently, the orbiter returned stunning images of what winter looks like on Mars.
Holiday decorations may have come down already on Earth, but a nebula located 7,000 light-years away is keeping the festive spirit alive.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning image of a small region of Westerhout 5, also known as the Soul Nebula, glowing red. The suffusion of red light is caused by H-alpha emission, which happens when very energetic electrons within hydrogen atoms lose energy, causing the release of this distinctive red light, Hubble representatives wrote in a description of the image.
This red light also reveals a range of fascinating features, such as a so-called free-floating evaporating gaseous globule (frEGG). Seen as a dark, tadpole-shaped region in the upper center left of the image, this frEGG is officially named KAG2008 globule 13 and J025838.6+604259.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
The Soul Nebula, located 7,000 light-years from Earth, is infused with a red glow in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sahai)
This and other frEGGs belong to a special class of evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs), which occur in nebulas when energetic radiation from young, hot stars ionizes surrounding gas by stripping away electrons. This causes the gas to disperse away from those bright stars in a process called photoevaporation, which may help to halt star formation in nebulas.
In EGGs, the gas is so dense that this photoevaporation process happens much more slowly than it does in surrounding regions of gas. This slower photoevaporation and the protection of gas from dispersal allow gas to remain dense enough to collapse and form protostars, which eventually go on to become full-fledged stars. This means astronomers are interested in frEGGs and EGGs because they are the areas of nebulas where star birth may have once taken place.
Astronomers discovered the existence of EGGs only recently. A prominent example of these structures is located at the tips of the Pillars of Creation in a 1995 Hubble image of the nebula. frEGGs are an even newer find; they are distinct from EGGs because they are detached from surrounding gas, giving them a distinct tadpole-like shape.
The Soul Nebula is the partner of another nebula that will have its image widely shared as Valentine’s Day approaches: the Heart Nebula. Officially known as IC 1805, the massive cloud of gas and dust is so named because the glowing hydrogen content makes it resemble a pink heart. At 7,500 light-years away, the Heart Nebula can be snapped by amateur astrophotographers, making it one of the most commonly shared space images around Feb. 14.
The “Heart and Soul” nebula complex forms a vast star-forming region that spans 300 light-years, with the two nebulas joined by a bridge of gas. Both nebulas are packed with bright stars that are just a few million years old, veritable infants compared with our nearly 5 billion-year-old sun.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning new image of the bright variable star V 372 Orionis and a companion star.
The NASA and European Space Agency telescope snapped the stars, which lie in the Orion Nebula, a region of stellar formation located around 1,450 light-years away from Earth.
The companion star is seen in the upper left corner.
V 372 Orionis is a particular type of variable star known as an Orion Variable.
NASA SUCCESSFULLY TESTS NEW ENGINE FOR DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION
The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Bally, M. Robberto)
Patchy gas and dust of the Orion Nebulae are seen throughout the image. Orion Variables are commonly associated with diffuse nebulae.
The image from the team overlays data from two of the telescope’s instruments — the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3.
The data at infrared and visible wavelengths were layered to reveal details of the area.
An astronaut aboard the space shuttle Atlantis captured this image of the Hubble Space Telescope May 19, 2009. (NASA)
NASA AND DARPA TO DEVELOP NUCLEAR THERMAL ROCKET ENGINE THAT MAY PUT HUMANS ON MARS: REPORT
Notably, the diffraction spikes that surround the brightest stars of the image were formed when an intense point source of light interacted with the four vanes inside Hubble that support the telescope’s secondary mirror.
In this April 13, 2017, photo provided by NASA, technicians lift the mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope using a crane at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. (Laura Betz/NASA via AP, File)
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Comparatively, those of the James Webb Space Telescope are six-pointed due to its hexagonal mirror segments and 3-legged support structure for the secondary mirror.
Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News and Fox Business Digital.
HONOLULU — A camera atop Hawaii’s tallest mountain has captured what looks like a spiral swirling through the night sky.
Researchers believe it was from the launch of a military GPS satellite that lifted off earlier on a SpaceX rocket in Florida.
The images were captured on Jan. 18 by a camera at the summit of Mauna Kea outside the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru telescope.
A time-lapse video shows a white orb spreading out and forming a spiral as it moves across the sky. It then fades and disappears.
Ichi Tanaka, a researcher at the Subaru telescope, said he was doing other work that night and didn’t immediately see it. Then a stargazer watching the camera’s livestream on YouTube sent him a screenshot of the spiral using an online messaging platform.
“When I opened Slack, that is what I saw and it was a jaw-dropping event for me,” Tanaka said.
He saw a similar spiral last April, also after a SpaceX launch, but that one was larger and more faint.
SpaceX launched a military satellite the morning of Jan. 18 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The location of the spiral matched where the second stage of the SpaceX rocket was expected to be after its launch.
SpaceX didn’t respond to an email sent Friday seeking comment.
Tanaka said the observatory installed the camera to monitor the surroundings outside the Subaru telescope and to share Mauna Kea’s clear skies with the people of Hawaii and the world.
Someone watching the sky in less clear conditions, for example from Tokyo, might not have seen the spiral, he said.
The livestream is jointly operated with the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese newspaper, and frequently gets hundreds of viewers. Some tune in to watch meteors streak across the sky.
The summit of Mauna Kea has some of best viewing conditions on Earth for astronomy, making it a favored spot for the world’s most advanced observatories. The summit is also considered sacred by many Native Hawaiians who view it as a place where the gods dwell.
How many stars can you count when you look up into the clear night sky? Not nearly as many as the Dark Energy Camera in Chile. Scientists released a survey of a portion of our home Milky Way galaxy that contains 3.32 billion celestial objects, including billions of stars.
The National Science Foundation’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) operates DECam as part of an observatory project in Chile. The new astronomical dataset is the second release from the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2). NOIRLab called it “arguably the largest such catalog compiled to date” in a statement on Wednesday.
Casual viewers can enjoy NOIRLab’s smaller-resolution version of the survey that gives a sweeping overview. For those who like to dive into the details, this web viewer lets you go deeper on the data.
This wide strip of the Milky Way contains billions of celestial objects as part of the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey.
DECaPS2/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)
The camera used optical and near-infrared wavelengths of light to spot stars, star-forming regions and clouds of gas and dust. “Imagine a group photo of over 3 billion people and every single individual is recognizable,” said Debra Fischer of the NSF. “Astronomers will be poring over this detailed portrait of more than 3 billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come.”
The survey looks at the Milky Way’s disk, which appears as a bright band running along the image. It’s packed with stars and dust. There’s so much of both it can be hard to pick out what’s happening. Stars overlap. Dust hides stars. It took careful data processing to sort it all out.
“One of the main reasons for the success of DECaPS2 is that we simply pointed at a region with an extraordinarily high density of stars and were careful about identifying sources that appear nearly on top of each other,” said Harvard University graduate researcher Andrew Saydjari, lead author of a paper on the survey published in The Astrophysical Journal this week.
Several billion stars may sound like a bonkers number, but it’s just a small drop in the galactic bucket. NASA estimates there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. The new survey covers just 6.5% of the night sky as seen from the Southern Hemisphere.
DECaPS2 was an epic, multi-year project consisting of 21,400 individual exposures and 10 terabytes of data. NOIRLab’s description of the survey as a “gargantuan astronomical data tapestry” is fitting. We’ve never seen the Milky Way quite like this before. It’s beautiful and it’s humbling.
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South Korea’s first lunar probe has returned some striking images of Earth and the moon.
The Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter began orbiting the moon in December after the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s spacecraft hadlaunched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August.
The probe, also known as “Danuri” thanks to a public naming contest in the country that combined the Korean words for moon and enjoy, will orbit the moon for 11 months.
The stunning images captured by the probe showcasing Earth and the moon in black and white look like something photographer Ansel Adams might have taken had he ever enjoyed such an opportunity. The orbiter is flying at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar surface.
Data collected by the orbiter will be used to inform future lunar exploration, including the Artemis program, which eventually aims to land humans at the lunar south pole in late 2024.
The probe’s imagery could help with selecting landing sites for future Artemis missions, as well as mapping resources like water.
South Korea signed the Artemis Accords in 2021 and collaborates with NASA on lunar exploration.
The probe carries six instruments, including the NASA-funded ShadowCam, developed by Arizona State University.
Universities and research institutes in South Korea developed the probe’s high-resolution camera to scout future landing sites, a polarized camera to analyze surface particles, an instrument to measure the lunar magnetic field and a gamma-ray spectrometer to identify elements in the lunar surface.
ShadowCam’s main objective is to take images of the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles that will help researcherssearching for ice, mapping terrain and watching for seasonal changes.
ShadowCam is several hundred times more sensitive than the cameras on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, enabling it to take detailed images in incredibly low-light conditions.
The probe recently used ShadowCam to peer inside Shackleton crater, one of the permanently shadowed regions on the lunar surface.
Previous images taken of this crater by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were able to spot its illuminated rim, but ShadowCam could actually see the interior, including the crater floor and boulder tracks that rocks left behind after tumbling inside.
Officials atthe Korea Aerospace Research Institute, or KARI, seesthe Danuri orbiter as a “first step for ensuring and verifying its capability of space exploration,” according to the organization.
The US, Russia, Japan, China, European Union and India have all sent missions to the moon, and South Korea wants to dive into space exploration and develop its own missions.
“Korea is planning to successfully land onto the surface of the Moon or asteroids and make safe return,” according to the institute. “Korea is expecting to achieve strategic space technologies.”
In addition to the orbiter, KARI aims to make an initial lunar landing on the moon by 2030.
