The moon nearly blots out the sun on January 4 during an annular eclipse captured here by Japan's Hinode satellite. During an annular eclipse, the moon is slightly farther from Earth than usual and so appears smaller than during a total eclipse—leaving the edges of the sun visible.
For example, SOFIA's mid-infrared images (right) of the region around the Messier 42 nebula uncovers a bright star cluster (upper right) that's hidden by dust clouds in images from the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
With their rare access to mid-infrared wavelengths, the SOFIA team hopes to shed new light on "how stars and planets are formed, how organic materials necessary for life form and evolve, and the nature of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy," according to NASA.
The nooks and crannies of Saturn's largest irregularly-shaped moon, Hyperion, come into sharp focus in a picture taken by NASA's Cassini orbiter on November 28, 2010, and released on Monday.
Past Cassini data have led scientists to speculate that Hyperion's craters contain molecules of hydrocarbon.
"These molecules, when embedded in ice and exposed to ultraviolet light, form new molecules of biological significance," planetary scientist Dale Cruikshank said in a 2007 statement. "This doesn't mean that we have found life, but it is a further indication that the basic chemistry needed for life is widespread in the universe."
A new study has found that these towering flares carry much hotter gas than previously detected. The discovery may help solve the mystery of why the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona—which can reach a million degrees Fahrenheit (560,000 degrees Celsius)—is so much hotter than its surface, researchers say.
Image courtesy SDO/NASA
The Lagoon Nebula, aka Messier 8—the large circular cloud at center above—bursting with color in a composite image made with data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, and released January 6.
About a hundred light-years across, the Lagoon is among the few stellar nurseries visible to the naked eye. It boasts a number of huge, hot stars that are sculpting the clouds with their strong radiation.