Astronomers offered new views and animations of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A during the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Read more.
Credit: Image from video by D. Berry, T. DeLaney, CXC, NASA

VIDEO | The evolution of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A is shown by combining X-ray images taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in January 2000, February 2002, February 2004 and December 2007. Lowest energy X-rays are shown in red, intermediate energies in green and the highest X-ray energies in blue. The explosion’s outer blast wave, moving slower than expected, is also shown in blue.
Credit: D. Patnaude et al., CXC, SAO, NASA

VIDEO | This video shows a three-dimensional animation of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, based on data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope. Green indicates mostly X-ray emissions from iron; yellow reveals mostly X-ray, infrared and visible-light emissions from argon and silicon; and red is the coolest debris, seen in infrared. Blue depicts X-rays from the outer blast wave.
Credit: D. Berry, T. DeLaney, CXC, NASA

Radio observations reveal the Milky Way galaxy must have four spiral arms: two dominant ones and two others that contain only newborn stars, as shown here in this artist's conception. Most star formation in our galaxy takes place in these spiral arms.
Credit: Robert Hurt, IPAC; Mark Reid, CfA, NRAO/AUI/NSF

This false-color panorama of the central 300 light-years of the Milky Way shows the glow from ionized hydrogen gas and a multitude of young stars. The infrared portrait is the sharpest ever taken of our galaxy core. Full Story
Credit: Hubble portion of panorama: Q.D. Wang, NASA, ESA; Spitzer portion: S. Stolovy/Spitzer Science Center/Caltech, JPL/NASA

This false-color panorama of the central 300 light-years of the Milky Way shows the glow from ionized hydrogen gas and a multitude of young stars. The infrared portrait is the sharpest ever taken of our galaxy core. The mosaic combines images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer with lower-resolution images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Orange indicates emissions at an infrared wavelength of 5.8 micrometers and red is 8 micrometers. 
Credit: Hubble portion of panorama: Q.D. Wang, NASA, ESA; Spitzer portion: S. Stolovy/Spitzer Science Center/Caltech, JPL/NASA

They were only supposed to last three months. But this month, NASA’s twin robot geologists, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, celebrate their fifth anniversary exploring the Red Planet. Spirit parachuted onto Gusev crater on January 3, 2004, while Opportunity arrived at Meridiani Planum three weeks later, on January 24. Surviving sandstorms, a malfunctioning wheel and other aging equipment, along with the low-light levels of Martian winters, both rovers have discovered supporting evidence that the planet was once wetter and warmer. Collectively, the rovers have returned some 250,000 imag...
Credit: JPL/NASA, Cornell University, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

This month, NASA’s twin robot geologists, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, celebrate their fifth anniversary exploring the Red Planet. Shown is a portion of a panorama assembled from images Spirit took between February and October 2008. Read more.
Credit: IMAGE CREDIT: JPL/NASA, Cornell University, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

Larger Version | Like its cousin the neutrino, a geoneutrino (an anti-neutrino produced in Earth) can pass through Earth unimpeded and, researchers hope, into detectors built to catch it.

Large Version | Collaborations within microbial consortia often rely on quorum sensing, a way bacteria can coordinate their behavior by exchanging chemical signals that can turn genes on or off.
Credit: Arnold/Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 2007

Large Version | In a bacterial model of a predator-prey ecosystem, quorum sensing enables two groups of E. coli to communicate in ways that affect the balance of their populations. Initially, the predator population wanes amid a scarcity of prey. But the communication directs the prey to “rescue” the predator (steps 1–4), and once the predator population recovers, it begins to kill the prey (5–8).
Credit: A. Nandy, Source: You/Molecular Systems Biology 2008

"Nothing approaches the impact of X-rays as a tool for understanding materials."
Credit: Tom Siegfried