Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Monday, 2 February 2026
This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows an outcrop with finely layered rocks within the "Murray Buttes" region on lower Mount Sharp.
The buttes and mesas rising above the surface in this area are eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after lower Mount Sharp had formed. Curiosity closely examined that layer -- called the "Stimson formation" -- during the first half of 2016, while crossing a feature called "Naukluft Plateau" between two exposures of the Murray formation. The layering within the sandstone is called "cross-bedding" and indicates that the sandstone was deposited by wind-blown sand dunes.
The image was taken on Sept. 8, 2016, during the 1454th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens and Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS data from LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response.
Tuesday, 3 February 2026
Overview of a swirling green phytoplankton bloom in the Baltic Sea captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 in July 2018.
Every summer, phytoplankton spread across the northern basins of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers. Nutrient-rich, cooler waters tend to promote more growth among marine plants and phytoplankton than is found in tropical waters.
Three decades of satellite observations suggest that these green blooms are likely to be cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), an ancient type of marine bacteria that capture and store solar energy through photosynthesis (like plants). Some of the greens could also come from diatoms, which are rich in chlorophyll.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Wednesday, 4 February 2026
Deep Space Station 15, one of the 112-foot antennas at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California, looks skyward, with the stars of the Milky Way overhead, in September 2025. Goldstone is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), which operates three complexes around the globe that support communications with dozens of deep space missions.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz), Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Acknowledgement: Mehmet Yüksek
Thursday, 5 February 2026
This is NGC 7722, a lenticular galaxy located about 187 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. A “lenticular”, meaning “lens-shaped”, galaxy is a type that sits in between the more familiar spiral galaxies and elliptical galaxies.
This new Hubble image, the sharpest yet taken of NGC 7722, brings the impressive dust lanes into sharp focus. Bands of dust like this are not uncommon in lenticular galaxies, and they stand out against the broad, smooth halo of light that typically surrounds lenticular galaxies. The distinctive dust lanes of NGC 7722 are thought to result from a past merger with another galaxy, as seen in other lenticular galaxies.
While it doesn’t host as many new, young stars as a spiral galaxy, there’s still activity in NGC 7722: in 2020, it was host to the explosion of a star that could be detected from Earth. SN 2020SSF was a Type Ia supernova, an event which occurs when a white dwarf star in a binary system siphons enough mass away from its companion star that it grows unstable and explodes.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Jason Major
Friday, 6 February 2026
This very impressive, and little-known, image of a meandering squiggle of high-altitude clouds on Saturn was captured by the Cassini spacecraft on July 18, 2010. It almost looks like one of these fancy latte art designs!
Related News
Related Projects
Support the
SETI Institute
Scientists are getting closer in their search for life beyond earth. But with limited federal funding for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, supporters are the reason cutting-edge scientists can keep their eyes on the sky.
){kind=logo}
