Views Of The Space Shuttle Atlantis Undocking From The Mir Space Station On July 4, 1995. Cosmonauts

M7, Open Star Cluster 

Psychedelic Pluto : New Horizons scientists made this false color image of Pluto using a technique called principal component analysis to highlight the many subtle color differences between Plutos distinct regions.

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Scientists are getting closer to finding the ninth planet

California Institute of Technology scientists shocked the world when they announced the possible existence of a ninth planet in our solar system earlier this year. The only problem is the finding is based on a mathematical model, not on direct observation. The planet orbits so far out on the fringes of our solar system that it likely takes up to 20,000 years to make it around the sun. Spotting it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But that haystack just got a bit smaller.

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The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus

This weekend marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and we’re highlighting the moons of Uranus; some of which are named after characters from his works.

While most of the moons orbiting other planets take their names from Greek mythology, Uranus’ moons are unique in bing named for Shakespearean characters, along with a couple of them being named for characters from the works of Alexander Pope.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope and improved ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a total of 27 known moons around Uranus.

Here’s a sampling of some of the unique aspects of the moons:

Miranda

Shakespearean work: The Tempest

Miranda, the innermost and smallest of the five major satellites, has a surface unlike any other moon that’s been seen. It has a giant fault canyon as much as 12 times as deep as the Grand Canyon, terraced layers and surfaces that appear very old, and others that look much younger.

Ariel

Shakespearean work: The Tempest

Ariel has the brightest and possibly the youngest surface among all the moons of Uranus. It has a few large craters and many small ones, indicating that fairly recent low-impact collisions wiped out the large craters that would have been left by much earlier, bigger strikes. Intersecting valleys pitted with craters scars its surface.

Oberon

Shakespearean work: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Oberon, the outermost of the five major moons, is old, heavily cratered and shows little signs of internal activity. Unidentified dark material appears on the floors of many of its craters.

Cordelia and Ophelia

Shakespearean works: Cordelia - King Lear; Ophelia - Hamlet

Cordelia and Ophelia are shepherd moons that keep Uranus’ thin, outermost “epsilon” ring well defined.

Between them and miranda is a swarm of eight small satellites unlike any other system of planetary moons. This region is so crowded that astronomers don’t yet understand how the little moons have managed to avoid crashing into each other. They may be shepherds for the planet’s 10 narrow rings, and scientists think there must be still more moons, interior to any known, to confine the edges of the inner rings.

Want to learn more about all of Uranus’s moons? Visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/uranus/moons

Check out THIS blog from our Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan, where she reflects on the life and legacy of William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death on April 23, 1616.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

The Milky Way Meteor Shower by jeremyjonkman on Flickr.

M3 is Astronomy Magazine Picture of the Day

Elon Musk has released this video of today’s Falcon 9 landing attempt. The first stage of the JASON-3 mission’s Falcon 9 touched down on the surface of the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship around ten minutes after today’s 1:42pm EST launch.

However, according to Musk, landing strut #3 didn’t lock in to place properly, and vehicle toppled over. In this newly-released video, the Falcon 9 can be seen gently coming to land on the desk of the ship, falling on the improperly secured leg shortly thereafter.

Musk also said that preliminary data suggests ice build up from foggy launch conditions may have caused the strut to improperly secure upon deployment.

All Quiet in the Nursery?

The dark patch snaking across this spectacular image of a field of stars in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent-bearer) is not quite what it appears to be.

Although it looks as if there are no stars here, they are hidden behind this dense cloud of dust that blocks out their light. This particular dark cloud is known as LDN 1768.

Despite their rather dull appearance, dark nebulae like LDN 1768 are of huge interest to astronomers, as it is here that new stars form. Inside these vast stellar nurseries there are protostars — stars at the earliest stage of their lives, still coalescing out of the gas and dust in the cloud.

Eventually, the protostars will become dense and hot enough to start the nuclear reactions that will produce visible light and they will start to shine. When this happens, they will blow away the cocoon of dust surrounding them and cause any remaining gas to emit light as well, creating the spectacular light show known as an HII region.

Credit: ESO