New images, taken over 16 min on January 17, 2025 by the Mastcam instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover, show noctilucent, or twilight clouds, in the atmosphere of Mars. Sometimes these clouds even create a rainbow of colors, producing iridescent, or mother-of-pearl clouds. Too faint to be seen in daylight, they’re only visible when the clouds…
Astronomers using ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) have created a stunning 80-million-pixel image of the star cluster RCW 38. This VISTA/VIRCAM image shows the super star cluster RCW 38. Image credit: ESO / VVVX Survey. RCW 38 is a super star cluster located approximately 5,500 light-years away in the constellation of…
Paleontologists have unearthed the fossilized remains of two Jurassic bird species at a locality in Zhenghe county, Fujian province, southeast China. These 149-million-year-old fossils demonstrate the early appearance of highly derived bird features, and together with another bird fossil from the same locality, they suggest an earlier origin of birds and a radiation of early…
The Tarantula Nebula is the most important star-forming complex in the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the Andromeda galaxy. At its heart lies the exceptionally rich young stellar cluster R136, containing the most massive stars known. Stellar winds and supernovae have carved the Tarantula Nebula into…
Named SNR J0614-7251 and SNR J0624-6948, the newly-discovered supernova remnants reside in the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the largest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. In the center of the image, the stars cluster to form a bright and dense green candy floss-colored haze, that is the Large Magellanic Cloud. Scattered across the…
Dubbed KM3-230213A, the newly-detected neutrino carried an astonishing energy of 220 peta-electronvolts (PeV), making it one of the most powerful elementary particles ever detected. Its energy was roughly a 100 million billion times the energy of visible light photons and about 30 times the highest neutrino energy previously detected. Visual impression of the ultra-high energy…
Astronomers have imaged planetesimal belts in 74 planetary systems as part of the REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars (REASONS) survey. This gallery contains 74 images of different star systems with exocometary belts taken with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter (ALMA) radio telescope facilities. Image credit: Luca Matrà. To…
Birds-of-paradise are a family of small to medium-sized forest birds found in the New Guinea region. With their elaborate and colorful feathers, these birds are among the most beautiful creatures on Earth. In a new study, ornithologists from the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found 37 of the 45 currently…
The metabolism of theanine — a unique non-proteinogenic amino acid — is a necessary biological process during the planting and production of tea (Camellia sinensis) that determines tea quality. A proposed model for CsMYB73 negatively regulating the accumulation of theanine mediated by CsGGT2 and CsGGT4 in tea shoots of ‘Huangkui’ returning green from yellow. The…
A team of scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, TUD Dresden University of Technology and the Australian National University, has discovered an ‘unexpected’ accumulation of beryllium-10 — a rare radionuclide produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere — in samples taken from the bottom of the Central and Northern Pacific. Koll et al. report on the…
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