Messier 100, or M100, is a grand design spiral galaxy that contains over 100 billion stars. This Hubble Space Telescope image was made in 2009, but there's even more history here; look carefully for the "small spot that is a light echo from a bright supernova that was recorded years before the image was taken."
Need an antidote to the saccharine nature of today? We have a breakup dramatic enough to be visible across Europe to sooth your curmudgeonly soul. The very last of the European Space Agency's ATV cargo space tugs in on course for a fiery breakup perfect for the most dramatic of Valentine's Day traditions.
Behold, Turkey's Love Valley. It's happy to see you, too!
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From a satellite, the plumes venting from two volcanoes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo look like clouds. Right now, they're just spewing harmless steam and gas. But that could change.
Forget physics: love makes the world go 'round. This is a gallery of our favourite images of love from the natural world, from rocks to landscapes to the far reaches of space.
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This is the aftermath of an exploding star (G299, by name) and it's undoubtedly beautiful. But what it also is is very, very strange — and it just might turn all that we know about how stars explode on its head.
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A new analysis shows that the northeast corner of what is now the United States was slammed by at least 23 severe hurricanes from the years 250 to 1150, many of them reaching category 3 and 4 status. Researchers say these hurricanes, which formed in relatively warm seas, could be a harbinger of things to come.
Journal of Brief Ideas, where they will only accept papers that are 200 words or less. And no, there is no peer-review process.
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If we're ever going to explore the only celestial body in our solar system with surface bodies of liquid, we're going to need a sea-worthy vehicle. Luckily, NASA is all over the niche space submarine market.
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The official poster for the 45th expedition to the International Space Station is Star Wars themed, and features astronauts Scott Kelly, Mikhail Korniyenko, Oleg Kononenko, Kimiya Yui, Kjell N. Lindgren, and Sergey Volcov dressed in Jedi robes and weilding lightsabers.
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After successfully completing its 100-minute, remotely operated ride, the European Space Agency's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) was lifted aboard the Nos Aries, ESA's recovery ship, as we can see in this photo above released by the space agency today.
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Garbage in the ocean is a big problem, but until now we didn't know how big. A study published today in Science drops a rough but still astounding estimate: 8 million metric tons per year. That's 20 to 2000 times more than what experts had estimated.
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There's a famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet that says "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," and the same now holds true for brave new worlds for humans to explore.
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Nobody should be surprised that spy satellites are kept secret. But it's actually more complicated. The launches are aired, but with scheduled media blackouts. We get mission patches, but no details on the nature of the payload. But the weirdest thing is how easy it is to track these satellites.
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The New Horizons spacecraft has beamed back a time-lapse "movie" showing an entire day in the Pluto-Charon system. Captured from a distance of just 126 million miles (203-million km), the footage clearly depicts the "wobble" imposed on the dwarf planet by its large moon.
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There's a rather dramatic landslide in progress in Val Parghera, Switzerland, but you wouldn't necessarily know it by just looking at it. Thankfully, there's now a stop-motion video showing its movements over the past 21 months.
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Multiple star systems containing two or more stars are extremely common, but astronomers aren't entirely sure how these complex systems are created. The remarkable discovery of an embryonic four-star system is providing some tantalizing clues.
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European Space Agency engineers are going where no human will ever go. They've put a camera inside an automated spacecraft full of garbage (including sewage) to see what will happen during its reentry into Earth's atmosphere this weekend.
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Scientists working at the Solar Dynamics Observatory have spotted a massive solar filament that stretches across a good portion of the sun's visible surface. It's about 533,000 miles long (857,780 km) – equivalent to 67 Earths lined up in a row.
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The staff of symmetry has created a fun set of physics-themed Valentines to share with the people you love. And because ours is a universe that contains both matter and antimatter, they've created a complementary set of anti-Valentines, for the people you love to hate.
