Gabriel Bouys / AFP - Getty Images
From a cat bath to peeping chicks and dozing pandas, get your cuteness fix with creatures great and small.
Seagulls fly over the skies of Rome in this slow-exposure photo taken on May 2.
Chris Hadfield / CSA
Feast your eyes on an alligator-like mountain range in Mexico, plus other curiosities seen from outer space in April 2013. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield calls this "a Dali watch on an alligator wristband."
Canada's new printed-polymer $5 bill has received the country's highest sendoff, altitude-wise, from International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield. Tuesday's currency-unveiling ceremony in space was just the latest in a series of achievements that have drawn attention to Canada's best-known spaceflier.
Hadfield already has made his mark as a photographer, a musician and composer, and an explainer of spaceflight phenomena ranging from crying to vomiting in zero-G. Some of his latest space shots, including this view of an alligator-like mountain range in Mexico, are featured in our Month in Space Pictures slideshow. To learn more about Hadfield's role in the first outer-space rollout of a bank note, flip over to this Cosmic Log posting.
Chris Hadfield / CSA via Twitter
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield passed along this picture of Boston at night, as seen from the International Space Station, in recognition of the city's tragedy.
Monday's Boston Marathon bombing prompted expressions of sympathy from humanity's farthest-flung outpost: the International Space Station.
"Our crew just heard about the horrible events at the Boston Marathon," the space station's commander, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, wrote in a Twitter update. "We all pass along our condolences and thoughts to everyone affected."
Later, Hadfield tweeted a picture of the city at night in recognition of "a somber spring night in Boston."
Even though the space station wheels around our planet at a height of 230 miles (370 kilometers) or so, the crew stays in touch with earthly news through official NASA communications as well as Internet links that make use of the space agency's TDRS satellite network. For example, the space station has been receiving a digital version of NBC Nightly News for years.
All that altitude gives the station's crew a unique perspective on Earth's tragedies. On Sept. 11, 2001, NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson looked down on the smoke streaming from the wreckage of New York's World Trade Center. "It was like seeing a wound in the side of your country, of your family, your friends," he said years later. Last October, astronauts watched as Superstorm Sandy blasted its way toward the East Coast.
The horrible events in Boston may not have been visible from space — but Hadfield's tweets demonstrate how we connect during times of tragedy, even when we're off the planet.
More perspectives from space:
Google via AP
A screenshot made from the Google Maps website shows stranded ships left as a testament to the power of the tsunami which hit the area, near a road in Namie, Japan.
Google via AP
A crushed building in Namie, a nuclear no-go zone where former residents have been unable to live since they fled from radioactive contamination near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant two years ago.
Google via AP
Google's camera-equipped vehicle moves through Namie in a photo released on March 27, 2013 and taken earlier in the month.
Crumpled homes, abandoned shops, empty streets. The town of Namie has lain virtually untouched since its residents were evacuated two years ago, following the accident at the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant.
On Wednesday they were able to see their town again thanks to Google, which began offering glimpses of Namie on its Street View service. The town's mayor, Tamotsu Baba, invited Google to document the current state of Namie after receiving numerous requests from constituents who wanted a reminder of their home town.
Although some restrictions on entering the town have been lifted, Namie's 21,000 former residents have not yet been allowed to return to live there due to the still-high levels of radiation.
In a message posted on the Google website, the mayor said he hoped that sharing the images with the rest of the world would serve as a reminder of the consequences of a nuclear accident.
Related:
Nuclear refugees visit their home near stricken Fukushima plant
Fukushima: Before, during and after
Inside the Fukushima exclusion zone
Google via AP
Google via AP
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Get a look at a Mars expedition on Earth, pictures from other planets and other out-of-this-world images from March 2013.
Our monthly roundup of cool views from outer space includes this picture, showing a weird assortment of frost-covered mounds as seen from orbit. But where do you suppose the picture was taken? Morocco? Montana? Mercury? Mars? Take a guess, then click through March's edition of the Month in Space Pictures slideshow to get the answer. And if you're just dying to look at the answer key immediately, click on this link.
More space slideshows:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Marco Di Lorenzo / Ken Kremer
The Curiosity rover's instrument-laden robotic arm is front and center in this mosaic view captured by the Mars rover's NavCam system and assembled by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. The colorized black-and-white imagery was captured on March 23. Click on the image to see the full panorama.
After a week of down time due to a computer glitch, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover is once again sending back pictures of its rocky Red Planet locale at Yellowknife Bay. In this fresh panorama, the rover looks as if it's sticking its drill-equipped robotic arm right in your face.
"That drill is hungry, looking for something tasty to eat, and 'you' (loaded with water and organics) are it," jokes scientist-writer Ken Kremer, who collaborated with Italian colleague Marco Di Lorenzo to assemble the panorama.
Curiosity's percussive drill played a key role in the science team's most recently reported breakthrough: the finding that powder drilled out of a Martian rock contained the chemical traces of a life-friendly environment that existed on Mars billions of years ago. The team's chemical analysis of the powder indicated that the minerals were probably formed in the presence of drinkable water.
That kind of water no longer exists in liquid form on the Martian surface. The place where Curiosity is currently working may have once been in the vicinity of a riverbed, but it's now a cold and dry wasteland of sand and rock. In the weeks to come, Curiosity's scientists plan to drill into the rock again, looking for confirmatory clues about the potentially habitable environment in the Red Planet's past.
The plan has been held up due to a series of minor setbacks — including a memory failure that may have been due to a cosmic-ray strike, a precautionary stand-down to weather a solar storm, and most recently a computer file glitch that put the rover into safe mode. The Curiosity team has been carefully bringing the rover back to full operation, and this picture is presumably part of the checkout process.
It won't be long before the rover will once more have to reduce its contact with its handlers back on Earth, due to an Earth-Mars-sun conjunction that will interfere with radio signaling. Curiosity's communication gap is expected to last from April 4 to May 1, as detailed in a mission update from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the break, Curiosity is expected to carry on with its experiments, but the transmission of science data and images will have to wait until May. So let's enjoy these fresh images while we can.
For more of Curiosity's raw imagery, check out the galleries on JPL's Mars Science Laboratory website. You'll also find great pictures on UnmannedSpaceflight.com, where Kremer, Di Lorenzo and other image-processing gurus post their work. If you have 3-D glasses, whip 'em out and take a look at Ed Truthan's red-blue view of Curiosity's first drilling site.
Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars and see the pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.
More about Mars:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Swedish photographer Goran Strand created a 10-image mosaic of the sun using a hydrogen-alpha filter on March 16, and then captured full-sky views of the northern lights over Ostersund during a four-hour period on March 17 for this time-lapse video. "The time lapse consists of 2,464 raw images for a total data amount of 30GB. ... All in all, this movie contains over 40GB of data that I've been processing over the last five days. Hope you enjoy it," Strand writes. Watch the video in full-screen HD for maximum effect. Music: "I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor," by Chris Zabriskie.
Talk about dancing with the stars: The glow of the northern lights danced through the night sky this week, thanks to a solar storm that swept past Earth over the past few days. Comet PanSTARRS, which is appearing a little bit farther north in western skies every evening, adds some extra sparkle.
The time around the equinox is considered the peak of the aurora season, because this time of year strikes a balance between the dark skies of winter and the more clement temperatures of summer. And although PanSTARRS may not have panned out the way some of the more optimistic skywatchers might have expected, it's still observable in the Northern Hemisphere — particularly if you're watching with binoculars from a vantage point far from city lights, with a clear view to the western horizon.
Sky & Telescope's PanSTARRS page helps you track the comet day by day, and you can always rely on SpaceWeather.com to have the latest, greatest pictures of PanSTARRS as well as the auroral glow.
For example, French photographer Sylvain Dussans managed to capture both phenomena in one glorious picture, taken from Norway's Senja Island.
Here are a couple more videos of the solar storm and the comet, as seen from Earth and space:
Chad Blakley, the photographer behind Lights Over Lapland, captured this time-lapse view of the northern lights and Comet PanSTARRS in Sweden's Abisko National Park on March 20 and posted the picture on Vimeo. "The auroras began as soon as the sun went down and continued to dance all night long," Blakley said in an email. "To say that we had an incredible night would be a huge understatement!" For best results, watch the video in HD at full-screen.
Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland
This closeup from Chad Blakley's video uses a black circle to highlight the comet's location. For more, check out Blakley's Lights Over Lapland page on Facebook.
This movie from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, shows Comet PanSTARRS as it moved around the sun from March 10 to 15. The clip is repeated three times. The images were captured by the Heliospheric Imager, an instrument that looks to the side of the sun to watch coronal mass ejections as they travel toward Earth, which is the unmoving bright orb on the right. The bright light on the left comes from the sun, and the bursts from the left represent the solar material erupting off the sun.
More about the comet and the aurora:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
NOAA
The GOES-13 satellite captured this full-disk image of our planet at 7:45 a.m. ET on March 20, just after the 7:02 a.m. ET equinox. The satellite image shows how Earth's two hemispheres receive equal amounts of sunlight during the equinox. In this image, the sun is artificially created to enhance the picture.
Earth's 23.5-degree tilt almost always ensures that the northern and the southern halves of our planet get unequal amounts of solar energy, with longer nights in winter and bigger stretches of sunlight in summer. Twice a year, however, both hemispheres get equal amounts of light, with equal intervals of day and night. That's what's known as the equinox.
Just such an event at 7:02 a.m. ET on Wednesday heralded the official beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and the start of autumn in the South. This full-disk picture from the GOES-13 weather satellite, captured at 7:45 a.m., shows the equal division between Earth's night and day.
"The visible imagery sensor on GOES requires sunlight to 'see' clouds, and so it provides a useful example of the equinox," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Visualization Laboratory says in Wednesday's advisory. "In this image the GOES imagery extends to each of the poles since the entire hemisphere is equally lit. After the equinox passes today, the Northern Hemisphere will be more lit than the Southern Hemisphere – causing the seasons."
Orbital mechanics may determine the precise moment of the equinox, but scientists say that the effects of the seasonal change can vary widely, due to climatic factors. There's some evidence, for example, that climate change is causing flowers to bloom earlier in the eastern U.S. than they did in the 1850s or the 1930s. Have you noticed changes on shorter time scales? Feel free to spring into action with your comments below.
More about the changing seasons:
Tip o' the Log to LiveScience's Douglas Main.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp, also known as Aeolis Mons, in a white-balanced color adjustment that makes the sky look overly blue but shows the terrain as if under Earthlike lighting. This is just a small segment of a wider panorama assembled from image data collected on Sept. 20, 2012. The sky has been filled out by extrapolating color and brightness information from the portions of the sky that were captured in images of the terrain. A raw-color version of the mosaic shows the scene's colors as they would look in a typical smartphone camera photo taken on Mars. Click on the image to see a larger version from NASA.
If you could pull up a 3-mile-high mountain from Mars and plop it down in California's Mojave Desert, it'd probably look much like this latest color panorama from the Curiosity rover's science team. This little piece from the panorama doesn't do justice to the whole picture: You really should see the whole thing at high resolution to get a sense of just how much Mount Sharp, a.k.a. Aeolis Mons, looms over the scene where NASA's six-wheeled robotic lab has been working.
The most jarring thing about the picture is the blue sky. No, the Martian sky doesn't really look like that. The Red Planet's atmosphere is filled with iron-rich dust that turns everything into shades of butterscotch, burnt orange and brick. To see Mount Sharp as you or your smartphone camera might see it if you were actually there, check out this true-color version of the panorama.
The blue-sky version has been processed to reflect a white-balanced view, as if the picture were taken in an earthly rather than a Martian setting. Why would scientists bother with a phony view of Mars? "White-balancing helps scientists recognize rock materials based on their experience looking at rocks on Earth," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains in Friday's photo advisory. It's as if Curiosity was able to get rid of all that red dust in the air and take a clear picture of the mountainside from miles away.
The pictures for this panorama was taken in September, while the rover was en route to its first destination. For the past couple of months, Curiosity has been studying the rocks at a site known as Yellowknife Bay, and it's already turned up some amazing discoveries about Mars' past — including evidence that the area was capable of supporting microbial life billions of years ago.
Within the next couple of months, Curiosity is due to turn around and begin its 6-mile (10-kilometer) trek to the foothills of that big mountain. Pictures like this panorama will help scientists figure out exactly where their nuclear-powered robotic geologist should be going.
Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars and see the pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.
More about Mars:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Mike Massee
Comet PanSTARRS and the crescent moon loom over a mountaintop row of wind turbines near Mojave, Calif., on Tuesday night. The pairing of the comet and the moon made for one of the year's best opportunities for astrophotography.
Two elusive superstars came out on Tuesday evening to greet their adoring fans — in L.A. and Vegas, as well as in California's Mojave Desert and the mountaintops of Arizona and California. As a matter of fact, observers around the world could catch a glimpse of Comet PanSTARRS and the barely lit crescent moon, as long as the skies were clear.
Like most superstars, Comet PanSTARRS doesn't always live up to its advance billing. For months, skywatchers have been looking forward to PanSTARRS as one of the top sights in the night sky. The long-period comet is now thought to be at its brightest, due to the fact that it has just come out of its close approach to the sun. But finding it has proved more difficult than expected, because it's so easily lost in the glare of sunset.
XCOR Aerospace's Mike Massee acknowledged that it wasn't easy to capture his comet shot, which was taken in the last light of dusk from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, where the XCOR rocket venture has its headquarters.
"At 7:20, neither the moon nor the comet were visible, but about five minutes later you could barely make out the sliver of the new moon. According to XCOR's resident astronomy guru, Randall Clague, the comet would appear about eight moon diameters to the left of the moon. So I set up an image with the moon on the right side of the frame and made some exposures," Massee said in an email.
"After a few minutes I could zoom in and see the comet in my camera, but not with the naked eye," he wrote. "As the sky grew darker the comet became more and more visible, and eventually you could just make out a fuzzy spot with your naked eye, but the camera was still the best way to review it after the shot was taken."
Over the next couple of weeks, Comet PanSTARRS will be better positioned for viewing by Northern Hemisphere observers in the western sky after sunset, but each night it's expected to grow dimmer. If there are clear evening skies, grab your binoculars and try to pick out PanSTARRS. This viewing guide can help.
While you're waiting for those dark, clear skies, check out this photo album, which includes a special shout-out to the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter's Adam Block and all those who contributed through NBC News' FirstPerson photo-upload website.
Adam Block
The sunset glow lingers in the skies over Mount Lemmon SkyCenter in Arizona as Comet PanSTARRS and the crescent moon shine on Tuesday night. Even the dark portion of the moon glows faintly, due to reflected "Earthshine" from our own planet.
Gene Blevins / Reuters
David Schaefer of Pasadena, Calif., uses an iPad to help him spot Comet PanSTARRS over Southern California. The comet should be visible from the Northern Hemisphere until the end of March in western skies after sunset.
Gene Blevins / Reuters
Comet PanSTARRS takes its place next to the waxing crescent moon in the skies over Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Craig Yacks via FirstPerson
Craig Yacks says he took this photo of Comet PanSTARRS (left) and the moon (right) from Highlands Ranch, Colo., "as the clouds opened up just after sunset." The photo was taken with a Nikon D800 camera, set for ISO 1000 with a four-second exposure. "Zoomed in to give a better view of the comet and the moon," Yacks said.
Cast your eyes on pictures featuring PanSTARRS, Hale-Bopp and other crowd-pleasing comets.
More PanSTARRS photos from FirstPerson fans:
Update for 7:15 p.m. ET March 13: So where's Comet PanSTARRS now? It's well below the moon, and you'll need binoculars to spot it. To get a fix on the comet, you can consult this sky chart from SpaceWeather.com.
Wednesday evening's images from Jens Riggelsen in Aarhus, Denmark, illustrate how tricky it can be to see the comet. The moon is high in the sky, but PanSTARRS is just a speck amid the glow of sunset. "The comet wasn't visible to the naked eye, but figured I might be able to capture it with the camera. And indeed, there it was," Riggelsen told SpaceWeather.com.
Can you spot the comet in this brand-new view from Jamie Cooper?
Jamie Cooper
Comet PanSTARRS is a glimmer in the sky after sunset, far below and to the right of the crescent moon. This picture was taken by Jamie Cooper from Northampton in England on Wednesday.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
Members of the Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission return after collecting geological samples for study at the Mars Desert Research Station in the Utah desert on March 2. The mission is meant to simulate what explorers will face during an eventual mission to the Red Planet.
NASA says it could be another 20 years before humans touch down on Mars, but in a sense, the Mars Society has been exploring the red planet for more than a decade — in Utah.
The nonprofit society's Mars Desert Research Station, near Hanksville, Utah, has been home to 126 crews since the Mars-style habitat was erected in 2002. The idea behind the experimental station is to test the tools and techniques that could come into play during eventual human expeditions to the real Red Planet. Each expedition crew consists of roughly a half-dozen volunteers who spend about two weeks in the Utah desert, conducting real research on a make-believe Mars.
Utah's desert is one of several locales around the world that are thought to be sufficiently Mars-like to teach researchers about the far more extreme conditions on the cold, dry planet. Other locales for Mars simulations include the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica, Norway's Svalbard Peninsula, caves on the Italian island of Sardinia, and even a lab in Russia.
The crew members for such simulations range from NASA researchers to students who hope to walk on Martian soil someday. Another would-be Marsonaut is Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart, who has long yearned to take pictures of the Mars Desert Research Station and its crew. "I had tried for years to go, but my story pitches never made the cut," he said Monday in a blog posting. This month, Urquhart finally got the green light from his editors, in part because "science and space exploration have become sexy again," he said.
Urquhart came away impressed by the volunteer astronauts. "I kept thinking to myself that this group of six embodies so much of what I wish I could become," he said. "They were passionate and chasing their dreams."
Check out these pictures — and Urquhart's blog posting — for more about his visit to Mars in the Utah desert.
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
The night sky whirls above the Mars Desert Research Station outside Hanksville, Utah, in a long-exposure photo. The station is designed to reflect the type of habitat that would be constructed on the Red Planet for future explorers.
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
Csilla Orgel, a geologist, collects samples for study in the Utah desert.
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
Members venture out in their simulated spacesuits to collect samples.
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
Crew members return to the Mars Desert Research Station after a simulated Marswalk.
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
Crew members prepare a meal inside the Mars Desert Research Station. The mock astronauts wear simulation spacesuits when the venture outside, but work in shirt sleeves when they're inside the habitat.
Get a look at the moon's glories, interplanetary vistas and other outer-space highlights from February 2013.
Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland
The northern lights shimmer in the skies above Abisko National Park in Sweden on March 3. "In addition to the northern lights, you can also see a massive fireball streak across the sky," photographer Chad Blakley writes. "It was a fantastic night!"
It's prime time for the northern lights, and particularly for the far northern lights.
"I believe I just saw the most amazing aurora display I have ever seen," Chad Blakley, the photographer behind Lights Over Lapland, wrote from Sweden over the weekend. "I would send you more images, but I have to go back outside and take a few more photos first." (You can see the results in the time-lapse video below.)
Places like Sweden and Norway, Iceland and Finland, Alaska and Canada's Northwest Territories are prime viewing areas for the northern lights, because that's where the interactions between Earth's poles and the sun's geomagnetic storms are strongest. The fact that the sun's 11-year activity cycle is close to its predicted maximum should be adding to the show, although the storm activity has been mysteriously low so far.
There's another factor that makes this month favorable for seeing the northern lights: Experts say that March and September, around the time of the year's two equinoxes, are just right for aurora-watching because the skies stay dark for a relatively long time, and yet the weather is relatively mild. December can get pretty chilly up north, and June is the time of the midnight sun — which is not conducive to seeing the aurora's delicate greenish glow.
Darkness is the key to seeing the aurora, whether you're in Abisko National Park in Sweden, or in Albany, N.Y. Stake out a place that's far from city lights with good northern exposure. The thinner and clearer the air, the better — which means you should be up on a mountain rather than down in a valley. The wee hours of the morning are the best time of night for spotting the northern lights.
If you're not in the prime aurora zone, spotting a good display is a matter of good timing, good luck and location, location, location.
Auroral displays are seldom seen much farther south than the northern tier of U.S. states, but every once in a while there's a strong storm that lights up the skies in America's midsection. To find out when a storm is brewing, check in with SpaceWeather.com, the University of Alaska's Aurora Forecast website and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, plus the prediction center's Facebook page and its Ovation aurora forecasting app. The Yukon Territory's Northern Lights Centre provides additional tips for aurora-watchers. You can also follow @Aurora_Alerts, @AuroraMax and @AuroraWatch on Twitter.
If you live too far south to see the lights with your own eyes, don't despair: You'll find plenty of auroral pictures in SpaceWeather.com's gallery, and Vimeo has lots of videos to show you. Got a great picture of the northern (or southern) lights? Feel free to share it via our FirstPerson photo-upload page.
More auroral glories:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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