Global view of the Orion A molecular cloud (Image ESO/VISION survey)

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes the most detailed view of the molecular cloud called Orion A, one of the two giant molecular clouds in the Orion molecular cloud complex. A team of researchers created it by putting together infrared images obtained from the VISION (Vienna Survey in Orion) survey with ESO’s VISTA telescope revealing many young stars and other objects normally hidden within dust clouds.

Interstellar filaments in Polaris (Image ESA and the SPIRE & PACS consortia, Ph. André (CEA Saclay) for the Gould’s Belt Survey Key Programme Consortium, and A. Abergel (IAS Orsay) for the Evolution of Interstellar Dust Key Programme Consortium)

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ESA has published a new picture of the network of interstellar filaments seen by the Herschel Space Observatory in the space around Polaris, the North Star, which is actually a multiple system. For this reason also known as Polaris Flare, it’s an interstellar cloud in which filaments formed in which there are gas and dust visible especially at infrareds.

The area around the Auki crater (Image NASA/USGS)

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An article published in the journal “Icarus” describes new evidence of ancient hydrothermal activity presence in the Auki Crater on Mars. A team of scientists led by Filippo Giacomo Carrozzo of INAF-IAPS, Rome, Italy, used images and spectroscopic data collected by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) space probe to identify geological structures and mineral hydrates that confirm that hypothesis.

The region around Sagittarius A* (Image X-ray: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al., IR: NASA/STScI)

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An article published in the journal “Physical Review Letters” describes a research on Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. A team of scientists from the University of Princeton and the US Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) developed a new method to create a model of the accretion disk which feeds Sagittarius A*.

IRAS 16399-0937 (Image ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (geckzilla))

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An image obtained thanks to observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a very peculiar galaxy. Called IRAS 16399-0937, it’s a megamaser, which is an astronomical maser that emits microwaves with an intensity about a hundred million times greater than that of astronomical masers found in galaxies like the Milky Way. That’s because virtually all the galaxy is a maser.