NASA

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station photographed this striking view of Pavlof Volcano on May 18. The oblique perspective from the ISS reveals the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which is often obscured by the top-down view of most remote sensing satellites.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured this stunning view of an ash plume streaming from Pavlof Volcano on May 18.  The volcano began erupting 10 days ago in Alaska's chain of Aleutian Islands, about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.

LiveScience reports that "the volcano's ash cloud has reached as high as 22,000 feet" — which is still at least 200 miles (320 kilometers) below the space station. Feast your eyes on additional orbital views of the volcano from NASA's Earth Observatory and the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. And if you think Pavlof looks impressive from outer space, check out the amazing perspectives from the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Illustrated London News

Starving people searching for potatoes in a stubble field during the Great Famine (1845-1852) which was caused by the failure of the Irish potato crop and British government inaction.

Scientists have finally figured out exactly what strain of potato blight led to the deaths of more than a million people in Ireland during the Great Famine of the mid-19th century — and it's not the usual suspect.

For decades, researchers assumed that a particular strain of Phytophthora infestans, known as US-1, made the leap from the Americas to mainland Europe, and then to Ireland in the 1840s. Selective breeding and fungicides have made US-1 less of a threat than it was a century and a half ago, but it and other strains of blight continue to pose a threat to potato crops around the world. Blight can still turn seemingly healthy potatoes into black, stinking balls of mush, just as it did in 19th-century Ireland.

An international team of scientists took on the task of tracing the roots of late blight through genetics, and to flesh out the story, they deciphered the genomes for 11 strains of blight preserved in Germany's Bavarian State Collection for Botany and London's Kew Gardens. The dried potato plants containing the blight pathogens were saved in herbaria — that is, collections of preserved plants — by 19th-century scientists who had no idea they could yield that kind of scientific data.

What the researchers found surprised them: The genetic signature of the blight that was extracted from the Irish potato plants did not match up exactly with US-1. Instead, the blight represented a closely related but previously unknown strain that has now been designated HERB-1.

The study of blight evolution is to be published in the open-access journal eLife.

Roots of the blight
By mapping the genetic differences between the 19th-century samples and 15 modern-day strains of blight, the scientists could reconstruct the pathogen's evolution over the centuries. They determined that the blight originated in Mexico's Toluca Valley. The species' genetic diversity increased markedly in the 16th century, around the time that Spanish explorers settled the New World. That era marked the wider spread of potato varieties, and probably hastened the evolution of Phytophthora infestans as well.

Kew Gardens

This potato specimen from the Kew Gardens' herbarium was collected in 1847, during the height of the Irish famine. The legend reads "Botrytis infestans" because it was not known yet that Phytophthora does not belong to the mildew-causing Botrytis fungi.

The similarities between US-1 and HERB-1 suggest that they both made their appearance in the early 19th century, not long before the first major outbreak of the blight in Europe. "Probably they both came out of the United States," said one of the study's authors, Sophien Kamoun, a researcher at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Britain.

HERB-1 spread to Europe first, and soon made its way to Ireland, where potatoes were the staple crop for millions of poor farmers. "The potatoes at the time were very susceptible to blight," Kamoun told NBC News. More than a million people died between 1845 and 1852, and at least that many emigrated to friendlier locales. Even today, Ireland's population level has not returned to the pre-famine high of 8 million.

US-1's rise came in the 20th century, after the introduction of new potato varieties that were resistant to HERB-1. Eventually, US-1 became the dominant blight strain, and HERB-1 faded away. "We think HERB-1 is most likely extinct," Kamoun said.

Delving into DNA
The research illustrates how useful herbaria can be for resolving decades-old questions about centuries-old plants. "The degree of DNA preservation in the herbarium samples really surprised us," Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen said in a news release about the study. It also illustrates how quickly evolution can produce new strains of pathogens, Kamoun said.

"The molecular clock turned out to be shorter than perhaps we expected," he said.

The study's lead author, Kentaro Yoshida of the Sainsbury Lab, said the study suggests that crop breeding methods play a role in the molecular evolution of pathogens.

"Perhaps this strain became extinct when the first resistant potato varieties were bred at the beginning of the 20th century," Yoshida said. "What is for certain is that these findings will greatly help us to understand the dynamics of emerging pathogens."

More about plant problems:

• How blight becomes a killer
• Fungal threats become growing concern
• Wind may spread diseases faster than thought

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor, and the great-grandson of Michael Boyle, who migrated from Ireland to America at the height of the Irish potato famine in 1847.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's 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.

University of Leicester

The remains of King Richard III showed a curved spine and signs of battle trauma. He apparently was hastily buried -- the grave was irregularly shaped, with sloping sides, and too small for the 5-foot-8-inch skeleton. That may have been because he had already spent days dead in the summer heat. .

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

The body of King Richard III was buried in great haste, a new study finds — perhaps because the medieval monarch's corpse had been out for three days in the summer sun.

The new research is the first academic paper published on the discovery of Richard III, which was publicly announced in February 2013. A team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester found the body beneath a parking lot in Leicester that was once the site of a medieval church. The full study will be available online on Friday evening.

The archaeological analysis contains details only alluded to in the initial announcement of the findings. In particular, the archaeologists found that Richard III's grave was dug poorly and probably hastily, a sharp contrast to the neat rectangular graves otherwise found in the church where the king was laid to rest. [Gallery: The Discovery of Richard III]

Richard III's journey to Leicester
Richard III ruled England from 1483 to 1485, when he was killed during the Battle of Bosworth Field, the definitive fight in the War of the Roses.

University of Leicester

The skull of the skeleton found at the Grey Friars excavation in Leicester, identified as that of King Richard III.

Historical records reveal that after the battle, Richard's body was stripped and brought to Leicester, where it remained on public display for three days until burial on Aug. 25, 1485. The church where the body was interred, a Franciscan friary called Grey Friars, was eventually demolished around 1538. A former mayor of Leicester built a mansion on the site, but by the 1700s, the land had been subdivided and sold off, the location of the church lost.

With it went all memory of where one of England's most famous kings was buried. Richard III was immortalized by a Shakespeare play of the same name and made out to be a villain by the Tudor dynasty that followed his rule. Today, however, there are societies of Richard III enthusiasts called Richardians who defend the dead king's honor. One of these Richardians, a screenwriter named Philippa Langley, spearheaded the excavation that discovered Richard III's body.

Digging for Richard
The new paper, published in the journal Antiquity, outlines how archaeologists dug three trenches in a city government parking lot, hoping to hit church buildings they knew had once stood in the area. They soon found evidence of the friary they were looking for: first, a chapter house with stone benches and diamond-pattern floor tiles. This chapter house would have been used for daily monastery meetings.

South of the chapter houses, the excavation revealed a well-worn cloister walk, or covered walkway. Finally, the researchers found the church building itself. The church was about 34 feet (10.4 meters) wide. It had been demolished, but the floors (and the graves in the floor) were left intact. Among the rubble were decorated tiles and copper alloy letters that likely once marked the graves.

Brick dust suggested the outer church walls may have been covered with a brick façade, which would have created a striking red-and-white look with the church's limestone-framed windows, the researchers wrote.

A hasty grave
Most of the graves in the Grey Friars church floor are neat and orderly, with squared-off rectangle sides. Richard III's is an exception. The grave is irregularly shaped, with sloping sides. It was also too small for the 5-foot-8-inch (1.7 m) skeleton interred within: Richard's torso is twisted and his head propped up rather than laid flat. The body was also crammed against the north wall of the grave, perhaps because someone stood against the south wall to guide the body into its resting place. Whoever it was did not spend time afterward rearranging the body into a more symmetrical position.

"The haste may partially be explained by the fact that Richard’s damaged body had already been on public display for several days in the height of summer, and was thus in poor condition," the researchers wrote.

There was no coffin in the grave, and likely no shroud, judging by the loose position of the skeleton's limbs. However, the corpse's hands were crossed and perhaps tied in front of him.

The study also delineates the 10 injuries on the corpse's skeleton. Most are likely battle wounds, including two fatal blows to the back of the head. Two wounds on the face, one to the ribs and one to the buttock were likely delivered post-mortem, after Richard III was stripped of his armor, the researchers wrote. These "humiliation wounds" may have been designed to disrespect the king in death.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Top 10 Weird Ways We Deal With the Dead
• 8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries
• History's Most Overlooked Mysteries

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NASA

Officials collected 770 entries between April 20-21 from more than 9,000 people in 83 cities around the world for this year's International Space Apps Challenge.

By Clara Moskowitz
Space.com

An interplanetary weather app, a spot-the-space-station tool, and a Mars greenhouse concept are among the winners of the 2013 International Space Apps Challenge. The contest solicited mobile apps and technologies that aid space exploration and enrich life here on Earth.

On Wednesday, a panel of judges from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and partners announced the winners of the contest, which collected 770 entries between April 20-21. More than 9,000 people from 83 cities around the world contributed to the apps submitted, according to NASA.

"The International Space Apps Challenge was the culmination of months of planning, years of experimentation and thousands and thousands of hours of hard work from people across the globe who share in the excitement of building our collective future," Nick Skytland, NASA Open Innovation Program Manager, wrote in a blog post on open.NASA. "It is a shining example that transparency, participation and collaboration are alive and well at NASA." [10 Best Space Apps in the Universe]

Many of the contestants in the challenge, which is in its second year, used free cloud storage and services provided to all participants in the challenge by the company CloudSigma. "It's amazing to see the innovation coming out of this event, and we feel honored to have been a part of it,"CloudSigma Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Robert Jenkins said in a statement.

The teams behind the six winning apps receive invitations to the November launch of NASA's robotic Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) Mars probe from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and a Spaceflight Training course at the National Aerospace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center in Pennsylvania.

The six "best in class" winners of the challenge are:

Best Use of Data: Sol
This Kansas-produced app integrates weather data collected by the Curiosity rover on Mars with live weather conditions on Earth to give users a forecast for both planets at once.

Best Use of Hardware: ISS Base Station
A combination hardware-software entry, ISS Base Station, made in Philadelphia, includes an app that tracks the position of the International Space Station (ISS) over Earth, with a physical device that can point to the current location of the space station and alert users when it's in view.

Best Mission Concept: Popeye on Mars
This concept, submitted by a team from Athens, Greece, proposes a reusable Martian greenhouse that would use aeroponics to grow spinach on the Red Planet. The idea includes resources, sensors and technology to stabilize the greenhouse environment over the 45 days it would require to harvest spinach.

Galactic Impact: Greener Cities
This project, invented in Gothenburg, Sweden, proposes a system for integrating climate data from NASA satellites with crowd-sourced data collected from people on the ground via garden sensors and other inputs to improve the overall picture of the environment.

Most Inspiring: T-10
This London-based submission is a prototype app designed for astronauts living on the International Space Station who aim to photograph certain spots on Earth. The program would integrate weather data to alert spaceflyers when the orbiting laboratory was passing over those areas, if conditions permit photography at the time.

People's Choice Award: ChicksBook
This app, developed in Sofia, Bulgaria, won the votes of social media users around the world for its use in managing a backyard farm and tools to learn how to raise chickens.

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Top 10 Smartphones
• PhoneSat: Small Satellites Use Smart Phones For Brains | Video
• NASA's Space Exploration and Tech Goals for 2014 (Photos)

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Ayako Wada-Kutsumta and Andrew Ernst

The head of a male German cockroach with antennae extending upward. Long maxillary palps and short labial palps extend downward toward a tasty droplet (blue). The antennae and palps all contain sensory hairs, some of which convey information about taste to the insect's central nervous system.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

In the ongoing battle between humans and cockroaches, the insects have a leg up. A new study finds that roaches evolved their taste buds to make sweet insecticide baits taste bitter. As a result, the roaches avoid the baits and thrive, to the frustration of homeowners everywhere.

Plenty of insects evolve resistance to pesticides; they gain the ability to break down poisons without dying. German cockroaches, on the other hand, evolved what's known as a behavioral resistance to baits. They simply stopped eating them.

"Our paper is the first to show the sensory mechanism that underlies that behavioral resistance," said study researcher Coby Schal, an entomologist at North Carolina State University.

The answer, Schal and his colleagues found, is in the taste buds.

Evolving cockroaches
German cockroaches are the small, scuttling roaches frequently seen in human habitats, including homes and restaurants. They grow to be about a half-inch (1.27 centimeters) long and are omnivorous, scavenging everything from grease to starch.

"They'll eat pretty much anything in the kitchen, but they are incredibly good at eating things that are adaptive to them," Schal told LiveScience. "They are really amazingly good at learning to associate smells with specific tastes."

Beginning in the 1980s, many pest control companies switched from using spray insecticides to control cockroaches to using baits. The baits combine sugars with insecticide so that roaches eat them, thinking they are sugary snacks, return to their nests and die. Ideally, the other cockroaches in the nest then cannibalize their dead relative, getting a dose of the poison, too.

This worked beautifully — for a while. But in 1993, NC State entomologist Jules Silverman noticed that several populations of German cockroaches around the world were thriving in spite of the baits. The roaches were refusing to eat the glucose, or sugar, that was supposed to make the bait appealing.

Bitter or sweet?
Pest control companies switched up the sugars in their baits to keep them working, and for years, no one knew how the roaches had developed their glucose aversion. Now, Schal, Silverman and NC State postdoctoral researcher Ayako Wada-Katsumata have the answer.

The first question, Schal said, was whether there was a change in the brains or the sensory systems of the glucose-averse roaches. To find out, Wada-Katsumata conducted a delicate procedure in which she sedated roaches with ice, immobilized them and attached electrodes to the taste hairs on the cockroach mouthparts. These taste hairs act like taste buds on the human tongue, detecting chemical signals and sending them to the insect's central nervous system. [See Video of the Cockroach Experiments]

In normal roaches, some of the cells in the taste hairs respond to bitter tastes and others to sweet tastes. In roaches that avoided glucose, however, there was one change.

"The system was perfectly normal, except for the fact that glucose was being recognized not only by the sweet-responding cell, but also by the bitter-responding cell," Schal said.

In other words, the glucose-averse roaches tasted sweet things as bitter and thus avoided them. (Even cockroaches have standards, it seems.)

Roaches could have evolved this response simply because people started poisoning them with sweet baits, Schal said. It's also possible that the trait goes way back in cockroaches' 350-million-year history. Some plants produce toxic bittersweet compounds that roaches would have needed to avoid before humans came around. Once humans started building dwellings and roaches moved in, they may have lost this sugar-avoidance ability in order to snack on humans' leftovers. When people started developing sugary baits, the preadapted anti-sugar trait may have re-emerged, Schal said.

Either way, Schal said, the finding has implications for pest control. The industry has replaced glucose in baits with another sugar, fructose, but evidence already suggests that roaches are evolving to avoid fructose, too, he said. The industry needs to vary baits frequently and make multiple types at once to stay a step ahead of the roaches, he said.

"If you put out a little dab of bait and see that the cockroach bounces back from it, there's no point of using that bait," Schal said.

The researchers are to report their findings Friday in the journal Science.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Nature's Biggest Pests
• Gallery: Dazzling Photos of Dew-Covered Insects
• No Creepy Crawlies Here: Gallery of the Cutest Bugs

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Bill Saxton, NRAO / AUI / NSF

An artist's conception of SS Cygni double-star system, which includes a red-dwarf star (left) and a compact white-dwarf star, right. The binary stars are actually 372 light-years from Earth, much closer than the 520 light-years previously thought.

By Clara Moskowitz
Space.com

A strange pair of stars is much closer to Earth than scientists ever thought, a discovery that finally helps explain a puzzling mystery behind the stellar twins, scientists say.

The binary star system is made up of a normal star and a dense stellar remnant called a white dwarf. According to the new measurement, the star system is 372 light-years from Earth, not 520 light-years as previously thought. Known as SS Cygni, the star pair is one of the variable star systems most often observed in the sky, but until now, astronomers couldn't figure out why it behaves the way it does.

SS Cygni erupts in regular outbursts about once every 49 days, when it brightens to release significantly more light than normal. Such outbursts are considered normal for most star pairs of this type, called dwarf novas, but if SS Cygni was as far away as astronomers thought, this explanation didn't make sense. [Star Quiz: Test Your Stellar Smarts]

White dwarfs are known to pull mass off companion stars with their strong gravity. This stolen mass then swirls around the white dwarf in a rotating disk that feeds material directly onto the dense star. When the flow of mass onto the white dwarf slows down, though, the disk can become unstable and release a flare of light.

This should not have been the case for SS Cygni, however, if it truly was as far away as 520 light-years.

Bill Saxton, NRAO / AUI / NSF

The Trigonometric Parallax method determines distance to a star by measuring its slight shift in apparent position as seen from opposite ends of Earth's orbit.

"That was a problem," astronomer James Miller-Jones of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, said in a statement. "At that distance, SS Cygni would have been the brightest dwarf nova in the sky, and should have had enough mass moving through its disk to remain stable without any outbursts."

Miller-Jones led the research team that made the new distance measurement, which in turn refines astronomers' understanding of the twin stars' intrinsic brightness. At the new distance, SS Cygni finally makes sense. "Our new distance measurement has solved the puzzle of SS Cygni's brightness; it fits our theories after all," Miller-Jones said.

While the previous distance measurement came from Hubble Space Telescope observations, Miller-Jones and his team used radio telescopes — in particular, the Very Long Baseline Array spread across the United States and the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network in Europe and South Africa.

The scientists employed a method called parallax to pinpoint SS Cygni's location more accurately than ever before. Essentially, this method compares the apparent wobble of a foreground object — in this case, the double star system — against the relatively stable positions of background objects such as distant galaxies.

"If you hold your finger out at arm's length and move your head from side to side, you should see your finger appear to wobble against the background," Miller-Jones explained. "If you move your finger closer to your head, you'll see it starts to wobble more. We did the exact same thing with SS Cygni — we measured how far it moved against some very distant galaxies as the Earth moved around the sun."

The measurements could be made only during one of SS Cygni's outbursts, when it releases enough light in the radio frequency range to be seen clearly. The scientists collaborated with amateur astronomers from the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) to know when to make their observations.

"The system only emits radio waves for a short period of time," said astronomer Matthew Templeton of the AAVSO, who is a co-author of the findings. "Without the cooperation of our many amateur observers who looked at SS Cygni night after night, we wouldn't have known when to look — their contribution was invaluable."

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Cannibal White Dwarf Feeds On Companion Star | Video
• Top 10 Star Mysteries
• Photos: New Supernova Explodes in Galaxy M95

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Chimelong Safari Park

The coat of white tigers, such as these ones at Chimelong Safari Park in China, results from a change in a pigment gene.

By Tanya Lewis
LiveScience

The strikingly beautiful, milky coats of white tigers are caused by a single change in a known pigment gene, a new study finds.

Since their discovery in the Indian jungle centuries ago, white tigers, a variant of Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris), have had a certain mystique. Captive white tigers have been inbred to preserve the recessive white coat trait, leading some to speculate the trait is a genetic defect. But the genetic basis of tiger whiteness was not known. (A recessive trait will only show up if the individual gets two genes for that trait, one each from mom and dad.)

White tigers have now disappeared from the wild. "The white tiger represents part of the natural genetic diversity of the tiger that is worth conserving, but is now seen only in captivity," study author Shu-Jin Luo of China's Peking University said in a statement. [Iconic Cats: All 9 Subspecies of Tiger]

Luo and colleagues are calling for a captive management program to maintain both white and orange Bengal tigers, and possibly to reintroduce the cats back into the wild.

To find out the genetics responsible for white tigers' creamy hue, Luo's team mapped the genomes of a family of 16 tigers — both white and orange — in China's Chimelong Safari Park. The researchers also sequenced the full genomes of the three parent tigers. They validated their findings in 130 unrelated tigers.

The team focused on a pigment gene called SLC45A2, which is linked to light coloration in modern Europeans as well as horses, chickens and fish. The white tigers carried a variant of this gene that inhibits the production of red and yellow pigments without affecting black pigments, results showed.

The gene variant explains why the majestic cats lack the rich orange shade of their feline cousins but still have their famous dark stripes. The findings were detailed Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Now that the researchers have identified the white color gene, they want to investigate how these two color varieties, white and orange, have survived through evolution.

Records of white tigers in India date back to the 1500s, Luo and colleagues say. They appear able to survive in the wild, as their primary prey, such as deer, are probably colorblind. The animals were widely hunted, and the last known free-ranging white tiger was shot in 1958. Habitat destruction probably contributed to the cats' decline.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• Gallery: Tiger Species of the World
• Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth
• In Images: Tigers Rebound in Asia

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NASA / JPL-.Caltech / Cornell / Arizona State University

The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called "Esperance," which was inspected by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. This image is a composite of three exposures taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera during the 3,262nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (March 28, 2013).

By Megan Gannon
Space.com

The venerable Mars rover Opportunity, the older and smaller cousin of Curiosity, has discovered another water-weathered rock hinting that the Red Planet could have supported life in its ancient past, NASA officials said.

In its last days exploring "Cape York," a site on the rim of the giant Endeavour crater, the Opportunity rover examined a fractured rock unlike any it has seen during its nine years on Mars, researchers say.

With data from a camera and spectrometer on the rover's robotic arm, researchers found that the rock, dubbed "Esperance," is a relic of a wetter time on Mars when life may have been possible. [Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life (Photos)]

"Water that moved through fractures during this rock's history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen," Opportunity principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University said in a statement.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / USGS

This mosaic of four frames shot by the microscopic imager on the robotic arm of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows a rock target called "Esperance" after some of the rock's surface had been removed by Opportunity's rock abrasion tool.

Compared with the composition of rocks previously probed by Opportunity, Esperance is higher in aluminum and silica and lower in calcium and iron, researchers said. And it has other unique characteristics as well.

"What's so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions, so that Opportunity can clearly see the alteration," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, a long-term planner for Opportunity's science team.

Earlier this year, NASA's Curiosity rover found that the Red Planet could have supported microbial life in the ancient past, based on a sample the 1-ton robot drilled out of a Martian rock.

Opportunity did not have such luck in its early days, finding evidence for ancient wet environments that were very acidic and thus unlikely to have supported life. The older rover was guided toward Endeavour crater after NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected evidence there of clay minerals, which form in relatively neutral-pH wet environments.

"Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking," Squyres said.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

This map of a portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars shows the area where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity worked for 20 months, "Cape York," in relation to the area where the rover team plans for Opportunity to spend its sixth Martian winter, "Solander Point."

Opportunity had a deadline to meet last week to end its 20-month exploration of Cape York and set out for Solander Point, another site at the edge of the impact crater Endeavour, which measures 14 miles (22 kilometers) across. The Opportunity team plans to keep the golf cart-sized rover working there during its next Martian winter.

Opportunity is poised to break the international record for distance traveled on another world during its 1.4-mile (2.2-km) drive to Solander Point. That mark is held by the Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 23 miles (37 km) on the moon in 1973.

The six-wheeled Opportunity broke the U.S. record last week when its total odometry hit 22.22 miles (35.76 kilometers) on May 15, NASA officials said. The previous U.S. mark was set in December 1972 when astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove 22.21 miles (35.74 km) across the lunar surface on the Apollo 17 moon rover.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

• Latest Mars Photos From Rovers Spirit & Opportunity
• Mars Could Have Supported Life, NASA Finds | Video
• Amazing Mars Discoveries By Rovers Spirit & Opportunity

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ESO

This stellar nursery shines 6,500 light-years from Earth in this photo released Thursday..

By Miriam Kramer
Space.com

An amazing photo of a stellar nursery located 6,500 light-years away from Earth marks the 15-year cosmic anniversary of a telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Very Large Telescope — located in Chile's Atacama Desert and operated by the European Southern Observatory — captured this incredible image of the nebula IC 2944 as it shines in the southern constellation Centaurus.

"These opaque blobs resemble drops of ink floating in a strawberry cocktail, their whimsical shapes sculpted by powerful radiation coming from the nearby brilliant young stars," ESO officials said. [Greatest Hits from ESO's Very Large Telescope (Video)]

The newly released image is the sharpest shot of IC 2944 ever taken from the ground, ESO officials said, and it makes sense that the VLT would be responsible for capturing it. The VLT is the "world's most advanced optical instrument," ESO officials added.

"Emission nebulae like IC 2944 are composed mostly of hydrogen gas that glows in a distinctive shade of red, due to the intense radiation from the many brilliant newborn stars," officials from ESO wrote in a release. "Clearly revealed against this bright backdrop are mysterious dark clots of opaque dust, cold clouds known as Bok globules."

ESO officials also created a flyby video tour through the nebula using the images collected by the telescope.

ESO/ P.D. Barthel / M. McCaughrean / M. Andersen / S. Gillessen et al. / Y. Beletsky / R. Chini / T. Preibisch

The Very Large Telescope saw first light on May 25, 1989. This image was released Thursday.

The Bok globules (the dark splotches in a sea of red) in new ESO photo are being bombarded by ultraviolet radiation given off by brightly shining hot stars close by. Like lumps of butter in a hot frying pan the globules are "both being eroded away and also fragmenting," ESO officials said.

The globules depicted in this photo will likely not create new stars before they are obliterated.

The Hubble Space Telescope has also imaged this part of the sky for NASA and the European Space Agency, but the new image from the Very Large Telescope reveals a wider swath of sky with more star formation than the space telescope's views, ESO officials said.

The VLT was originally a combination of four giant telescopes, but now four smaller telescopes have joined the originals to create the VLT Interferometer. The first telescope in the instrument saw first light on May 25, 1998.

"The VLT is one of the most powerful and productive ground-based astronomical facilities in existence," ESO officials said. "In 2012 more than 600 refereed scientific papers based on data from the VLT and VLTI were published."

The ESO is run by 15 different countries and is considered the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory.

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