Astronauts on the International Space Station recently used a digital camera to capture several hundred photographs of the Aurora Australis, or the “southern lights.”  (Photo: NASA)

A research team from the University at Buffalo in New York, studying glaciers at Ayr Lake on Baffin Island, Canada, found the island’s glaciers reacted rapidly to past climate change, providing what they say is a rare glimpse into glacier sensitivity to climate events. (Photo: Jason Briner via NSF)

The lava lake in the Halemaʻumaʻu crater of Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano spits and sputters with occasional bursts of volcanic material. (Photo: USGS)

Two galaxies becoming one. This is a Hubble telescope photo of NGC 2623, two galaxies in the final stages of a titanic galaxy merger, located some 300 million light-years away. (Photo: NASA)

NASA’s Small Multi-Purpose Research Facility ( SMiRF ) evaluates the performance of thermal protection systems required to provide long-term storage and transfer of cryogenic propellants in space. Recent testing was done over a range of temperatures as low as -253°C and tank pressures from 20-80 psia (pounds per square inch absolute). (Photo: NASA & Bridget R. Caswell (Wyle Information Systems, LLC))

The Soyuz rocket carrying ISS Expedition 33 crew members launches to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012. (Photo: NASA)

Paragorga arborea, also known as bubblegum coral, is an abundant coral species that can grow massive colonies, and has been found at polar, subpolar, and subtropical regions of all of the world’s oceans. It can reach up to eight meters in height and live up to 100 years.  (Photo: NOAA/MBARI)

A look at the center of our galaxy. Using a massive nine-gigapixel image, (from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile) an international team of astronomers has created a catalog of more than 84 million stars located in the central parts of the Milky Way. The image is so large that, if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 meters long and 7 meters tall. (Photo: ESO/VVV Consortium/Ignacio Toledo)

This is a robot at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that has been coded with PaR-PaR, which stands for Programming a Robot; a simple, high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language that allows researchers to make better use of liquid-handling robots and thereby make possible experiments that otherwise might not have been considered. (Photo: Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab)

A bright particle of material found in a hole dug by the Curiosity Martian rover caused a bit of concern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory because another similar object, found nearby, was identified as a piece of debris from the spacecraft. However, the mission’s science team assessed the bright particles in this scooped pit to be native Martian material rather than spacecraft debris. (Photo: NASA)

NASA/Goddard physicist Babak Saif checks an oscilloscope as he works on a project that would be capable of detecting, with atomic-level precision, gravitational waves that were predicted in Einstein’s general theory of relativity. (Photo: NASA)

The Z machine, the largest X-ray generator in the world, is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It concentrates electrical energy, turning it into short pulses of enormous power, which can then be used to generate X-rays and gamma rays. (Photo: Image: Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories)

The farthest-ever view of the universe. Hubble’s Extreme Deep Field (XDF) is a composite made from 2,000 images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a 10-year period. (Credit: NASA)

This orange elephant ear sponge, or Agelas clathrodes, was found in NOAA’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo: NOAA)

The Curiosity rover may found evidence of an ancient stream bed. This picture of a Martian rock outcrop called Link has characteristics consistent with a rock formed by water deposits and transport. (Photo: NASA)

African penguins gather to keep warm as some are fed sardines at the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds.  The penguins were recently found covered in oil on Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo: AP)

Space shuttle Endeavour, atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, comes in for a landing at the Los Angeles International Airport. It was the final scheduled ferry flight of the US Space Shuttle Program. Endeavour will be placed on public display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.  (Photo: NASA)

A high-powered laser – based at the University of California, Santa Barbara – is used to study the world at the atomic level. (Photo: UCSB/Susumu Takahashi)

A cardiac balloon catheter embeded with a mesh of sensors and electronics is being developed by researchers at the University of Illinois. When placed inside a cardiac patient’s heart, a device such as this may allow for a better and more efficient diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias. (Photo: J. Rogers, University of Illinois)

Technicians and scientists in the clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, check out one of the first two flight mirrors that will be used on the new Webb Space Telescope. (Photo: NASA)

Millions of monarch butterflies are expected to migrate south in less than a month in their seasonal trip from Canada to Mexico. Ecologists in Kansas and Missouri say extreme temperatures in the Midwest could hurt their southern migration. (Photo: AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

NASA’s new Mars rover Curiosity takes a panoramic picture of itself by its navigation cameras. The picture is actually a mosaic of multiple shots taken by the Mars rover. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

That’s sure one big snake! Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus prepare to examine the anatomy of a 17-foot-7-inch Burmese python, the largest found in Florida so far. The more than 75 kg snake carried a state record 87 eggs in its oviducts. (Photo: University of Florida photo by Kristen Grace/Florida Museum of Natural History)

NASA’s Orion spacecraft will take astronauts on missions to destinations far beyond Earth, such as to an asteroid and Mars. This photo shows one of Orion’s main parachutes undergoing a test of recovery procedures for the parachutes. (Photo: NASA/James Blair)

Cave divers exploring a submarine lava tube cave in the Canary Islands for a National Science Foundation-supported expedition, ‘Survey of Anchialine Cave Fauna of the Bahama Islands’ (Photo: Jill Heinerth/NSF)

Lab on a chip (LOC) devices are microchip-size systems that can prepare and analyze tiny fluid samples with volumes ranging from a few microliters (millionth of a liter) to sub-nanoliters (less than a billionth of a liter) and some day could revolutionize how laboratory tasks such as diagnosing diseases and investigating forensic evidence are performed. (Photo: Cooksey/NIST)

Turning its eye to the Tarantula Nebula, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken this close-up of the outskirts of the main cloud of the Nebula. The Tarantula Nebula is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of our neighboring galaxies, and situated at a distance of 170,000 light-years away from Earth. (Photo: European Space Agency/Judy Schmidt)

Juvenile crocodile captured in Homestead, Florida. Since the croc monitoring program began at the plant in 1978, some 5,000 hatchlings have been captured and marked. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

The heat shield for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is being prepared at Lockaheed Martin Space Systems in Denver. It’s the largest ever built for a planetary mission. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin)

Female pillar coral releases eggs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Researchers say it was the first time anyone has observed female pillar coral spawning. (Photo; AP Photo/Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, Karen Neely)