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The glowing jumble of gas clouds visible in this new image make up a huge stellar nursery nicknamed the Prawn Nebula. Taken using the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, this may well be the sharpest picture ever taken of this object. It shows clumps of hot new-born stars nestled in among the clouds that make up the nebula.

This illustration shows how the different effective viscosity of water affects the force required to slide two surfaces separated by a thin layer of water when confined by a hydrophilic material or a hydrophobic material.

This model of the guanidinium chloride salt (blue and silver) in solution shows carbon (yellow) and water (green) surrounding the cations and demonstrates cation-cation pairing.

Diagram of an example flight profile is shown. It takes about 3 hours from launch for the payload to reach float (maximum altitude). HEROES will observe the Sun for approximately 5 hours until it is no longer visible. Astrophysical observations will then take place during the night-time.

This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.

This atomic force microscope image shows directed self-assembly of a printed line of block copolymer on a template prepared by photolithography. The microscope’s software colored and scaled the image. The density of patterns in the template (bounded by the thin lines) is two times that of the self-assembled structures (the ribbons).

If you could drive a car around the giant Asteroid Vesta, you would need a road map akin to the atlas of images released from NASA's Dawn mission. Twenty-nine new maps of the asteroid, one of which is shown here, show its mountains and craters at a scale similar to that of common road maps.

Japan has launched a new rocket that it hopes will be a less expensive and more efficient way of sending satellites into space.

A diagram of one of the group's experimental setups shows a copper plate that can be heated using a torch underneath it, to study the effect of temperature on the process. On top of the plate, an apparatus consisting of two reservoirs separated by a silicon structure that has a single carbon nanotube on top of it. When a power source is connected to the electrodes (the wires extending up from the device), charged molecules (ions) from one of the reservoirs can pass through the tube, and its progress can be monitored using a scanning electron microscope.