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Botany Bay is a topographic saddle exposing sedimentary rocks that are part of the Burns formation, a geological unit Opportunity examined during earlier years of the mission. At Botany Bay, the Burns formation is exposed between isolated remnants of Endeavour Crater's rim. Solander Point and Cape Tribulation are rim segments south of Botany Bay. Opportunity is on the way to Solander Point to spend the upcoming winter season on northerly tilted surfaces. Extensive rock strata are evident on the northern side of Solander Point, and these ancient rocks and surrounding bench materials will be investigated in detail by Opportunity as part of the winter science campaign.

This is a diagram of the surface forces apparatus used to study ionic liquids.

Researchers for the first time mapped the extent and frequency of understory fires across a study area (green) spanning 1.2 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) in the southern Amazon forest. Fires were widespread across the forest frontier during the study period from 1999-2010. Recurrent fires, however, are concentrated in areas favored by the confluence of climate conditions suitable for burning and ignition sources from humans.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward the night side of Saturn's largest moon and sees sunlight scattering through the periphery of Titan's atmosphere and forming a ring of color.

The Newcastle-Moore EF-5 tornado ripped through central Oklahoma on May 20, 2013, killing 24 people and leaving behind more than $2 billion in damage.

(a) Photograph of an ultrathin (72 µm thick) metamaterial sample. (b) Illustration of how the metamaterial redirects an electromagnetic wave, which would not happen for a normal thin film. The structure is not drawn to scale.

This artist’s rendering shows all-optical control of an individual electronic spin within a diamond. This spin is associated with a naturally occurring defect in diamond known as the nitrogen-vacancy center, a promising quantum bit (qubit) for quantum information processing. The University of Chicago’s David Awschalom and his associates have developed techniques to initialize, manipulate, and read out the electronic spin of this qubit using only pulses of light.

Mars Express mission highlights.