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This artist's impression of one of the most distant, oldest, brightest quasars ever seen is hidden behind dust. The quasar dates back to less than one billion years after the big bang. The dust is also hiding the view of the underlying galaxy of stars that the quasar is presumably embedded in.

By observing the sun in a number of different wavelengths, NASA's telescopes can tease out different aspects of events on the sun. These four images of a solar flare on Oct. 22, 2012, show from the top left, and moving clockwise: light from the sun in the 171 Angstrom wavelength, which shows the structure of loops of solar material in the sun's atmosphere, the corona; light in 335 Angstroms, which highlights light from active regions in the corona; a magnetogram, which shows magnetically active regions on the sun; light in the 304 Angstrom wavelength, which shows light from the region of the sun's atmosphere where flares originate.

Using ARTIDIS to feel the tissue structure of a tumor biopsy by a nanometer-sized atomic force microscope tip

Valles Marineris, seen at an angle of 45 degrees to the surface in near-true colour and with four times vertical exaggeration. The image covers an area of 630 000 sq km with a ground resolution of 100 m per pixel. The digital terrain model was created from 20 individual HRSC orbits, and the colour data were generated from 12 orbit swaths. The largest portion of the canyon, which spans right across the image, is known as Melas Chasma. Candor Chasma is the connecting trough immediately to the north, with the small trough Ophir Chasma beyond. Hebes Chasma can be seen in the far top left of the image.

This image of a solar flare on Oct 22, 2012, combines the light from two different wavelengths as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The wavelengths are 131 and 335 Angstroms, typically colorized in teal and blue, respectively. The former is a particularly good wavelength for observing solar flares, while the latter helps highlight active regions on the sun where such flares can originate.