Getting involved in astronomy doesn’t always require a telescope. In fact, there’s a whole class of space researchers who get more mileage out of microscopes: They’re called astrobiologists.

According to NASA, astrobiology is:

“the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. This multidisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our Solar System and habitable planets outside our Solar System, the search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry and life on Mars and other bodies in our Solar System, laboratory and field research into the origins and early evolution of life on Earth, and studies of the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in space.”

That means many an astrobiologist gets to spend time visiting some of the most beautiful places on Earth, searching for extremely odd bacteria, ancient fossils, and other signs of life that may offer clues to what aliens could be like and how life might have evolved on other planets.

Supernova Origins

In 1572, people on Earth saw the bright light of a supernova. Now, by combining different intensities of x-ray data, scientists using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have created a new image of the debris left from that explosion, which hints at the origins of the cosmic blast.

Known as Tycho’s supernova remnant, the space puffball includes a cloud of expanding debris (yellow) enveloped by a high-energy blast wave (blue). The latest image also shows an arc of high-energy x-rays (bottom left) that seems to be coming from a faster moving ball of material.

Astronomers think that the supernova happened when a white dwarf star siphoned so much material from a companion star that it exploded. The blast blew material off the sunlike companion, and that debris is now emitting the arc of x-rays.

Surreal Sunrise

Clouds flow like a river over the lights of Swiss villages as the rising sun crowns the Alps with morning gold in a January 30 picture. To the right, a crescent moon and the bright dot of Venus decorate the paling sky.

Venus is closer to the sun than Earth, so—like a car going around a racetrack—Venus periodically overtakes Earth as it orbits. This means Venus changes from the evening star, visible after sunset, to the morning star, visible before sunrise, every 584 days.

Star-Struck Aurora

Stars wheeling across the sky seem to cut through a fiery aurora in a recently released long-exposure picture taken in western Sweden.

Auroras can appear in different colors depending on the types of gases in the atmosphere and where these gases are. Auroras happen when energized particles form the sun interact with air molecules and give them extra charge. These “excited” molecules then emit light. Oxygen, for example, can create auroras in yellow-green to red, while nitrogen emits light in blues and purples.

Aft View of Earth

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station snapped this recently released shot of the station’s rear end with Earth in the distance from aboard the ISS Progress 40 supply vehicle.

The unpiloted Progress 40 craft has since undocked from the station carrying waste items. The craft will be used for scientific experiments until it is burned up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Double Trouble

An arch of plasma called a solar filament erupts from the sun on January 28 in a video still from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

The craft caught the sun producing two events at once: At the same time the filament erupted, a coronal mass ejection on the opposite side of the solar disk (not pictured) blasted a huge spray of particles into space.

Have a Nice Day?

People with coulrophobia might want to avoid the south pole of Mars: Seasonal carbon dioxide frost has given rise to a pit that bears an eerie resemblance to a deranged clown face.

Scientists compared this newly released picture from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter with another taken in 2007 to see how the pit has changed over time. The team saw signs of growth inside the “happy face,” which they think is caused by frost that sublimates—turns directly from solid to gas—from the pit walls and then recondenses on its surfaces.

Snowy Berlin

Bright white snow and dark vegetation create a crystalline patchwork over the urban landscape of Berlin in a recently released satellite image of the German capital. Home to 3.4 million people, Berlin has the second largest population, within city limits, of any city in the European Union after London.

The picture was taken by the Japanese ALOS satellite and processed by theEuropean Space Agency. ALOS was designed to chart land cover in visible and near-infrared light.

WISE Comets

After a year of mapping the sky in infrared, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, space telescope discovered 20 comets, seen above in a mosaic of false-color pictures. The backgrounds appear fuzzy because WISE also captured the faint heat signatures of dust in our solar system.

In addition to comets, WISE discovered more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and 134 near-Earth objects—asteroids and comets that come within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit around the sun.