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Otters are often observed - both in the wild and inside the enclosures of zoos - playing and juggling with stones and pebbles. No one knows exactly why otters do this — but it’s completely mesmerizing

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Un azul muy de... Prusia.

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CuCl2 • 2H2O

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Vanadio en sus estados de oxidación.

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Sal de Mohr.

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Forgetfulness is a virtue

Retired chemist Frank Distefano rescued a small sample of nickel sulfate from a group of chemicals tagged as waste at his work. The metal salt had originally been slated to be part of a catalyst preparation process. “My intent was specifically to prepare crystals, reliving my childhood chemistry experience,” he says. “After making an aqueous solution, I set it aside and forgot about it.” About a year later, Distefano found these two large crystals, 14x3x2 mm and 12x4x2 mm, waiting for him. —Craig Bettenhausen

Submitted by Frank Distefano

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That star stuff you see here? That’s what you’re made of. You possess the elements ✨ ⁣

This composite image from our Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Isaac Newton Telescope shows high-energy X-rays emitted by young, massive stars in the star cluster Cygnus OB2. This year we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of Chandra’s launch. Want to dive deeper? Click here

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

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Say hello to the Butterfly Nebula 👋

It looks like our Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a peaceful, cosmic butterfly unfurling its celestial wings, but the truth is vastly more violent. In the Butterfly Nebula, layers of gas are being ejected from a dying star. Medium-mass stars grow unstable as they run out of fuel, which leads them to blast tons of material out into space at speeds of over a million miles per hour!

Streams of intense ultraviolet radiation cause the cast-off material to glow, but eventually the nebula will fade and leave behind only a small stellar corpse called a white dwarf. Our middle-aged Sun can expect a similar fate once it runs out of fuel in about six billion years.

Planetary nebulas like this one aren’t actually related to planets; the term was coined by astronomer William Herschel, who actually discovered the Butterfly Nebula in 1826. Through his small telescope, planetary nebulas looked like glowing, planet-like orbs. While stars that generate planetary nebulas may have once had planets orbiting them, scientists expect that the fiery death throes these stars undergo will ultimately leave any planets in their vicinity completely uninhabitable.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

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Laser activated

As the light from a single ultraviolet laser cuts through these cuvettes, it looks like it changes colors. In fact, what’s happening is that each of these solutions contains a slightly different fluorescent molecule known as a curcumin derivative (general structure shown). These molecules each have slightly different electron-donating groups attached, causing the solutions to light up in distinct colors when they interact with laser light. Bruna Martins de França, a PhD student in the lab of David Ernest Nicodem at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, is studying these molecules for applications in photodynamic therapy for cutaneous sporotrichosis, a fungal skin disease that is a growing problem in Brazil. De França hopes these molecules can be applied and activated with a laser through a patient’s infected skin, where they would generate reactive oxygen species that show efficient antifungal action. – Manny Morone

Submitted by Bruna Martins de França

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