Of Interest: Firdousi is a relatively fresh impact crater approximately 96 kilometers (60 miles) in diameter. Its abundant secondary craters dominate the surroundings, and many have haloes of high-reflectance, relatively blue ejecta.

This Dawn FC (framing camera) image shows the sun illuminating the landscape of Vesta during a Vestan 'sunrise'. When this image was obtained the sun had a low angle relative to Vesta's surface, just as the sun has a low angle in the sky in the morning on Earth. This 'early morning', low angle light on Vesta enhances the surface topography of the illuminated regions. For example, the morphological details of the interior wall of the crater in the bottom right of the image are especially clear.

This image was taken on February 19, 2012 and received on Earth February 20, 2012. The camera was pointing toward Titan at approximately 10,989 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters. This image has not been validated or calibrated. A validated/calibrated image will be archived with the NASA Planetary Data System in 2013. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Images of a Martian landscape offer evidence that the Red Planet's surface not only can shake like the surface of Earth, but has done so relatively recently. If marsquakes do indeed take place, said the scientists who analyzed the high-resolution images, our nearest planetary neighbor may still have active volcanism, which could help create conditions for liquid water.

New images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft show the moon's crust is being stretched, forming minute valleys in a few small areas on the lunar surface. Scientists propose this geologic activity occurred less than 50 million years ago, which is considered recent compared to the moon's age of more than 4.5 billion years.

Caption: This is an image of an artificial moon rock sample, measuring about half a millimeter across, made with an electron microprobe at ambient temperature after the experiment with X-rays. The fragmentation of the sample occurred when it was extracted from the small diamond cylinder in which it had been melted under high pressure and temperature. Credit: Nature

As if it could not make up its mind . . . darker, cooler plasma slid and shifted back and forth above the Sun's surface seen here for 30 hours (Feb. 7-8, 2012) in extreme ultraviolet light. An active region rotating into view provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma. The particles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. They are tracking along strands of magnetic field lines. This kind of detailed solar observation with high-resolution frames and a four-minute cadence was not possible until SDO, which launched two years ago on Feb. 11, 2010. So it's our 2nd Anniversary!