LPL Spotlight Stories

A team led by UA doctoral student Teddy Kareta obtained a rare glimpse of the bizarre, blue asteroid that is responsible for Geminid Meteor Shower.
Ceres is a dwarf planet that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. In this image, Ahuna Mons can be seen in the bottom right of Ceres's profile.
For this animation, OSIRIS-REx image scientists combined five exposures of asteroid Bennu taken by the spacecraft’s PolyCam camera. At this distance, almost six times of that between the Earth and the moon, Bennu is just a point source, indistinguishable from a star other than the way it moves against the star field in the background. This will change dramatically once the spacecraft comes closer and rendezvous with the asteroid in December. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)
"I hope there is a massive coronal mass ejection that happens during the mission," says Joe Giacalone (left), "…or maybe at the end of the mission." Kristopher Klein (right) is excited about the opportunity to go to a "fundamentally new" region of space – a star.
The Orion Nebula is a star-forming region in the Milky Way, and one of the most famous of the astronomical nebulas.
Project POEM participants test water quality in a shallow pool on Mount Lemmon.
Richard Kowalski of the UA-operated Catalina Sky Survey, talks about the discovery of 2018 LA, the small asteroid that exploded over southern Africa on June 2.
Air Force Research Lab, Others Tap UA Space Expertise. Satellite flying through space over Earth with sun setting in the distance.
New Estimates of Mercury's Thin, Dense Crust. This image of Mercury was created using infrared, red and violet filters that capture wavelengths both visible and invisible to the human eye; the colors shown here are only slightly different from what the human eye would see. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL/Carnegie Institute of Washington)
LPL Astronomers Track Tesla Roadster in Space. The Tesla Roadster and its mannequin passenger, Starman. This image was captured by cameras onboard the vehicle. (Image: SpaceX)