What better way to celebrate the glories of space exploration than to make a video about it? How about making a video about space exploration, and winning a trip for four to one of NASA's space centers? That's the top prize in the "Why Space Matters to the Future" video contest, sponsored by the centers in cooperation with the Coalition for Space Exploration.

Contest organizers are looking for videos up to two minutes in length that explain the values and benefits of space exploration, for this generation and future generations. The deadline for entries is April 7. The viewing public will get a chance to vote for their favorite, and a panel of judges will keep the people's choice in mind when they select the winner on April 17 — just after the global spaceflight celebration known as Yuri's Night.

The winning video will earn its maker a VIP trip for four to one of NASA's visitor centers: the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Space Center Houston in Texas, or the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Alabama. Check the coalition's website or VisitNASA.com to check out the contest instructions, review the official rules and upload your video.

Another space-themed video contest is coming up on a deadline this week: The Golden Spike Company is asking its Indiegogo supporters to send in videos touting the potential benefits of lunar exploration. Golden Spike plans to offer expeditions to the moon with a price tag of $1.4 billion or so for two-person round trips. Its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign is aimed at raising $240,000 for public outreach and engagement efforts — and the video contest is meant as a perk for the venture's contributors.

Video entries for the first round can be submitted via email to Angelica@tntcommgroup.com through Friday. Selected videos will be posted to Golden Spike's YouTube channel and put up for a public vote. Winning entries will be eligible for prizes such as lunar-lander models. TNT Creative Group's Tina Lange explains how it all works in the video below:

More about space ventures:

• Meet the folks planning trips to the moon and Mars
• The moon looms again as future destination
• Five rationales for the next Space Age

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Tibetan wildlife photographer Matse Rangja has been tracking snow leopards for eight years, and his efforts have paid off in a video clip that shows the elusive cat sniffing at the hidden camera's lens.

Last October, Rangja captured infrared video of snow leopards roaming the 15,000-foot Burhan Budai Mountains in China's northwest Qinghai Province at night. Last month, his camera trap caught a leopard during the daytime — and that video was released to the public this week.

"I make notice of the footprints and excrement of snow leopards when I'm on a picture trip," Rangja explained in an NTD TV report on his latest video. "And if I find the footprints, I will hide my camera nearby."

Snow leopards are on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, in large part due to poaching and human encroachment. Citing figures from 2003, the IUCN estimates that there are as many as 6,590 snow leopards left in the world, including 2,500 in China. But it acknowledges that the estimates may be "rough and out of date."

"There is no definite number in China or overseas to say how many snow leopards are left in Qinghai Province, in China or across the globe," NTD TV quoted Zhang Yu, a senior engineer in the Qinghai Department of Forestry, as saying. "We can only say that there is an average of 3.1 snow leopards every 100 square kilometers."

More views of snow leopards:

• Snow leopard moms and cubs seen in Mongolia
• Elusive snow leopards collared for science
• First snow leopards filmed in Siberia
• Snow leopards turn up in Kashmir, too

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Did Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe really capture photos of a UFO outside his office in Australia, passing over Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens? Or was it just a sailboat passing by?

In a series of Twitter updates, Crowe — who won the best-actor Oscar for his role in "Gladiator" and recently starred in another Oscar-nominated film, "Les Miserables" — insists that the pictures are real and that they don't show reflections or lens flare. What the YouTube video does show is a series of three timed-exposure photos, with a flat red light moving across the frame.

Crowe said the pictures were taken by a camera (a Canon 5D with no flash, to be precise) that was set up on the balcony of his office in the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo to capture pictures of fruit bats rising from the gardens. "This was a big surprise," Crowe wrote.

Some commenters quickly speculated that the UFO was nothing more than reflections from a light, perhaps from a beacon on a sailboat that was passing through nearby Woolloomooloo Bay. But Crowe defended the sighting: "The camera is on a balcony, not behind glass," he told one questioner. "Can't be a lens flare because it moves, camera is fixed," he said in another tweet.

Unless Crowe 'fesses up to a publicity stunt, or accepts one of the alternate explanations offered by skeptics, this sighting is likely to go into a big thick folder of unsolved celebrity UFO files. The conversation also rates a place among Crowe's most entertaining tweets. For what it's worth, here's another one from the Twitter files: "Due to a hangover of massive proportions ... anything I say on Leno tonight needs to be taken with a pinch of salt ... and a slice of lime."

I'll drink to that.

Update for 8 p.m. ET March 6: Facebook friend Tom Jorgenson came up with what seems to be the best explanation for the red light: It's reflected sunlight from a plane passing across the scene near sunset. You can make out what appears to be the outline of the plane's fuselage and tail. The exposure setting may have made the time-lapse pictures look more dramatic. To confirm that hypothesis, you'd have to check the time for the photo-taking session (at sunset) and the orientation of the camera (pointing to reflect the sun's rays into the camera lens). But I think we have a winner. What do you think?

Update for 12:13 a.m. ET March 7: OK, here's a much better explanation. ParaBreakdown's Phil Poling shows why Russell Crowe's UFO is most likely to be a series of long-exposure photos of an Unidentified Floating Object ... which now appears to have been identified. The YouTube video below breaks it down:

More from Cosmic Log's UFO files:

• Exploding UFO looks like weather balloon
• Middle East UFO linked to Russian missile test
• Cosmic Log archive on UFOs

Tip o' the Log to Huffington Post UK for the ParaBreakdown video.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Wed Mar 6, 2013 5:52 PM EST

NASA followed one of the classic rules for Internet videos during its first space-to-Earth Google Hangout on Friday: If you want to bring in the viewers, don't forget the cats.

Astronaut Tom Marshburn's demonstration of how an astronaut in the International Space Station's zero-gravity environment can imitate a falling kitty was one of the highlights of the hourlong video chat, which addressed more than 30 questions sent in via YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and real-time hookups with kids across the country.

One of the questions, phrased in the form of a video, came from the host of the "Smarter Every Day" webcast series, a rocket engineer known as Destin. (He keeps mum about his last name to protect his kids, who appear in the webcasts.) Destin ran his own mini-video showing how a falling cat rights itself in the air to land on its feet, and asked if the astronauts could match that feat in zero-G.

"We don't have any cats onboard," said space station commander Kevin Ford, "but we have a medical doctor who maybe can try to demonstrate the next best thing to a cat."

Marshburn, who's a physician as well as an astronaut, then proceeded to float in front of the camera and twist his body to change position — not quite as adroitly as the cats, but not bad for a human.

"I hope you believe that what you saw happened with the cat isn't a mystery, and that it can happen in space, too," Ford concluded. You can watch the demonstration around the 33-minute mark in the Hangout video.

Other astronauts participating in the chat included Canada's Chris Hadfield aboard the station, and NASA's Ron Garan and Nicole Stott on the ground. They took questions passed along from social media by NASA moderator John Yembrick; from live-video hookups with classrooms at University High School in Orlando, Fla., and Mescalero Apache School in New Mexico; and from a youngster named Fred whose video link was facilitated by the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Google

Astronauts Tom Marshburn, Kevin Ford and Chris Hadfield join the Google+ Hangout.

Here are a few more nuggets from the video:

• Hadfield said that this week's communications outage on the space station was "not that big a deal," and that the crew members were well-trained to operate the station even when they were out of contact with ground controllers. "It wasn't any sort of panic or anything, it was just us dealing with a problem on the ground, and our crew dealing with the problem on board," he said. 
• Getting into the right sleep cycle is a big challenge on the space station, where there are 16 sunsets and sunrises every day. Garan said that when it gets close to bedtime, some astronauts avoid looking out the window at Earth's bright side. Stott said NASA is experimenting with a scheme that makes the lighting inside the space station more bluish for the "morning" of the astronauts' workday, and more orangish during the "evening."
• The station's crew members showed off the medical kits they kept on board for health problems, but if there's a life-threatening emergency on board, astronauts would get into one of the Russian Soyuz capsules attached to the station and fly the stricken crew member back to Earth. "Our Soyuz is our ambulance," Marshburn said. 
• When the astronauts were asked which scientist from the past they wish they could bring to the space station, Marshburn instantly said Isaac Newton, who drew up physics' three laws of motion in the 17th century. "We see what he could only imagine," Marshburn said. 
• Taking pictures from space is a challenging task that requires advance training, due to the sharp contrast between the blackness of outer space and the brilliance of the planet below, Hadfield said. But there's one big plus: Because of the zero-G environment, it's a lot easier to handle huge telephoto lenses. "Every photographer in the world would love to have that much glass in front of their eyes ... and not have to balance it," Hadfield said.
• When the astronauts were asked about their growing social-media stardom, Hadfield said, "I don't think anybody tries to push the edge of human experience more than we do." Being able to see the whole world below is "too good an experience not to share," and avenues such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+ help facilitate that, he said. He noted that a lot of the astronauts' popularity had to do with their unique perspective. "We know just how lucky we are to be here," Hadfield said.

For more outer-space video goodness, tune in the Weekly Space Hangout at 3 p.m. ET Friday. Yours truly will be on the screen along with other scribes to review the week's space news, including the meteor blast that hit Russia a week ago.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn (left), Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (center) and space station commander Kevin Ford strike a zero-G pose in the International Space Station's Harmony node. All three will participate in Friday's Google+ Hangout.

Friday's live Google+ Hangout represents one small step for NASA, one giant leap for the Web-based videoconferencing tool.

Space-to-Earth hookups are nothing new for the International Space Station: NASA TV regularly broadcasts video from the orbital outpost as it circles the globe at an altitude of 240 miles (385 kilometers). Astronauts have been sending Twitter updates and Flickr photos from space for years. Heck, even NASA's robots have Facebook pages. But Friday's hourlong event, scheduled to run from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. ET, marks the first time that NASA has done a Hangout.

"We're looking forward to it," said Jason Townsend, a spokesman at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

He said NASA has selected 20 video questions from the scads that were sent in by the agency's social-media followers, and at least some of those questions will be aired for the space station astronauts to answer during a 20-minute downlink opportunity starting at 11 a.m. ET. "We're angling to fill every minute," Townsend told NBC News.

Three of the space station's six astronauts — station commander Kevin Ford, NASA colleague Tom Marshburn and Canada's Chris Hadfield — will participate in the space-plus-Earth Hangout. (The three others, all Russians, will presumably be minding the store.)

Townsend said that for the balance of the hour, questions will be handled by two NASA astronauts on the ground: Ron Garan, a social-media star who's in nearly 3 million Google+ circles; and Nicole Stott, who participated in the space station's first live NASA Tweetup in 2009.

Questions can be submitted during the Hangout via Google+, via Twitter (by including the hashtag #askAstro) and via NASA's Facebook page.

The outer-space Hangout is just the latest leap for NASA's social-media strategy: The Tweetups of the late space shuttle era have given way to a string of NASA Social gatherings. One took place just this week at NASA Headquarters. NASA regularly sets aside seats for social-media mavens at big events, including next month's SpaceX Dragon launch.

Last year, NASA's social-media teams presented 16 events that brought more than 1,000 followers to NASA facilities and other spacey locales. Mars Curiosity rover has been the star of the show, thanks in part to her (yes, her) 1.3 million Twitter followers. During the rover's landing last August, NASA served up a record 36 million webcast streams, and the six-wheeled robot has been known to check in to Foursquare from Mars.

How can the Three Amigos on the space station possibly compete with Curiosity (and her cantankerous, non-NASA-sponsored alter ego, Sarcastic Rover)? Tune in on Friday and find out.

More marvels from the space station:

• Astronaut's artistry hits warp speed
• Space-plus-Earth duet makes debut
• Online contest to boost space station power

After NASA's Hangout, keep an eye out for the Weekly Space Hangout, which brings space scribes together for an hour starting at 3 p.m. ET. Universe Today's Fraser Cain and Astrosphere's Scott Lewis (the Bald Astronomer) are among the ringleaders.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

A pixelated profile from NASA's Goldstone radar dish makes the passing asteroid 2012 DA14 look a bit like an out-of-control Viper space fighter from "Battlestar Galactica." But the real-life asteroid is almost five times as big, and might well pack a bigger wallop if it ever hit our planet.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Tuesday released a movie combining 73 radar images of 2012 DA14, captured over the course of eight hours on the night of Feb. 15-16. The image resolution is 13 feet (4 meters) per pixel.

In a news release, NASA said the images show the roughly 130-foot-long (40-meter-long) asteroid moving away from us, at a distance ranging from 74,000 miles to 195,000 miles (120,000 to 314,000 kilometers). These readings were made just hours after the time of closest approach, when the asteroid came within 17,200 miles (27,680 kilometers) of our planet.

2012 DA14's close encounter on Feb. 15 was eclipsed by the nuclear-scale impact of a meteor over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk earlier in the day — a widely witnessed event that caused more than 1,200 injuries and did an estimated $33 million in damage. NASA said the asteroid behind Russia's meteoric display was about a third the size of 2012 DA14.

If 2012 DA14 had hit instead, the damage would have been much, much worse. Experts have compared the bigger space rock to the object that blew up over a Siberian forest in 1908, knocking down millions of trees over an 820-square-mile area. As it is, the Russian meteor rates as the biggest observed cosmic impact since Siberia's Tunguska event.

JPL's radar observations, which continue through Wednesday, are aimed at fine-tuning the calculations of 2012 DA14's future orbit by getting a better fix on its size, shape, rotation, surface features and surface roughness. For what it's worth, the asteroid's estimated length of 40 meters along its long axis is between four and five times the length of the Colonial Viper spacecraft that buzzed the Cylons in the "Battlestar Galactica" TV series.

The asteroid's path was perturbed by Earth's gravitational field in such a way that it won't come as close in the foreseeable future. However, a better understanding of its orbit and its composition could help scientists prepare for encounters with other asteroids — and figure out the best way to divert potentially threatening near-Earth objects.

The radar observation campaign is led by JPL's Lance Benner and Marina Brozovic.

Here are a more views of 2012 DA14 from other observers:

An international team led by MIT's Nicholas Moskovitz observed asteroid 2012 DA14 with a number of telescopes, including the 2.1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. This animated image shows the asteroid as it was leaving Earth's vicinity. Check out the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's news release for more information. If you missed seeing the animation, click here for a refreshed view.

More about the asteroid:

• Watch a passing asteroid fade out
• How it rates among asteroid hits and misses
• Earth kicks asteroid into safer orbit
• NBCNews.com's asteroid archive

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:24 PM EST

Asteroid 2012 DA14 has made its closest pass of Earth, just a scant 17,200 miles from our surface, and now astronomers are watching it recede harmlessly into the cosmos. You can watch it, too, thanks to a variety of webcasts.

The time of closest approach came at 2:25 p.m. ET, as scheduled, when the asteroid was zooming above the eastern Indian Ocean at a speed of almost 17,500 mph (7.8 kilometers per second). It was too dim to see with the naked eye, but observers in Australia, Asia and Europe could follow it with binoculars or small telescopes.

"It's on its way out now," said Paul Chodas, an astronomer with the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.  

Read: Meteor vs. asteroid? Terms get tangled when describing space rocks 

Chodas and his colleagues monitored 2012 DA14 with high-powered optical telescopes and huge radar dishes to learn more about the asteroid's color, shape, spin and reflectivity. Such data could tell them what the object is made of, and perhaps provide insights into how similar objects could be diverted if they were on a threatening course.

Experts estimate that asteroids the size of 2012 DA14 hit our planet every 1,200 years or so, exploding with the energy of a 2.5-megaton atomic bomb: The last such impact struck a remote region of Siberia without warning in 1908, flattening 820 square miles of forest. If an object that big were to hit in just the wrong place, it could wipe out a city. Coincidentally, a much smaller space rock came down over Russia on Friday, sparking a fireball and a glass-shattering shock wave.

Even though the 150-foot-wide (45-meter-wide) asteroid 2012 DA14 is the biggest object of its kind to be seen coming this close to Earth, its orbit is so well-known that NASA's Near-Earth Object Program can rule out any chance of collision in the foreseeable future. And even though 2012 flew 5,000 miles closer than satellites in geosynchronous orbit, NASA said its mostly south-to-north orbital path went through a "sweet spot" that kept it far away from those satellites — as well as from other spacecraft that are in closer orbits, including the International Space Station.

Astronomer hope their observations of 2012 DA14 will provide insights into subtle phenomena such as seismic disturbances that are induced by Earth's gravitational kick, or characteristics of the asteroid's spin that are affected by radiation absorption and emission.

This animated set of three images shows 2012 DA14 as it was observed by the Faulkes Telescope South in Australia on Feb. 14 at a distance of 465,000 miles. The asteroid is the moving bright spot in the middle. NASA's website provides details. Credit: LCOGT / E. Gomez / Faulkes South / Remanzacco Observatory.

Radar readings provide the best way to get a fix on the asteroid's shape and spin, in part because observations from multiple radio telescopes can be combined to produce a clearer picture. During the 2012 DA14 encounter, scientists used radio telescopes in California and New Mexico to produce new sets of radar imagery.

The first pictures from NASA's 230-foot (70-meter) dish at Goldstone, Calif., are due to be released on Saturday, and eventually those radar images will be combined to produce a 3-D map of the space rock.

Other telescopes, spread out from Australia to Israel to the Canary Islands to the U.S., gathered optical data — and the images from some of those telescopes were shared over the Internet on Friday. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been passing along pictures from a variety of telescopes via its Ustream video channel. Here's a rundown of other post-encounter webcasts:

5 p.m. ET: The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 presents live video of the asteroid flyby from a telescope in Italy, weather permitting. Video site: Watch Virtual Telescope Project's webcast.

6 p.m. ET: Weather permitting, the Clay Center Observatory in Massachusetts will stream real-time, high-definition video from 6 p.m. ET until 4 a.m. ET Saturday. Watch Clay Center video on Ustream.

9 p.m. ET: Slooh Space Camera plans to present several live shows about the asteroid flyby, accompanied by expert commentary. Weather permitting, imagery will be beamed to Slooh HQ from telescopes on the Canary Islands and in Arizona. Watch the show on Slooh.com.

9 p.m. ET: A video feed of the flyby from a telescope at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will be streamed for three hours. During the live-streaming event, viewers can ask researchers questions about the flyby via Twitter or the Ustream chat window. Watch Marshall's Ustream channel.

Chodas said the initial observations confirmed scientists' estimates of 2012 DA14's size, but other revelations will have to wait until astronomers have had a chance to analyze the data collected on Friday. By that time, the asteroid will be long gone. Earth's gravitational influence has changed 2012 DA14's orbit to keep it farther away from our planet during future orbits.

"It won't return for many, many years," he said.

More about the asteroid encounter:

• How 2012 DA14 rates among asteroid hits and misses
• Would-be miners say asteroid is worth $195 billion
• Hooray! Earth will kick asteroid into a safer orbit
• Flash interactive: Close encounters of the asteroid kind
• NBCNews.com's archive on asteroids

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Fri Feb 15, 2013 7:51 AM EST

After exploring the science of football, hockey and the Olympics, an Emmy-winning educational video effort is tackling the biggest game of all: innovation. The 11 videos in the "Science of Innovation" series are the latest fruits of a long-running partnership between the National Science Foundation and NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News.

The "Science of Innovation" series, narrated by NBC's Ann Curry, delves into the sometimes-unpredictable process that results in better technologies and products — and highlights 10 frontiers of innovation, ranging from biofuels to micro-electronic health monitors that can be worn on the skin like tattoos.

Monday's unveiling of the series was timed to coincide with the 165th birthday of Thomas Edison, one of America's best-known inventors. For this series, NSF and NBC have teamed up with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All of the scientists and engineers featured in the videos have been funded by NSF and have received U.S. patents for aspects of their work.

"America's unique system of funding innovative ideas helps them move from basic to applied research and, ultimately, into the marketplace," Judith Gan, NSF's director of legislative and public affairs, said in a news release. "NSF is proud to have participated in supporting innumerable scientific and technological innovations, which in turn have helped create millions of jobs that make our economy exceptionally competitive."

The videos are being made available to NBC affiliates, and can be downloaded freely from NSF's Science360 portal as well as the NBCLearn website. They complement lesson plans produced by the National Science Teachers Association for middle-school and high-school classes.

Teresa Stanek Rea, the patent and trademark office's acting director, said that "education is the key to encouraging today's children to become tomorrow's innovators."

"These videos and lesson plans are great tools for teachers everywhere to help students learn about intellectual property, while inspiring them to connect the process of innovation with science, technology, engineering and mathematics education." she said.

Soraya Gage, general manager of NBCLearn, said "our hope is that this special video series will engage and inspire our students to imagine the next great invention that will improve lives and transform the future."

More from the 'Science Of...' series:

• Are you ready for some football science?
• Take a shot at the science of hockey
• Jump into the science of the Winter Olympics
• Videos explore the science of Summer Olympics
• Chemistry gets its own show online
• Learn about our 'Changing Planet'
• Get the science behind the news

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many pages of scientific prose is a science comic worth? Or, for that matter, how many words in a blog post?

Science comics took the spotlight last week during one of the scores of sessions at Science Online 2013 in Raleigh, N.C. — and one of the takeaways was that illustrators and cartoonists are serious about the science they're depicting. Heck, many of them are trained scientists as well as gifted artists. Take MinutePhysics' Henry Reich, for example: He earned degrees in physics and math, but found himself drawn to film and video. Now he encapsulates complex concepts in physics (such as the quest for the Higgs boson) in YouTube videos that last just a bit more than a minute.

His latest MinutePhysics offering wraps up more than two dozen science websites and video channels worth checking out, including way-cool science comics such as xkcd and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. You'll want to scan the whole list, but you won't want to stop there. It's a good thing the weekend is coming up, because here are another eight science comics to while away the hours with:

Bird and Moon: Rosemary Mosco is a "nature lover with a passion for science communication" — and a flair for cute, colorful graphics that are thoughtful as well. Have you always wondered how to tell a dolphin from a porpoise? Check out the "Animal Cheat Sheet."  

Beatrice the Biologist: Katie McKissick is on a mission to "make science fun and interesting for the casual reader," and she's not afraid of stirring up a little controversy as well. Don't miss the story behind the "Facebook Genital Scandal of 2012."

Jay Hosler: Biology professor Jay Hosler highlights science comic strips of all stripes in his blog, "Drawing Flies," and creates his own highly respected comics and graphic novels. 

Luci's Let Down: Writer Marjee Chmiel and illustrator Sandra Lanz team up on an online comic book that's more about metaphysics than strictly physics.

PHD Comics: Jorge Cham draws the kinds of comics that graduate students might post on their office bulletin boards — when their faculty adviser isn't looking. Check out this Cosmic Log Q&A with Cham, as well as his fantastic guide to the Higgs boson.

Sci-ence.org: Maki Naro aims to "communicate science topics in a way that hopefully anybody can understand, and ideally elicit some chuckles." I had to chuckle over a certain zombie who guest-starred in a strip about last year's "Supermoon."

Walkabout Em: Emily Coren has degrees in ecology and evolutionary biology as well as science illustration. Her illustrations don't joke around — instead, they present creatures and concepts with a pleasing style.

2D Goggles: Melina Sydney Padua presents "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage," a quirky webcomic interspersed with observations about the history of the Difference Engine and other geeky subjects.

Science-fiction author David Brin has his own list of favorite science webcomics. And if you're looking for science-centric graphic novels you can actually hold in your hand, keep an eye out for "Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards," "Darwin," "Feynman," "Logicomix," "Neurocomic," "Radioactive," "Science Tales" and "Trinity."

More about science comics:

• Bam! How comics teach science
• Comics go beyond the Higgs boson
• Geek gift prize highlights xkcd

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Published 10:19 p.m. ET Feb. 7, 2013. Last updated 12:36 p.m. ET Feb. 8, 2013.

Comet ISON is still too dim to be seen with the naked eye, but a fresh series of images from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft tracks what skywatchers hope will become the "Comet of the Century" nine months from now.

The pictures were taken by Deep Impact's Medium-Resolution Imager over a 36-hour period on Jan. 17 and 18, when the spacecraft was 493 million miles (793 million kilometers) from the comet, and roughly 185 million miles (300 million kilometers, or 2 AU) from Earth.

"This is the fourth comet on which we have performed science observations, and the farthest point from Earth from which we've tried to transmit data on a comet," Tim Larson, project manager for the Deep Impact spacecraft at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said today in a news release. "The distance limits our bandwidth, so it's a little like communicating through a modem after being used to DSL. But we're going to coordinate our science collection and playback so we maximize our return on this potentially spectacular comet."

Deep Impact began its comet-watching mission with a bang — by shooting a projectile into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 and watching the resulting blast. The camera-equipped mothership went on to study Comet Hartley 2, and then Comet Garradd, and now Comet ISON.

The new comet on the block, whose formal name is C/2012 S1, was discovered last September by two Russian astronomers using the International Scientific Optical Network's 16-inch (40-centimeter) telescope near Kislodovsk. It's coming in from the icy outskirts of the solar system, known as the Oort Cloud, and is still more than 474 million miles (763 million kilometers) from the sun. Nevertheless, the sun's warmth has already kicked up a cometary tail, extending more than 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) from ISON's nucleus.

Rolando Ligustri / CARA

A false-color, long-exposure image highlights Comet ISON and its faint but brightening tail in the center, surrounded by the trails of background stars. The image was captured by Rolando Ligustri of CAST Italia, using a remote-controlled telescope in New Mexico. The brightness of the comet is about magnitude 15.6.

ISON will stay far away from Earth: JPL projects that its closest approach will come on Dec. 26, at a distance of 40 million miles (64 million kilometers), or nearly half the distance between our planet and the sun. But it's expected to pass within 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) of the sun's surface a month earlier. If Comet ISON survives, that sun-grazing episode could make the dirty snowball's tail glow brighter than 2011's Comet Lovejoy or 2007's Comet McNaught. Some even think ISON's coma could shine brighter than the full moon — on a par with, say, the Great Comet of 1680.

"We see sungrazers all the time, but most are only seen as they flare up very close to the sun," University of Maryland astronomer Tony Farnham, a member of the Deep Impact science team, said in a news release. "With this comet, we are able to study it from where it is currently, farther from the sun than Jupiter and about five times farther from the sun than Earth, until its closest approach to the sun, called its perihelion, on Nov. 28.”

It's too early to tell whether Comet ISON will live up to the big buildup. Heck, it's even too early to tell how bright another eagerly awaited starry messenger, Comet PANSTARRS, will get next month when it swings through the inner solar system.

"One website says that Comet PANSTARRS has fizzled, and might not even be visible to the naked eye at its best, while another says it is back on track to be almost as bright as Hale-Bopp was in 1997," skywatcher Stuart Atkinson notes on his "Waiting for ISON" blog.

Whether ISON or PANSTARRS are hits or misses, it's worth monitoring all the cometary buzz over the months ahead. To follow ISON's progress, keep an eye on Atkinson's blog as well as the Comets-ML mailing list and SpaceWeather.com's comet gallery. Right now, the hottest topic isn't necessarily Comet ISON or PANSTARRS: It's Comet Lemmon, which is coming into its prime time after months of anticipation.

Correction for 10:30 p.m. ET: I originally wrote that the tail could shine brighter than the full moon, but in a Twitter message, German science writer Daniel Fischer points out that the speculation about brightness has focused on the coma. I've corrected that reference. This Flash interactive demonstrates the difference. 

More about comets:

• Video: A comet to watch in 2013
• Flash interactive: Inside a comet
• 'Comet of the Century' and other highlights

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Pupa U.P.A. Gilbert / Christopher E. Killian / UW-Madison

"Biomineral Single Crystals" is the first-place winner as well as the People's Choice in the photography category of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. These biomineral crystals are found in a sea urchin's tooth, and captured here using environmental scanning electron microscopy. Each color highlights a single crystal of calcite, making the tooth tough enough to grind rock.

The minerals of a sea urchin's tooth, a heart that beats in virtual reality and a wiring diagram based on a macaque monkey's brain are among the top honorees in the 2013 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation.

The annual contest, now in its 10th year, highlights works in visual media that promote understanding of scientific research. This year, 215 entries were received from 18 countries. The winners were selected by a panel of judges, and in addition, People's Choice awards were given out based on 3,155 public votes recorded via the Internet.

"These winners continue to amaze me every year with their remarkable talent and drive to engage the public," Monica Bradford, Science's executive editor, said Thursday in a news release announcing the top picks. "The visuals are not only novel and captivating, but they also draw you into the complex field of science in a simple and understandable way."

For example, take a look at "Alya Red: A Computational Heart," which won top honors in the video category as well as a People's Choice award. The film combines illustration, three-dimensional renderings and live-action video to describe the basic science of the heart in easy-to-understand language. "Understanding our organs — and the heart in particular — in deep detail is one of the challenges of modern medicine," Fernando Cucchietti of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center said in the news release. "The video presents the approach of our particular project ... which aims at developing large-scale numerical simulators of the heart."

The first-place illustration is "Connectivity of a Cognitive Computer Based on the Macaque Brain," which diagrams the connections between the major regions of a macaque monkey's brain. Such diagrams are helping researchers at IBM develop a new generation of "neuro-synaptic" computer chips that can be connected to form a brainlike network.

"Biomineral Single Crystals" looks like an abstract painting, but it's actually a photograph showing the structure of a sea urchin's tooth. The picture won first place in the photo category as well as a People's Choice award. "The shapes in this image are naturally formed in the sea urchin tooth," explained Pupa Gilbert of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Color is added in Photoshop to heighten the visual impact of the structure, and to emphasize how interconnected and intertwined the crystal forms are."

In all, the judges highlighted 15 top entries among photos, videos and illustrations, as well as posters and graphics, plus games and apps. Here's the full rundown:

OTHER TOP PHOTOS

Kai-Hung Fung

"Self Defense" won honorable mention in the photography category. The image is a 3-D CT scan of a clam and a whelk, both alive. The clam, at left, is nestled comfortably in the bottom half of its shell. The whelk, meanwhile, is protected by a shell with a sophisticated spiral construction. Both creatures solve the vital problem of self-defense, in different ways. But the whelk has the upper hand: It can drill a hole directly through the clam's shell by softening it with secretions, and then make a meal of the clam. The photography is by Kai-hung Fung of Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital in Hong Kong.

Charles U. / CTU

"X-Ray Micro-Radiography and Microscopy of Seeds" won honorable mention in the photography category. The array of pictures shows high-resolution, high-contrast X-ray radiography of plant seeds alongside images captured through microscopy. The technique can be used as a powerful tool allowing non-destructive investigation of millimeter-sized objects of any kind. The seeds shown here are roughly 3 millimeters in width, or a little more than a tenth of an inch. The photographic team from Charles University and Czech Technical University includes Viktor Sykora, Jan Zemlicka, Frantisek Krejci and Jan Jakubek.

ILLUSTRATIONS

IBM Research - Almaden

"Connectivity of a Cognitive Computer Based on the Macaque Brain" is the first-place winner in the illustration category of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Challenge. This visualization shows more than 320,000 connections between 4,173 neuro-synaptic "cores" representing the 77 largest regions in the macaque brain. This sort of "wiring diagram" serves as a guide for the design of neuro-synaptic computer chips being developed by Cognitive Computing researchers at IBM. The illustration is by Emmett McQuinn, Theodore M. Wong, Pallab Datta, Myron D. Flickner, Raghavendra Singh, Steven K. Esser, Rathinakumar Appuswamy, William P. Risk and Dharmendra S. Modha.

Sherbrook Connectivity Imaging Lab

"Cerebral Infiltration" won honorable mention and People's Choice in the illustration category. The image is the result of fiber tractography from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. It illustrates the structural connections contained in the white matter of the brain. The red, smooth surface represents a glioblastoma tumor. Blue fibers indicate that the fibers are located a safe distance away from the tumor, while the red fibers are in a close perimeter to the tumor and can cause severe post-operation deficits if they are cut. The illustration is by Maxime Chamberland, David Fortin and Maxime Descoteaux.

VIDEOS

POSTERS AND GRAPHICS

• First place: "Adaptations of the Owl's Cervical and Cephalic Arteries in Relation to Extreme Neck Rotation" is a large-format poster that was created as part of a master's thesis study on the ability of owls to rotate their necks around 270 degrees. The arterial structure of 12 deceased owl specimens were examined through dissection as well as digital subtraction angiography. The full study team included Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Michael Habib, Tim Phelps, Lydia Gregg and Phillippe Gailloud of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The research resulted in a paper that was published in this week's issue of Science.
• Honorable mention: "Earth Evolution: The Intersection of Geology and Biology" is an educational poster showing how geological and biological processes have shaped Earth's environment during its 4.6 billion-year history. The poster was created by Eriko Clements, Mark Nielsen, Satoshi Amagai, Bill Pietsch, Davey Thomas and Andy Knoll, from The Educational Resources Group, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Astronaut 3 Media Group.
• People's Choice: "The Pharma Transport Town: Understanding the Routes to Sustainable Pharmaceutical Use" is an informational graphic that shows the complex transport routes of pharmaceuticals in the environment, and considers psychological influences upon drug use and disposal. It was created by Will Stahl-Timmins, Clare Redshaw and Matthew White of the European Center for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School.

GAMES AND APPS

• Honorable mention: "Velocity Raptor," created by Andy Hall of TestTubeGames, is a Flash game about special relativity. Set in a world where you move at nearly the speed of light, the game starts off easy, and slowly adds in relativistic effects.
• Honorable mention: "CyGaMEs Selene II: A Lunar Construction GaME" lets players construct Earth's moon to discover and apply concepts in Earth and space science. The game's creators include Debbie Denise Reese, Robert E. Kosko, Charles A. Wood and Cassie Lightfritz of the CyGaMEs Project, Center for Educational Technologies, Wheeling Jesuit University; and Barbara G. Tabachnick of the University of California at Northridge.
• People's Choice: "Untangled," created by Gayatri Mehta of the University of North Texas, has users compete to create the most compact layouts of circuit elements on a grid. The game uses realistic algorithms that players are mapping onto different chip architectures that could be manufactured in silicon. 

More adventures in visualization:

• Visualizing science in 2012
• Visualizing science in 2011
• Visualizing science in 2010
• Visualizing science in 2009
• Nikon 2012 Small World in Motion
• Nikon 2011 Small World in Motion
• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2012
• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2011
• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2010
• The world within a drop of water
• Greatest hits from Nikon Small World
• Olympus Bioscapes' top 10 for 2012
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2011
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2010
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2009

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.