NASA / GSFC / LaRC / JPL / MISR

A stereo picture from the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA's Terra shows an ash plume rising from Sicily's Mount Etna Volcano on Oct. 29, 2002. Wear red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect.

A plume of volcanic ash pops off the page in a classic 3-D picture documenting the eruption of Sicily's Mount Etna. The image, captured by an instrument on NASA's Terra satellite on Oct. 29, 2002, illustrates how adding the third dimension comes in handy for scientific observations as well as multimillion-dollar movies.

You need standard red-blue glasses to experience the stereo effect, but once you put on your specs, you're in for a treat: The 3-D view makes it easier to judge the relative heights of the ash plume and the surrounding clouds.

If you don't have special glasses, you can still get a sense of the volcano's power by checking out the 2-D, natural-color view from Terra's Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer. There's even a 3-second QuickTime animation that puts together a series of snaps from the satellite flyover.

Satellites play a key role in tracking potentially dangerous natural phenomena around the world, including volcanoes. You can bet that Earth-observing satellites are keeping watch on three volcanoes that have recently started acting up: Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador, Mount Lokon in Indonesia and Mount Tolbachik in Russia. For the latest on all three, check out volcanologist Erik Klemetti's update on the Eruptions blog.

This picture of Etna was the focus of today's "Where in the Cosmos" contest on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. It took a few minutes for Hong Yaw Lim, Ryan Posey and Krystyn Allison-In Oneness to identify the mystery volcano, but to reward their efforts, I'm sending them pairs of cardboard 3-D glasses, provided courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. Press the "like" button for the Facebook page and get ready for the next 3-D glasses giveaway after the first of the year.

This is also today's offering from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which features a different view of Earth from space every day from now until Christmas. For more visual treats, check out the links below:

• 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
• Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
• Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
• Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
• Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
• Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
• Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark
• Day 8: Satellites look into a volcano's hell
• Day 9: Jack Frost nipping at Alaska's nose
• Day 10: Cosmonaut looks down on peaks
• Day 11: Earth looms above moonwalker
• Day 12: Skytree casts shadow on Tokyo
• Day 13: Aurora sets stage for meteor show
• Day 14: Apollo's last look at Earthrise
• Day 15: A sobering moment from space
• Day 16: Middle Earth spotted from orbit
• 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• The Atlantic: Hubble Advent Calendar
• Zooniverse Advent Calendar

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

This mosaic of imagery from Curiosity's navigation camera system shows a scoop on the end of the rover's robotic arm taking a sample of Martian soil on Sol 66 (Oct. 12).

NASA's Curiosity rover is rooting around what scientists call the Martian "Promised Land" — a place where three geological formations come together to provide a deliciously complex picture of Mars' ancient past.

Although the ultimate destination for Curiosity's $2.5 billion, two-year mission is a 3-mile-high mountain called Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, the rover is going to be spending the next few weeks nosing around its current site, which is called Glenelg. That name comes from a geological formation in Canada's Northwest Territories, but it's also a fitting name because it's spelled the same forward and backward. Similarly, Curiosity will be going backward and forward, retracing its steps for a while when it's time to head for the mountain.

Considering that Curiosity will be in the Promised Land for several weeks, we might as well get to know the place. These pictures from Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo show you the rover's surroundings. Kremer is a New Jersey-based journalist, research chemist and photographer; Di Lorenzo is a physicist who's a high school educator and photographer in Italy.

Both men are part of an active "amateur" community that makes use of the imagery provided by Curiosity and other Mars probes, such as NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Opportunity rover. "Amateur" is in quotes, because the work done by amateur image-processing gurus is such a great complement to the professional work from the Mars mission teams.

Many of these gurus hang out online at UnmannedSpaceflight.com. Some also maintain their own Mars-related websites, such as Martian Vistas, the Gale Gazette and the Road to Endeavour. If you haven't checked out these sites yet ... well, what are you waiting for? And if you have other recommendations for interplanetary imagery, such as the Mars Science Laboratory mission's home page or the Planetary Society's blog network, feel free to pass them along as a comment below.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

A series of images captured by Curiosity's Mastcam system shows the foreground terrain on Sol 50 (Sept. 26), with eroded hills in the background. Click on the picture to see a larger image.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

This panorama shows Curiosity's view of Glenelg on Sol 64 (Oct. 10), with hills in the far distance. The mosaic was assembled from 75 images acquired by the Mastcam 100 camera. Click on the picture to see a larger image.

Where in the Cosmos
I used a section of one of the Kremer/Di Lorenzo panoramas as today's "Where in the Cosmos" puzzle picture on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and it took only a matter of seconds for Bart Salatka (and many others) to name Glenelg as the place where the picture was taken. To reward his quick wits and fast fingers, I'm sending Salatka a pair of 3-D glasses that are being provided courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. Two of the close runners-up, Josh Sandler and Manny Acevedo, are eligible to receive 3-D glasses as well. Those cardboard specs will come in handy for seeing 3-D pictures from Curiosity's mission, such as this fresh view of the Rocknest site at Glenelg.

Congratulations to the other recent winners of "Where in the Cosmos" honors: Kevin Seaford, Lee Robbins and Tom Phillips for recognizing a satellite image of the aurora borealis; and Jeff Henager and Jenn Mason for identifying dust streaks on Mars. To get in on the action, click the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page. But hang tight: Due to travel plans, the next "Where in the Cosmos" contest won't take place until December. More about that later...

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.

Eight years ago, NASA's Opportunity rover came across strange-looking spheres that were nicknamed Martian blueberries — and now the Mars rover has sent back a picture showing a different flavor of berry that has the experts scratching their heads.

"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres, the rover mission's principal investigator, said today in a news release.

The golf-cart-sized Opportunity rover used the microscopic imager on the end of its robotic arm to take a super-close look at the spherical shapes. These particular berries, measuring as much as one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter, cover an outcrop called Kirkwood in the Cape York segment of Endeavour Crater's western rim.

"Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects," Squyres said. "Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."

Iron-rich Martian blueberries first came to light soon after Opportunity headed out from its landing site on Mars' Meridiani Planum in early 2004. The fact that they have layers of a mineral called hematite suggests that the spherules were formed by the action of mineral-laden water percolating through rocks. That's how similar spherules formed on Earth, where they're known as thunderballs, shaman stones or Moqui marbles.

Since then, Oppy has run across the blueberries (which are actually gray) many times. A couple of years ago, the rover spotted an unusual spread of blueberries that were so tightly packed that scientists called it a "blueberry sandwich."

Some scientists say the berries could become important in the search for signs of life on Mars: In the August issue of the journal Geology, researchers from the University of Nebraska and the University of Western Australia contend that microbial activity played a part in the formation of iron spherules on Earth — and may have played a similar role on the Red Planet. Spherules with an iron-rich exterior and an iron-poor core could "offer a macroscopic target in the search for life on Earth as well as Mars," they wrote.

Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside
Last week's discovery adds a new twist to the berry investigation. Many of the spheres on the Kirkwood outcrop have been broken open and eroded by the wind, NASA said. The eroded berries show signs of a concentric structure. To investigate further, Opportunity aimed its Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer at the berries and analyzed their elemental composition. The preliminary analysis indicates that the recently found spheres do not have the high iron content seen in the original Martian blueberries.

"They seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle," Squyres said. "They are different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution. So, we have a wonderful geological puzzle in front of us. We have multiple working hypotheses, and we have no favorite hypothesis at this time. It's going to take a while to work this out, so the thing to do now is keep an open mind and let the rocks do the talking."

There's plenty to investigate around the place where Opportunity is now: Just past Kirkwood, there's an intriguing pale-toned outcrop in an area where orbital observations have suggested clay minerals are present. That's another sign that the region's geology was influenced by the presence of water in ancient times.

It's been eight and a half years since Opportunity dropped onto the Martian surface, cushioned by a layer of bouncy airbags. Opportunity and its twin on the other side of the planet, Spirit, were expected to last at least three months. Both of those rovers became overachievers. Spirit finally gave up the ghost just a couple of years ago, but Opportunity is still going strong at 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater. This week, the team behind Spirit and Endeavour received the prestigious Haley Space Flight Award for pioneering "new techniques in extraterrestrial robotic system operations."

After weathering another Martian winter, Opportunity is raring to go.

"The rover is in very good health considering its eight and a half years of hard work on the surface of Mars," John Callas, project manager for the rover mission at  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in today's news release. "Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago, and we are looking forward to productive spring and summer seasons of exploration."

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ed Truthan / North Coast Graphics

A 3-D picture from the Curiosity rover's hazard avoidance cameras shows the rover's shadow in the foreground, and a 3-mile-high mountain in the far background. Use red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect.

Michael Howard

A stereo image shows the terrain in front of NASA's Curiosity rover. Use red-blue glasses to get the 3-D effect.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ed Truthan / North Coast Graphics

A 3-D view from Curiosity's rear hazard avoidance cameras shows one of the rover's wheels in the foreground, and its tracks leading back toward the horizon. Use red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect.

Curiosity on the move
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, NASA's Curiosity rover is on the move after completing the checkouts on its robotic arm. Curiosity, which arrived on Mars a little more than a month ago, is about twice the size of Opportunity — and thanks to its nuclear power source, it could theoretically last for decades.

The rover is heading for its first major destination: a geologically interesting spot called Glenelg, roughly a quarter-mile (400 meters) away from its landing site in Gale Crater. NASA reported today that Curiosity "perambulated over 105 feet (32 meters) of unpaved Gale Crater" over the past Martian day, or sol. It has put 466 feet (142 meters) on its odometer, and is roughly a quarter of the way to Glenelg.

This week, Curiosity turned its Mastcam imaging system toward the sun, to watch the Martian moon Phobos pass over the solar disk during the Red Planet's equivalent of a partial solar eclipse. Hundreds of thumbnail images were sent back to Earth, but the resolution wasn't sharp enough to show the eclipse. We'll have to wait until the full-resolution images are transmitted to gauge the success of Curiosity's eclipse-watching session. The timing of that transmission is dependent on where it's placed on the mission team's data priority list.

There'll be at least a couple of additional opportunities for eclipse-watching from Mars over the next few days. "This occurrence of transits happens twice per Martian year, which is once every Earth year," deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said during a teleconference on Wednesday, "so we did really want to scramble this time to try to take images."

The transit observations are something of a sideshow for Curiosity's $2.5 billion, two-year primary mission. The rover's main objective is to study Martian soil and rock for the chemical signatures of potential habitability. After spending a few weeks at Glenelg, the rover is due to begin a 12-mile (20-kilometer) odyssey to reach the flanks of a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain in the middle of Gale Crater, known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp. The layers of rock on that mountainside could preserve the biggest geological record ever studied on Mars, going back billions of years — and provide new pointers in the search for traces of life on Mars.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / USGS / Modesto Junior College

A photo from the Opportunity rover's Microscopic Imager shows strange spherules covering a Martian outcrop nicknamed Kirkwood. The view covers an area about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) across.

Where in the Cosmos
Opportunity's new flavor of Martian berries served as today's "Where in the Cosmos" photo puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. It took just seconds for Allen Gregory and Richard Braastad to tell me that the picture came from Mars, and Robert R. Reilly got the blueberry connection. To reward their quick wits and typing fingers, I'm mailing out 3-D glasses, courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. They'll come in handy for checking out 3-D pictures of Curiosity's trek. Ready for another puzzler? Click the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and get ready for next Friday's "Where in the Cosmos" picture.

Update for 12:30 a.m. ET Sept. 15: After some justified goading from one of my friends on Twitter, I emailed Steve Squyres a follow-up question: "If the spherules at Kirkwood are not as iron-rich as typical blueberries, what is their composition?" Squyres was kind enough to write back almost immediately:

"We're still working on that. At this point it's easier to say what they aren't than what they are.

"The spherules are much smaller than the APXS field of view, so we can't isolate a single spherule and measure its composition. Instead, what we measure is a field of view that has two different components in it. The field of view is partly filled with lots of spherules, and partly filled with the stuff they're embedded in, which we call the matrix.

"These two materials, when mixed together like that, have a composition that's a bit like 'average Mars' ... there's nothing noteworthy about it. That's why we're confident in saying that the spherules are not notably rich in iron, and the matrix is not notably rich in sulfur. If they were, we'd see it in the data. With just one measurement, though, we can't disentangle the compositions of the two different materials from one another.

"There's a solution, though. If we can make several measurements, with differing fractions of the field of view filled by spherules in each one, we can do some math and separate out the composition of the two components. And at that point, we'll get a good handle on what the spherules are made of (and, of course, also the matrix).

"It's an interesting mystery... and one that'll take a little while longer to solve." 

More about Mars:

• Curiosity uses its X-ray vision
• Mars rover takes a peek at what lies beneath
• Rover ready for rocks after a month on Mars
• Gallery: 11 amazing things the rover can do
• Curiosity snaps its own profile picture
• Cosmic Log archive for the Mars mission

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 dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

The view out the front of NASA's Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle simulator features an image of the asteroid Itokawa, which was visited by Japan's Hayabusa probe in 2005. Itokawa serves as the model for the Desert RATS' simulated mission to a near-Earth asteroid.

NASA's Desert RATS team is ready to begin a visit to a near-Earth asteroid next week — a simulated mission, that is.

Since 1997, the Desert RATS crew have conducted summer simulations aimed at trying out the robots and other tools that may come into play during future exploration missions beyond Earth orbit. The "Desert" part of the name refers to the usual locale for the exercises, in the Arizona desert, and "RATS" stands for "Research and Technology Studies."

This year is different: Instead of simulating surface operations on the moon or Mars, the team will focus on a zero-G visit to an asteroid, like the one NASA is planning for the mid-2020s. That means it's not so important to go out into the desert. As a result, this month's simulation is being run out of Building 9 at Johnson Space Center in Texas, the Desert RATS home base.

A mockup of NASA's Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle, or MMSEV, has been outfitted with a display that will show a virtual-reality view of the asteroid Itokawa out the front windows.

"It curves around the windows of the vehicle as a projection," NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean explained.

Four crew members will take turns living in the MMSEV and exploring their simulated asteroid, using Johnson Space Center's virtual-reality facilities — as well as a setup known as ARGOS (Active Response Gravity Offload System) that can suspend astronauts in the air to make them feel as if they're floating in microgravity.

James Blair / NASA

NASA astronaut Alvin Drew tries out the ARGOS system, which is designed to simulate microgravity.

Communications between the MMSEV and a mock mission control will be tweaked to simulate the light-speed travel time between Earth and an asteroid. There'll be a 50-second delay in voice transmission, going each way. And the MMSEV can move around to simulate the moves that an asteroid-bound crew might feel during a real mission. "We have it on a sled that we can put on an air-bearing floor," Dean said.

The Desert RATS exercise is due to get under way on Monday and run through Aug. 30, with Aug. 31 set aside as a contingency day. After all, even a mission to a make-believe asteroid may require a one-day extension.

To keep up with the RATS pack, check out the team's website, Facebook page and Twitter stream.

Where in the Cosmos
The picture of the MMSEV with a simulated asteroid looming in front of the windshield served as today's puzzle picture for our weekly "Where in the Cosmos" contest on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. It didn't take long for Dug Patnaude and Andrew Russell to figure out that the picture showed a simulated MMSEV — and to reward their quick wits and typing fingers, I'm willing to send them 3-D glasses, courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. Those red-blue spectacles will come in handy for watching this 3-D video of asteroid Itokawa. Want to get in on the fun? Click the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page and limber up your fingers for next Friday's contest.

More about mission simulations:

• Astronauts complete undersea asteroid mission
• Crew selected to explore food's final frontier
• Pale-faced crew emerges from mock Mars mission

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.

Slideshow: Curiosity's space odyssey to Mars

Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars, and see the first pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.

Launch slideshow

NASA's Curiosity rover is in the midst of a four-day brain transplant that will give it the smarts to drive around, use its robotic arm and do all the things it's expected to do over the months and years to come.

The reprogramming marks the transition from Curiosity's space odyssey to its scientific mission. The old software, which helped Curiosity get through its "seven minutes of terror" and land safely, is being phased out. The new software is being phased in — first on the primary computer, and then on the backup computer. During the process, science is taking a back seat.

The switchover is required because of the limitations of Curiosity's onboard memory. There are only about 4 gigabytes available for data storage, said Ben Cichy, the mission's lead flight software engineer. When Cichy described the limitations during a briefing today at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., he made a joking reference to Curiosity teammate Bobak Ferdowsi, the "Mohawk Guy" who stirred up so much Internet buzz this week (and was sitting in the audience during today's briefing).

"My phone has a processor that's 10 times as fast as the processor on Curiosity," Cichy said. "It has 16 times as much storage as Curiosity has, and my phone doesn't have to land anything on Mars. All my phone has to do is follow Bobak's Twitter feed."

The memory limitation comes into play because the rover's hardware had to be certified as capable of standing up to the rigors of space radiation. At the time that the rover was designed and built, going back as far as eight years, Curiosity's computer firepower was considered the state of the art in radiation-hardened electronics.

Fortunately, Cichy said, JPL has a "lot of very, very talented software engineers" who could work out a system for uploading fresh software into the rover's memory during the eight-month-plus flight from Earth, and installing it while Curiosity is sitting inside Gale Crater on Mars. "When they're given a challenge, they solve it," he said.

The new software, known as R10, gives Curiosity the capability to move its 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm and use all of its sampling devices, including a drill and a dust removal tool. It also upgrades the six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover's driving smarts, so that it'll recognize obstacles autonomously and drive around them. That will be a key capability, considering that there's a 14-minute delay in communications between Earth and Mars due to the speed-of-light travel time. Past rovers were occasionally stymied because they encountered an obstacle and had to wait for instructions from Earth.

"Curiosity was born to drive," Cichy said. "So the R10 software includes the capability for Curiosity to really get out and stretch her wheels on the surface of Mars."

Damian Dovarganes / AP

Devin Kipp, a member of the entry, descent and landing team for the Curiosity rover mission, gestures while teammates Gavin Mendeck (left) and Steve Sell (right) look on. Kipp said the picture of the spacecraft's working parachute, seen on the screen behind him, was "about the most beautiful picture I've seen in my life."

During the four-day reprogramming operation, Curiosity's science team will be analyzing the images that the rover took of its surroundings at Gale Crater and deciding what the next steps should be. Depending on how the operation goes, Curiosity's science checkout could resume on Tuesday. However, software transitions can be tricky: Shortly after the Spirit rover landed in 2004, a computer glitch took it out of action for two weeks. Fortunately, that rover recovered and went on to send back five years of scientific observations from Gusev Crater. Opportunity, Spirit's twin, is still going strong at Endeavour Crater, half a world away.

Scientists are hoping for even more from the larger and more capable Curiosity rover. The goals of its two-year, $2.5 billion mission are to analyze billions of years' worth of geological history contained in the rock layers of a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, and to look for the chemical signs of potential habitability. Although Curiosity isn't designed to detect life directly, its findings could point the way for future life-detection missions.

More about the mission:

• The engineers on Curiosity's team for entry, descent and landing — or EDL for short — recapped the story behind Curiosity's seven minutes of terror. Guidance lead Gavin Mendeck reported that the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft weathered accelerations of up to 11 G's during the descent. "If you were a human on board ... it would be a rough ride," he said. The rover landed about a mile and a half downrange of the central aim point, probably due to tail winds and a last-minute maneuver, Mendeck said. "We're still happy where we landed," he said. A more detailed review will be conducted once all of the EDL data is downloaded.

• The mission's project scientist, John Grotzinger, explained why the map quadrangle where Curiosity landed was nicknamed Yellowknife, after the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories. "If you ask what is the port of call that you leave from to go on the great missions of geological mapping to the oldest rocks in North America, it's Yellowknife," he said. Similarly, Curiosity will drive off from its landing site to study what may be some of the oldest rocks on the Red Planet. "It's sort of a tradition that was started here on Earth, and we're trying to do it on Mars," Grotzinger said.

• Curiosity team member Allen Chen said it was a good thing that NASA delayed the launch of Mars Science Laboratory by two years, even though that added hundreds of millions of dollars to the mission cost. "We weren't ready in 2009," he said. "Having that extra time certainly gave us the opportunity to make sure everything was going to work right. The proof is in the pudding."

• The team members said they were gratified by the public response to the mission, but one of the engineers, Devin Kipp, said the "enormous feeling of accomplishment" tasted even sweeter than fame. All of them were clearly taking the public adulation in stride. "I got recognized in the pizza parlor ... that was a little weird for me," Chen joked.

• We featured Curiosity's picture of Mount Sharp as the subject of our "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle today on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and it took mere seconds for Joe Chmill Jr. to tell us that Aeolis Mons is the alternate name for the mountain. (Aeolis Mons is actually the name that's recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Mount Sharp is an unofficial moniker.) To reward Chmill's quick wits and fast fingers, we're sending him a pair of 3-D glasses, as well as red-blue renderings of Aeolis Mons and yours truly. Several runners-up are also eligible to receive 3-D glasses: AZ Ducky, John Mulligan and Ken Mullins. Click the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page and limber up your typing fingers for next Friday's contest.

Still more about Mars:

• Why the rover has such a dinky camera and computer
• How to build your own Mars rover with Lego blocks
• The Puff on Mars: Photo mystery solved!
• Panorama reveals a colorful Mars
• NBC video: Panorama featured on 'Nightly News'
• Curiosity reveals a Martian Mojave
• Tour the Martian Mojave in 3-D
• Flying saucer spotted over Mars
• First 3-D pictures sent by Curiosity
• Orbital photo spots rover and its trash
• Curiosity sends color snapshot from Mars
• Rover video looks down on Mars during landing
• Mars orbiter spots rover in midair
• NASA's Mohawk Guy marvels at his fame
• Curiosity rover scores touchdown on Mars
• Mars probe provides radiation revelations
• Video: Highlights from rover's first two days on Mars

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 NBC News' 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 / GSFC / ASU

An enhanced close-up of the Apollo 11 landing site from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the descent stage as a bright spot, with smaller bright spots representing the experimental packages left on the moon. The enhancement brings out the tracks that the astronauts made during their moonwalks.

Forty-three years ago today, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were on the moon for just 21 hours and 36 minutes, but thanks to a new NASA website, you can see how the lighting at their landing site changes over the course of the two-week-long lunar day.

This week, the team behind the camera on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter unveiled an online viewer that combines imagery at different sun angles for each of the Apollo landing sites, from sunrise to sunset. Such images have been released regularly for the past three years, but it's way cooler to see them presented with a slider that lets you see the shadows shorten and lengthen as the day wears on. You can also click buttons to add labels for the artifacts left at each site, to trace the paths of the astronauts' moonwalks, or just to get your bearings.

A murky view of the Apollo 11 site, captured by LRO just before lunar sunset, served as this week's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. I thought it was interesting to see the last rays of the day reflected off the very top of the Eagle lunar module's descent stage, producing a bright spot at the very center of the image. You can also see how the lunar module's shadow hitting the rim of the crater to the east of the landing site.

NASA / GSFC / ASU

This view of the Apollo 11 landing site was captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter just before sunset on the moon.

It didn't take long for Facebook followers to recognize what this mostly black picture showed. The first ones to register the right guesses — Mike Hardin, Brian McGraw, Wyatt Bates and James Aker — are eligible to receive celebratory pairs of 3-D glasses, courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope team and yours truly. You can use your red-blue glasses to see 3-D views of the Apollo 11 site and lots of other space scenes.

The 43rd anniversary of any event is not usually that big of a deal, but today's "Dark Knight" shootings in Colorado left a lot of people looking for something positive to balance out all of the day's negativity. Apollo 11 provided that positivity, in 1969 and in 2012. I particularly liked the Twitter update from John Ryan: "News out of Colorado is grim, but today's also the anniversary of the first moon landing. Take heart, humanity can do amazing things, too."

No one knew that better than the late astronomer Carl Sagan. In Sagan's reflections on the Apollo missions, which endure in his book "Pale Blue Dot" as well as the Sagan Series of videos produced by Reid Gower, the sage marveled at the rare opportunity afforded by the Cold War space effort: "Once upon a time, we soared into the solar system. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?"

I can't watch the video without tears coming to my eyes. But at least they're not tears of grief.

More reflections on Apollo 11:

• Transterrestrial Musings: Evoloterra
• Bad Astronomy: What Apollo means to me
• Neil Armstrong still chooses to go to the moon
• Universe Today: The journeys of Apollo, on 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 dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

H. Olofsson / ESA / NASA

The bright star U Camelopardalis, or U Cam for short, is surrounded by a tenuous shell of gas in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The flash of an earthly fireworks display can be over in an instant — sometimes literally — but the show is longer lasting in outer space. The dying red-giant star known as U Camelopardalis, 1,500 light-years away in a region of sky near the north celestial pole, is in the midst of a fireworks blast that lasts for centuries.

By human standards, U Cam's blast may seem like an eternity. The star's shining shell of glowing gas, documented in this picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, has been traveling outward for something like 700 years, as Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait points out. When the outward explosion began, Europe was suffering through famines and plagues, and the mainstream view was that our planet was the center of the universe.

But in the astronomical scheme of things, centuries are mere blinks of the eye — and it won't be long before U Cam gives up the ghost.

U Cam is a carbon-rich star that's running low on its fusion fuel and becoming unstable. Every few thousand years, it coughs away stellar material as a thin, faintly glowing shell. The star itself is actually much smaller than it looks. The brightness dial has been turned way up to emphasize the delicate structure of the shell, and that means U Cam's glare is turned up as well.

Plait notes that our own sun is destined to run low on fuel billions of years from now, turn into a red giant and start blasting away shells of material — just as U Cam is doing now. "What we're seeing here is a glimpse of our own future," he writes. That's certainly a sobering thought, but 7 billion years or so should give us plenty of time to look around for other places where we can hang out.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

The Flame Nebula flares in this color-coded view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The famous Horsehead Nebula can be seenas a small bump poking out from the edge of the cloud, below the bright star of the flame.

Who knows? One of those places might be in the neighborhood of the Flame Nebula. The star-forming nebula is situated about as far away from us as U Cam — but in the direction of the constellation Orion, near the celestial equator. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer captured this view of the vast cloud and dust, lit up by a bright star that's 20 times as massive as our sun.

This view also shows two other familiar nebulae. The knot of light just beneath the brightest part of the image is a nebula known as NGC 2023. The Horsehead Nebula is poking out from the greenish-colored cloud, just to the right of NGC 2023 and down a bit. In visible light, the Horsehead is a dark cloud silhouetted by glowing gas, but in infrared light, we see the glow of the cloud instead.

This image is color-coded to reflect different infrared wavelengths. Hot stars are seen in shades of blue and bluish green, while relatively cool objects, such as the dust of the nebulae, show up in shades of green and red. The color combination makes for a fireworks display well-suited for the week of the Fourth of July.

Where in the Cosmos
The picture of the Flame Nebula served as this week's puzzle picture for the "Where in the Cosmos" contest on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. It only took a few minutes for Matt Gunn to identify the picture as the Flame Nebula, and Michael Vacirca and David Frambo were right behind him. All three are eligible to receive 3-D glasses, wrapped up in a 3-D picture of yours truly.

To put those red-blue glasses to use, check out Cosmic Log's 3-D archive, as well as the 3-D images available through the Planetary Society blog. And to get in position for next week's "Where in the Cosmos" contest, be sure to hit the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page.

Weekly Space Hangout
Cosmic sights were among the topics addressed during this week's Space Hangout, orchestrated by Universe Today's Fraser Cain, but we also addressed developments closer to home, such as the discovery of a new boson at the Large Hadron Collider and the untimely death of former astronaut Alan Poindexter. Check out the YouTube video for the whole Hangout.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.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. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JHUAPL / CIW

A June 3 image from NASA's Messenger probe shows a scene in Mercury's southern hemisphere, northwest of Magritte Crater. Three overlapping craters form the head and ears of a "Mickey Mouse" shape.

We've had the Face on Mars, the Smiley Face on Mars, even the Elephant Face on Mars — and now we've got the Mickey Mouse Face on Mercury, courtesy of NASA's Messenger probe.

The mousy shape comes from three overlapping craters in Mercury's southern hemisphere, northwest of a larger crater known as Magritte. The biggest crater in this scene, which serves as Mickey's head, measures about 65 miles (105 kilometers) across.

This picture was taken during Messenger's extended mission, with the aim of collecting imagery when the sun is near the horizon. Such conditions produce long shadows that highlight small-scale surface features. The result is that the Mercury mission's mapmakers get a better sense of the lay of the land.

Messenger became the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury back in March 2011, and the end of its one-year primary mapping mission marked the beginning of a one-year extension. Which means we may be hearing more about Mickey, Magritte and their Mercurial friends for months or years to come.

Where in the Cosmos
The Mickey Mouse Face on Mercury was today's featured image for our "Where in the Cosmos" Facebook contest. It took just a couple of minutes for Leslie Kebschull and Brad Perdew to come up with the locale for the cartoonish craters. Their entries came in just three seconds apart. To reward their quick minds and fingers, I'm sending them a pair of 3-D glasses, courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope. (Microsoft is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture.)

To get in on next week's contest, click the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page. And while you're at it, sign up for the Tech/Science email newsletter, which is sent out Monday through Friday. That's a great way to get your daily dose of Cosmic Log as well as other goodies from msnbc.com's Space and Science sections.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.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. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / SDO

Sunspot region 1476 points toward Earth like a loaded gun in this picture from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Experts say the active region is capable of generating major X-class flares.

We're not only closing out the week — we're closing out the first 10 years of Cosmic Log. It was on May 13, 2002, that I first began noting the follies and mysteries of science, space and society in this space. To mark the occasion, I'm presenting not just one, not just two, but three sets of brain-teasers.

The first puzzle has already played out on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. I asked Facebook followers to figure out which four-digit number is best associated with the picture above, and it just took a couple of minutes for multiple commenters to come up with the answer: 1476, the designation for the active region that's currently front and center on the sun's disk and capable of throwing X-class flares in our direction.

Mitch Siff was the first to put it all together, and I'm sending him my last pair of sun-viewing safety glasses, suitable for watching the May 20 annular solar eclipse from his home in Colorado. Michael J. Tiano was also quick on the draw, and he'll be getting my second-last pair of 3-D glasses, along with a scary 3-D picture of yours truly.

It's worth noting that a solar storm was one of the first topics tackled in Cosmic Log 10 years ago.

Space Needle unscrambler
Earlier in the week, I reported on the finals of a "Space Race 2012" competition at Seattle's Space Needle that resulted in Arizona law-school student Gregory Schneider winning a future suborbital trip into outer space. The final test was to solve a series of 10 brain-teasers while walking around a narrow ring-shaped platform just outside the Needle's 520-foot-high observation deck. I mentioned a couple of sample questions on Wednesday, but in honor of Cosmic Log's 10th birthday, here's the full set of 10 questions. The first commenter to give the correct answers to all 10 teasers — in a single comment, not a series of comments — will be eligible to receive my last pair of giveaway 3-D glasses.

Unscramble the five following words:

1. PALOLO

2. IODEATSR

3. VGATIYR

4. OEREMTETI

5. EFCRCAPTSA

6. How many stars are in the Big Dipper?

7. For the Space Needle's 50th Anniversary, the roof was painted which color: Orbital Orange, Galaxy Gold, Meteor Melon, Re-entry Red.

8. True or false: The planet Venus rotates clockwise. It is the only planet to do so.

9. Which is NOT the name of a NASA shuttle: Atlantis, Voyager, Discovery, Endeavour.

10. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first men to walk on the moon in which year: 1968, 1967, 1969, 1966.

Cosmic Log history lesson
Finally, here are some trivia questions about the past 10 years of Cosmic Log. First person to get all the answers correct in a single comment will be eligible to receive a signed copy of my book "The Case for Pluto." (I'm not holding my breath.) 

1. Where did the name "Cosmic Log" come from? A space mission? A TV show? A comic book? Or did I just make it up?

2. Which "Star Trek" actor was interviewed for Cosmic Log? Nichelle Nichols? Leonard Nimoy? William Shatner? George Takei?

3. Which would-be celebrity astronaut was interviewed for Cosmic Log? Lance Bass? Mark Burnett? James Cameron? Victoria Principal?

4. Which Apollo astronaut was NOT interviewed for Cosmic Log? Buzz Aldrin? Alan Bean? Pete Conrad? Harrison Schmitt?

5. Which magician has been interviewed for Cosmic Log? The Amazing Randi? The Amazing Kreskin? David Copperfield? Penn Jillette?

6. Which medium/channel/psychic has been interviewed for Cosmic Log? Mary T. Browne? Theresa Caputo? Allison Dubois? JZ Knight?

7. Which TV show has been the subject of Cosmic Log postings? "American Idol"? "Dancing With the Stars"? "The X-Files"? All of the above?

8. What is the "CLUB Club"? A hangout for Cosmic Log fans in Seattle back in the early days? A concept I proposed for an anti-theft device? A list of book recommendations? A members-only gallery of cosmic pictures?

9. What kind of celestial object got its name in part because of Cosmic Log? Asteroid? Comet? Crater? Mountain?

10. Who was the object named after? Douglas Adams? Alan Boyle? Stephen Hawking? Robert Heinlein?

I'll provide the answers to both of the 10-question teasers on Sunday, the 10th anniversary, and if I'm in a generous mood for the start of the next 10 years, I may give away a book even if no one gets all of the Cosmic Log trivia questions right.

Answers to questions:
Space Needle unscrambler: APOLLO, ASTEROID, GRAVITY, METEORITE, SPACECRAFT, seven stars, Galaxy Gold, true, Voyager, 1969. BigBenAlaska solved all the puzzles and richly deserves a pair of 3-D glasses.

Cosmic Log history: To get the answers to some of these questions, you have to go back to the deep archive at Multiply.com. Julia Cline got all the answers right and is eligible to receive a signed copy of "The Case for Pluto."

1. Cosmic Log's name was inspired by a 40-year-old quote from a character in Weird Mystery Tales #1: "My name is Destiny, and it is my Fate to walk alone throughout eternity and observe the follies and mysteries of mankind, and to note them all in the cosmic log." Among the rejected names: Quanta, Penultimate Questions and the Blog at the End of the Universe.

2. William Shatner was our guest for a Cosmic Log chat on Oct. 14, 2002. 

3. Although Lance Bass was the subject of frequent Cosmic Log items in 2002, I never did talk with Lance himself. I did, however, chat with James Cameron a couple of times about his space aspirations. 

4. I've had items in Cosmic Log about Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 12's Alan Bean, Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt and other astronauts from NASA's glory days. I interviewed Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad before his death in 1999 for a story about his Universal Space Lines venture — but that was before Cosmic Log got started. So Pete Conrad is the answer to this one.

5. The Amazing Kreskin was the focus of a 2002 Cosmic Log item about his UFO stunt in Nevada.

6. JZ Knight (who says she channels a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit named Ramtha) was the subject of an extended interview in 2010. I haven't yet checked in with Theresa ("Long Island Medium") Caputo or Allison Dubois of the "Medium" TV series, but I do stay in touch with my cousin Mary T. Browne, "the Wall Street psychic."

7. All of the above: Who hasn't written about "American Idol," "Dancing With the Stars" and "The X-Files"?

8. The CLUB Club is the "Cosmic Log Used Book Club." Since 2002, we've been highlighting books with cosmic themes that have been out long enough to become available at your local library or secondhand-book store. Even though I haven't been providing book club selections as often as I used to, the CLUB Club archive still makes for a pretty good reading list. 

9 and 10. Back in 2003, I discussed the procedure for naming asteroids and solicited suggestions for folks who should have an asteroid named after them. Douglas Adams, the humorist behind the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, was one of the prospects mentioned — and I noticed that there was an asteroid out there that almost literally had his name on it. The space rock known provisionally as 2001 DA42 included the date of Adams' death (2001), his initials (DA) and the answer to the ultimate question from the Hitchhiker's Guide (42). Astronomer Brian Marsden, who headed the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center at the time, thought it was a great suggestion and helped make it so in 2005. You can get the full story here.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.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. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Monika Landy-Gyebnar

Monika Landy-Gyebnar took this picture of the rising sun on May 1 from Veszprem, Hungary. "The image I saw when the sun appeared was incredible!" she said in a posting to SpaceWeather.com. "This was the strongest mirage effect on the sun I have ever seen!" In this image, the mirage makes the sunspot region known as AR 1471 look like three dots in a row, toward the lower left area of the sun's disk.

The next month promises to be filled with astronomical wonders, including this weekend's "supermoon," an annular solar eclipse later this month, and a last-in-a-lifetime transit of Venus. Here are a few images to get you in the mood for those cosmic glories.

Hungarian photographer Monika Landy-Gyebnar snapped an unusual picture of a solar mirage on May 1, showing the sun's distorted disk at the eastern horizon. She told SpaceWeather.com that she expected to see the mirage, because she lives in an area where morning fog usually collects in the valley, "so it is a location colder than its surroundings." The temperature difference often creates a shimmering mirage effect, but Landy-Gyebnar was amazed by the strength of the effect on that particular morning.

"The distortion reached the region where the big sunspot 1471 is located as a visible dark dot," she wrote. "I saw the sunspot disappearing and appearing again, then its mirage appeared above the original spot higher on the solar disk, then a third mirage spot appeared. ... I was shivering with beauty!"

For details, check out Landy-Gyebnar's gallery at SpaceWeather.com and her video clip on YouTube.

The picture above served as today's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and Brittany Pedersen was the first to figure out that the photo showed a sunspot mirage. To reward her sharp vision, I'm sending her a pair of solar viewing glasses from Astronomers Without Borders. Stay tuned for the next "Where in the Cosmos" quiz on Facebook in a week, and you might win some solar spectacles as well.

Landy-Gyebnar's photographs, and the glasses, serve as good reminders that skywatchers should never gaze at the shining sun without proper eye protection, even during the annular solar eclipse coming up on May 20. To get ready for that rare event, check out my two-part series and "Virtually Speaking" podcast.

Another big sky event is coming up this weekend, when the moon turns full during its closest approach to Earth. That means the moon will be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the norm — leading many to call the sight a "supermoon." So much has been made of Saturday night's full moon that Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait is counseling rhetorical restraint (with an artistic assist from Sci-ence's Maki Naro). But even Phil says it's worth going out and looking at the moon, on Saturday night or on any night. "It's bright and silvery and lovely and you can see features with your naked eye and with a telescope you'll see tons more," he writes.

If you have a great supermoon picture to share, please pass it along via msnbc.com's FirstPerson "Sky Highlights" upload page. We'll put together a gallery of our favorite moon views over the weekend.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been looking at the moon lately, in preparation for the transit of Venus on June 5. That's when the planet Venus makes a stately march across the disk of the sun over the course of six hours. The last time Venus did that was eight years ago, and it won't happen again until the year 2117. So the scientists behind Hubble, like many other astronomers, want to take a look.

As explained in today's image advisory, the sun is too bright for Hubble to observe directly. Instead, Hubble's scientists will check the light rays that are reflected by the moon and see whether they can discern the faint signature of the light that passed through Venus' atmosphere.

"Imprinted on that small amount of light are the fingerprints of the planet's atmospheric makeup," the Hubble team said in its advisory. "These observations will mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our solar system passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venus's atmosphere, and that it does not show signs of life on the planet. But the Venus transit will be used to test whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of an Earthlike planet, even one that might be habitable for life, outside our solar system that similarly transits its own star."

Hubble will observe the moon for seven hours on the day of the transit to get a good sampling of spectroscopic data. Here's a practice image of the impact crater Tycho, acquired on Jan. 11: 

D. Ehrenreich / IPAG / CNRS / UJF / NASA / ESA

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. Astronomers didn't aim NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image was taken in January as part of the preparation for observing the transit of Venus across the sun's face on June 5.

Finally, here are a couple of videos to end the week with: On one end of the time spectrum, there's an hourlong recap of this week's Space Hangout, in which several space scribes (including yours truly) review the far-out news of the week. On the other end, there's a six-minute mashup of cosmic images from NASA, titled "Pursuit of Light." The montage starts out with Earth imagery, then moves on to shots of the moon, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and its moons, the Saturnian system and asteroids. Then you'll see nebulas, the remnants of supernova blasts, and interacting galaxies. How much farther out can you get?

More far-out imagery:

• NASA probe captures close-ups of Saturnian moons
• Earth's beauty dazzles in astronaut video from space
• Slideshow: Month in Space Pictures for April 2012

Alan Boyle is msnbc.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. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.