NGC 7841

NGC 7841 is probably known as the Smoke Nebula, found in the modern constellation of Frustriaus, the frustrated astrophotographer. Only a few light-nanoseconds from planet Earth, The Smoke Nebula is not an expanding supernova remnant along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, though it does look a lot like one. Instead it was created by flash photography of rising smoke. The apparently rich star field is actually composed of water droplets sprayed from a plant mister by an astrophotographer grown restless during a recent stretch of cloudy weather in Sweden. A single exposure and three external flashes were triggered to capture the not-quite-cosmic snapshot.

NGC 6357

For reasons unknown, NGC 6357 is forming some of the most massive stars ever discovered. One such massive star, near the center of NGC 6357, is framed above carving out its own interstellar castle with its energetic light from surrounding gas and dust. In the greater nebula, the intricate patterns are caused by complex interactions between interstellar winds, radiation pressures, magnetic fields, and gravity. The overall glow of the nebula results from the emission of light from ionized hydrogen gas. Near the more obvious Cat's Paw nebula, NGC 6357 houses the open star cluster Pismis 24, home to many of these tremendously bright and blue stars. The central part of NGC 6357 shown spans about 10 light years and lies about 8,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Scorpion.

Just some photo

Van den Bergh 149 (bottom center) and 150 (top center) are two blue reflection nebulae located in the constellation Cepheus the King. The dark area to the left of vdB 149 is LDN 1235. The small spiral galaxy on the right side of the image is UGC 11861. The dust in the area appears to be uncataloged. (3.6-inch Astro-Tech AT90EDT refractor at f/6.7, SBIG ST-8300M CCD camera, LRGB image with exposures of 180, 40, 40, and 40 minutes, respectively)

32-inch Optical Guidance Systems Ritchey-Chretien telescope, SBIG STL-11000m CCD camera, LRGB with exposures of 40, 15, 15, and 15 minutes, respectively.

The photographer captured Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) through a 12-inch telescope to which he attached a CCD camera. He took 15-minute exposures through clear, red, green, and blue filters, and then stacked the results to produce the final image.

The spacecraft will assist in efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, as well as those suitable for asteroid exploration missions

New observations of young star region Herbig-Haro 46/47 revealed that some of the ejected material had velocities much higher than had been measured before

Scientists find "fluffy" disk around baby star
This near-transparent layer of RY Tauri's dust disk may have been left over from the star’s earlier formation period and could aid in the development of new planets around the star.

MAVEN

On November 18, 2013 MAVEN was successfully launched aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle.
Following the first engine burn of the Centaur second stage, the vehicle coasted in low-Earth orbit for 27 minutes before a second Centaur burn of five minutes to insert it into a heliocentric Mars transit orbit.
The plan is for MAVEN to be inserted into an areocentric elliptic orbit around Mars, 6,200 km (3,900 mi) by 150 km (93 mi) above the planet's surface, on September 22, 2014.

MAVEN-Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) is a space probe designed to study the Martian atmosphere while orbiting Mars. Mission goals include determining how the Martian atmosphere and water, presumed to have once been substantial, were lost over time.

Instrument include
MAVEN will study Mars' upper atmosphere and its interactions with the solar wind. Its instruments will measure characteristics of Mars' atmospheric gases, upper atmosphere, and ionosphere, and the solar wind. MAVEN will perform measurements from a highly elliptical orbit over a period of one Earth year, with five "deep dips" at 150 km (93 mi) minimum altitude to sample the upper atmosphere. The University of Colorado Boulder, University of California, Berkeley, and Goddard Space Flight Center each built a suite of instruments for the spacecraft, and they include:
Particles and Field (P&F) Package
Built by the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory.
Solar Wind Electron Analyzer (SWEA) - measures solar wind and ionosphere electrons
Solar Wind Ion Analyzer (SWIA) - measures solar wind and magnetosheath ion density and velocity
SupraThermal And Thermal Ion Composition (STATIC) - measures thermal ions to moderate-energy escaping ions
Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) - determines the impact of SEPs on the upper atmosphere
Langmuir Probe and Waves (LPW) - determines ionosphere properties and wave heating of escaping ions and solar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) input to atmosphere
Magnetometer (MAG) - measures interplanetary solar wind and ionosphere magnetic fields[26]
Remote Sensing (RS) Package
Built by the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrometer (IUVS) - measures global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere
Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) Package
Built by Goddard Space Flight Center
Measures the composition and isotopes of neutral gases and ions
Government shutdown: While it effect other program
On October 1, 2013, only nine weeks before launch, a government shutdown caused suspension of work for two days and initially threatened to force a 26-month postponement of the mission. With the spacecraft nominally scheduled to launch on November 18, a delay beyond December 7 would have caused MAVEN to miss the launch window as Mars moves too far out of alignment with the Earth. However, two days later, a public announcement was made that NASA had deemed the 2013 MAVEN launch so essential to ensuring future communication with current NASA assets on Mars—namely the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers—that emergency funding was authorized to restart spacecraft processing in preparation for an on-time launch.
Objectives
Features on Mars that resemble dry riverbeds and the discovery of minerals that form in the presence of water indicate that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere and was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface. Scientists suspect that over millions of years, the planet’s core cooled and its magnetic field decayed, allowing the solar wind to sweep away ninety-nine percent of the atmosphere and thus most of its water and volatile compounds.
MAVEN is intended to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space so that answers about Martian climate evolution will emerge. From its measurements of how quickly the atmosphere escapes into space and the relevant processes, scientists will infer how the planet's atmosphere evolved. The MAVEN mission has four primary scientific objectives:
Determine the role that loss of volatiles to space from the Martian atmosphere has played through time.
Determine the current state of the upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the solar wind.
Determine the current rates of escape of neutral gases and ions to space and the processes controlling them.
Determine the ratios of stable isotopes in the Martian atmosphere.
MAVEN is expected to reach Mars in September 2014. By then, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on board the Curiosity rover will have made similar surface measurements from Gale crater, which will help guide the interpretation of MAVEN's upper atmosphere measurements. MAVEN's measurements will also provide additional scientific context with which to test models for current methane formation in Mars.

InSight

There is lots of work to be done.Do we know everything about Mars.the answer is no.Mars is far from a dead world. The volcano on Mars might still be active just because we don't see them active,don't mean they aren't. The only way to be sure is to land a space probe InSight

Its was design to measure heat coming from the surface and if there are any Mars quakes
The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) will take precise measurements of quakes and other internal activity on Mars to better understand the planet's history and structure. SEIS is provided by the French Space Agency (CNES), with the participation of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Imperial College, Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE) and JPL. The seismometer is a sensitive broad-band instrument designed to detect sources including atmospheric excitation and tidal forces from Phobos.
The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, provided by the German Space Agency (DLR), is a self-penetrating heat flow probe —nicknamed "the mole". Also called a "self-hammering nail", it is being designed to burrow up to 5 m (16 ft) below the surface to measure how much heat is coming from Mars' core, and thus help reveal the planet's thermal history. It trails a tether containing precise temperature sensors every 30 cm to measure the temperature profile of the subsurface.
Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) uses the spacecraft's radio to provide precise measurements of planetary rotation to better understand the inside of Mars. X-band radio tracking, capable of an accuracy under 2 cm, will build on previous Viking and Pathfinder data. The previous data sets allowed the core size to be constrained, but with a third data set from InSight, the nutation amplitude can be determined. Once spin axis direction, precession, and nutation amplitudes are better understood, it should be possible to calculate the size and density of the Martian core and mantle. This would increase the understanding on the formation of terrestrial planets (e.g. earth) and rocky exoplanets.
A camera mounted on the lander's arm can capture black and white images of the instruments on the lander's deck and a 3-D view of the ground where the seismometer and heat flow probe will be placed. It will then be used to help engineers and scientists guide the deployment of the instruments to the ground. With a 45-degree field of view, the camera will also provide a panoramic view of the terrain surrounding the landing site. A second similar camera, with a wide-angle 120-degree field of view lens will be mounted under the edge of the lander's deck and will provide a complementary view of the instrument deployment area.
Some payload augmentations by the summer of 2013 included a high-resolution (finer than 10 mPa) pressure sensor, REMS wind sensors, a ground temperature radiometer, and a magnetometer. The seismometer (SEIS) needs to detect ground movement at a resolution of about half the radius of a hydrogen atom. While this level of sensitivity has been tested, it means carefully mitigating noise from the planet and lander.
A color camera was also considered, but there is a lack of funding for this item.
Solar cells was used to reduce the amount of money that is spend. Since it only to live on the surface for 1 Mars year. Unlike the Mars Rover which used RTGs as power source but these RGT weight a lot plus their cost lots.Plus they used the plans of the old Mars Phoenix lander,The plan landing site is Elysium Planitia .They are looking for the lowest point on the surface of Mars but it also has to be a safe landing site as well NO trip into Valles Marineris which would be the place to go,in some areas it 5 mile deep. This canyon makes the Grand Canyon on Earth look small
But to answer your ? Yes if Mars had a more active core it could had created higher mountain ranges, since now they think that Mars have a two Plate tectonics in action. On Earth was have 7 or of them...... But because the inter core of Mars oh well have come to a almost stop. Maybe we are look at Earth in few billion years after all the radioactive power source stop and Earth core slow down and stop making a magnetic field and Earth would become another Mars...

Kepler

Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.The spacecraft, named after the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler,was launched on March 7, 2009.
Designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way to discover dozens of Earth-size extrasolar planets in or near the habitable zone and estimate how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets, Kepler's sole instrument is a photometer that continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view.This data is transmitted to Earth, then analyzed to detect periodic dimming caused by extrasolar planets that cross in front of their host star.This is the small area that Kepler look at for years

Kepler is part of NASA's Discovery Program of relatively low-cost, focused primary science missions. The Ames Research Center is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations since December 2009, and science data analysis. The initial planned lifetime was 3.5 years, but greater than expected noise in the data, from both the stars and the spacecraft, meant additional time was needed to fulfill all mission goals. Initially, in 2012, the mission was expected to last until 2016,but this would only be possible if all remaining reaction wheels used for pointing the spacecraft remained reliable. On May 11, 2013, a second of four reaction wheels failed, disabling the collection of science data and threatening the continuation of the mission.
As of July 2013, Kepler had found 134 confirmed exoplanets in 76 stellar systems, along with a further 3,277 unconfirmed planet candidates. In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars.The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away!

On August 15, 2013, NASA announced that they have given up trying to fix the two failed reaction wheels. This means the current mission needs to be modified, but it does not necessarily mean the end of planet-hunting. NASA has asked the community to propose alternative mission plans "potentially including an exoplanet search, using the remaining two good reaction wheels and thrusters". On November 18, 2013, the K2 (also named "Second Light") plan proposal, which would involve using Kepler's remaining capability, photometric precision of about 300 parts per million, compared with about 20 parts per million earlier, to collect data for the study of "supernova explosions, star formation and solar-system bodies such as asteroids and comets, ... " and for finding and studying more exoplanets.In this proposed mission plan, Kepler would search a much larger area in the plane of earth's orbit around the sun.This would show how K2 would work using pressure from the solar wind to act like a reaction wheel

 The number of planet comfirm keep on adding up once people start looking over the data this is how they find a earth like planet orbiting around a Sun like star it goes around it star every 90 days and is within the goldylock zone(a area around a star that allow water to form on its surface,the area can be at different distance depending on the type of the star)
Confirm In addition to discovering hundreds of exoplanet candidates, the Kepler spacecraft has also reported twenty-six exoplanets in eleven systems that have not yet been added to the Extrasolar Planet Database. Exoplanets discovered using Kepler's data, but confirmed by outside researchers, include KOI-423b, KOI-428b, KOI-196b, KOI-135b, KOI-204b,KOI-254b, KOI-730, and Kepler-42 .The "KOI" acronym indicates that the star is a Kepler Object of Interest.

Both Corot and Kepler measured the reflected light from planets. However, these planets were already known, because they transit their star. Kepler's data allowed the first discovery of planets by this method, Kepler-70b and Kepler-70c. planet this is just a small list

Orion Nebula in Infrared light

Photo taken by Spitzer Space Telescope.This telescope show stuff in Infrared.It had run out of liquid helium to chill the detector but the two shortest-wavelength modules of the IRAC camera are still operable.Its called The Warm mission but the spacecraft's passive cooling system keeps the sensors at minus 407 degrees Fahrenheit.
Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. This stunning false-color view spans about 40 light-years across the region. Compared to its visual wavelength appearance, the brightest portion of the nebula is likewise centered on Orion's young, massive, hot stars, known as the Trapezium Cluster. But the infrared image also detects the nebula's many protostars, still in the process of formation, seen here in red hues. In fact, red spots along the dark dusty filament to the left of the bright cluster include the protostar cataloged as HOPS 68, recently found to have crystals of the silicate mineral olivine within its protostellar envelope.