What’s your take on this “object” seen precariously close to the sun, at a range where temperatures are estimated at 9,900 Fahrenheit and most spacecraft would burn up?

Photographed by NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory on April 24th, the image appears to show an artificially constructed object which is hinged with a boom arm.

According to Life’s Little Mysteries, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, or NRL, theorizes the object in space is just a collection of streaks left by cosmic rays that hit the camera’s CCD sensor.

“The streaks in question are consistent with energetic particle (proton) impacts on the CCD, something which is apparent in just about every image,” Nathan Rich, of the NRL’s solar physics branch, told the website.

“These artifacts do not persist from image to image,” Rich added, which suggests the cosmic streaks can explain what UFO proponents are hoping turns out to be an extraterrestrial craft.

A cosmic ray burst on the camera may also account for the “boom arm,” pictured below, that seems to be attached to the hinged “spacecraft.”

Is this just an image artifact or do the ET hunters have genuine reason to start creaming their pants?

Watch NASA astronaut Don Pettit create an antibubble, a bubble of water inside a bubble of air, inside a bubble of water. It’s bubble-ception in space.

Using satellite imagery, in the  first time an entire species have been tracked from space, an international team of scientists has been using high resolution satellite images from space to count penguins. They have found that there are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought.

UK, US and Australian scientists used satellite technology to trace and count the iconic birds, finding them to number almost 600,000.

Their census technique relies in the first instance on locating individual colonies, which is done by looking for big brown patches of guano (penguin poo) on the white ice.

High resolution imagery is then used to work out the number of birds present.

It is expected that the satellite mapping approach will provide the means to monitor the long-term health of the emperor population.

Try not to laugh and just think about the science!

Scientists have spotted a quick but rare light show in Uranus. The Hubble Space Telescope captured images of auroras on the icy planet. Astronomers last took a good look at Uranus’ auroras 25 years ago when the Voyager 2 flew by the planet.

Check out this beautiful time-lapse videoe depicting the stars from low earth orbit, as viewed from the International Space Station.

Watch this one in HD and full screen, although you may want to turn down the awful “soft pr0n” music.