For the first time in almost 20 years, northern autumn is beginning on the night of a full Moon. The coincidence sets the stage for a "Super Harvest Moon" and a must-see sky show to mark the change of seasons.

The Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation (SWEAP) is one of five instruments just selected for the Solar Probe Plus mission targeted to launch no later than 2018. Solar Probe Plus is a car-sized probe that will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere. The SWEAP instrument will specifically count the most abundant particles in the solar wind -- electrons, protons and helium ions -- and measure their properties. Jonathan Cirtain, Mike Effinger, and others of MSFC contributed to the winning proposal.

A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by NASA's Great Observatories. (Click "read more" to see.) The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in the composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms," seen in wide-angle views of the system. These features were produced by tidal forces generated in the collision.