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.

University of Arizona law student Gregory Schneider is getting ready for graduation this weekend, for the birth of his third child later this year — and now he'll have to get ready for a spaceflight as well.

Schneider accepted his prize during a Seattle Space Needle ceremony today from none other than 82-year-old Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men to walk on the moon in 1969. The suborbital trip into space, aboard a craft that's yet to go into operation, was the first prize in a "Space Race 2012" contest organized to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Schneider was selected from 50,000 people who entered the contest, and out-competed a fellow finalist, Sara Cook of Washington, D.C., during a last round of physical and mental tests this morning.

Schneider teared up as he talked about what the spaceflight prize meant to him. "The more people we can get to see the world from a different perspective, the closer we can all come," he said.

Just before he awarded the prize, Aldrin also reflected on the opening of the space frontier. "July 20, 1969, changed my life forever," he said, referring to the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing. "Maybe it's not as great as that, but the life of one of these two people is going to be changed when I open up this envelope."

Alan Boyle / msnbc.com

Sara Cook gets ready to climb up a ladder to the top of the Seattle Space Needle's antenna during today's "Space Race 2012" challenges.

The final rounds
Five finalists came to Seattle for this week's finals, and Schneider and Cook came out on top after racing remote-controlled rovers, putting together a simulated solar panel, and doing mental and physical tasks while floating in an indoor-skydiving arena. This morning, they were brought to the Space Needle for the high-wire finals. The first task was to shinny up a ladder to the very top of the Space Needle's antenna and set off an air horn. Schneider's 29.69-second performance gave him say over whether he went first or second in the final competition.

Then the contestants were hooked up with safety equipment and put out on the Needle's "Halo," a narrow, open-air ring circling the monument's 520-foot-high observation deck. The challenge was to walk around the Halo, periodically writing down the answers to word and trivia puzzles that were posted at 10 points on the course. (Two examples: Unscramble the word PALOLO ... and tell how many stars are in the Big Dipper.)

First Schneider, then Cook, took a turn. The times were recorded, with penalties added for missed answers. The brain-teasers turned out to provide the margin of victory: Cook answered four of them correctly, but Schneider got eight right.

Aldrin marveled at the two finalists' performance: "I've been kind of out and back," he said, "but you wouldn't catch me walking around that Space Needle. I'm afraid of heights."

Space dreams
Schneider said it's been his dream to fly in space, but the main reason he entered the contest was for his children — a 7-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son. "I thought of it as an opportunity to inspire my kids," he told me.

Cook, 24, who works for the Japanese Embassy in Washington, was also following through on long-held space aspirations. "I dreamed of being an astronaut when I was a child. ... I just couldn't not enter," she said. And even though she fell just short this time around, she hasn't given up her dream of going into outer space.

"If it became more affordable, I would love to," she said.

It'll be a while before Schneider gets to use his prize, which is valued at $110,000. The flight is being offered by Space Adventures, a Virginia-based travel company, on a craft that is currently being developed by Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace. That development effort hasn't yet progressed far enough to set a date for the start of commercial service.

Alan Boyle / msnbc.com

Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin counts down at right as Space Race 2012 contestant Gregory Schneider gets set to make his way through a puzzle course on the "Halo" of Seattle's Space Needle.

Alan Boyle / msnbc.com

Gregory Schneider discusses his spaceflight dreams after winning a future suborbital trip, plus a trophy in the shape of the Space Needle (left). Sara Cook gets set to climb up the Needle's antenna (right).

Schneider thus joins a long list of other contest winners who are waiting to take a spaceflight. Based on the current outlook, the first of those contestants might take suborbital trips in 2013 or so, when Virgin Galactic is expected to begin commercial service with the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.

The kinds of trips being planned by Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, XCOR Aerospace, Blue Origin and others taking aim at the suborbital travel market would bring passengers just beyond the 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary of outer space, then back down to the place they started from. It may not be as high-flying as Aldrin's trip in 1969, but it would give the passengers a few minutes of weightlessness, some roller-coaster thrills, and a view that's even better than the view from the Space Needle. That's what Schneider is looking forward to the most.

"It's going to be absolutely incredible to see the earth ... as a cosmic object that's out there in space," he told me.

Did you get the answers right? APOLLO, and seven stars in the Big Dipper.

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 / JPL / Univ. of Arizona

A lava flow in Mars' Elysium Planitia region takes on the appearance of an elephant in this picture from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, captured on March 19 and released April 4.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured an elephant on Mars — well, actually, it's an elephant-shaped lava flow in Elysium Planitia on Mars.

The picture provides one more Martian example of the phenomenon known as "pareidolia," in which our eyes and brain can be coaxed to see familiar patterns in unfamiliar settings. Pareidolia is the best explanation for the Face on Mars, the Mermaid on Mars ... and even the Happy Face on Mars.

The Elephant Face on Mars also provides a glimpse of the geological changes that shaped the Red Planet over the course of billions of years.

"Flood lavas cover extensive areas, and were once thought to be emplaced extremely rapidly, like a flood of water," University of Arizona planetary geologist Alfred McEwen, the principal investigator for the orbiter's HiRISE camera, wrote in an image advisory issued on Wednesday.

"Most lava floods on Earth are emplaced over years to decades, and this is probably true for much of the lava on Mars as well," McEwen said. "An elephant can walk away from the slowly advancing flow front. However, there is also evidence for much more rapidly flowing lava on Mars, a true flood of lava. In this instance, maybe this elephant couldn't run away fast enough."

This picture served as today's "Where in the Cosmos" puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and it took about an hour for Odies Neel to come up with the full story behind the image. Odies will be getting a pair of 3-D glasses in the mail as a reward — as will Seth Deitch and Jonce Matilovski, who came close to the mark.

Over the past six years, HiRISE (which stands for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) has sent back more than 22,000 images of the Martian surface, including 2,444 3-D anaglyph images that should give those red-blue glasses a good workout. Check out the HiRISE website and NASA's Mars exploration portal page for all the pictures.

There's still more to look forward to on the final frontier: Next Thursday, the big event will be Yuri's Night, a space celebration that commemorates the 51st anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's history-making orbital flight as well as the 31st anniversary of the first space shuttle flight.

The marketing director for Yuri's Night, Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto, discussed the past, present and future of spaceflight with me on the "Virtually Speaking Science" talk show, which airs on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world. Give a listen to the hourlong podcast, which you can get via BlogTalkRadio or iTunes — and check out Veronica's screengrab of our avatars sitting together in the Second Life auditorium:

Courtesy of Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto

AlanJBoyle Resident and Lunnna Capalini (Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto's avatar) sit together in the Second Life virtual world during the "Virtually Speaking Science" talk show.

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 or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

NASA file

The spacefliers on the International Space Station show off their Yuri's Night T-shirts during 2011's celebration. Yuri's Night commemorates the anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's history-making spaceflight as well as NASA's first shuttle flight — but for the first time since Yuri's Night was established in 2001, there are no space shuttles in service.

Yuri's Night has been celebrating space odysseys since 2001, on the 40th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's history-making launch into orbit — but it's much more challenging to find cause for celebration this year.

First of all, it's been just a year since the huge golden anniversary of the first human spaceflight, in 2011. To mark the occasion, Yuri's Night put on more than 600 events in 75 countries, and that's a hard act for anyone to follow. Perhaps more importantly, this year marks the first Yuri's Night since NASA retired the space shuttle fleet. For the next few years, there's no way to launch astronauts from U.S. soil.

"With the shuttle era coming to an end, there's going to be a lot of nostalgia this year," Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto, director of marketing for Yuri's Night 2012, told me this week. "It's going to be an interesting time to see how people bridge the gap."

The past, present and future of spaceflight — and of Yuri's Night — will be up for discussion on Wednesday when Zabala-Aliberto and I get together for "Virtually Speaking Science," an hourlong talk show that takes place in the Second Life virtual world and on BlogTalkRadio. The show gets under way at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT/SLT). Feel free to drop in or tune in, and if you can't listen to the stream in real time, you can always download the podcast via BlogTalkRadio or iTunes.

Yuri's Night traditionally focuses on April 12, which is the anniversary of Gagarin's launch as well as the first shuttle flight in 1981. But not all of this year's more than 150 events take place on that date. The Romanians get the party started with a school event titled "Dancing With the Stars" on Thursday, and the Peruvians close it out at an aerospace conference on April 26. In between, there's a series of parties, lectures, workshops and other events on all seven continents (yes, including the South Pole on Antarctica).

There'll be two parties in Second Life and one in Star Trek Online (just head for Quarks Bar at Deep Space Nine). And even as he's counting down to the big day, executive director Ryan Kobrick is working to get more venues on board, across the planet and off-planet as well.

"It's never too late to register," Kobrick told me. "It's for all ages and all demographics. Having a handful of friends over for dinner counts for Yuri's Night, if you go with that theme. Every Yuri's Night party is unique. The point is to bring people together and celebrate the past, present and future of spaceflight."

This year, the celebration may be accompanied by a sense that the future of spaceflight is not assured. NASA's plan calls for commercial ventures to start launching astronauts to the space station in 2017 or so, setting the stage for trips beyond Earth orbit in the 2020s. The first targets for those voyages of exploration include near-Earth asteroids, with Mars as the eventual goal. But that vision is still in flux, and the budget that's been proposed for NASA is more suited for an era of retrenchment rather than expansion.

This isn't the first time NASA has gone through a painful transition. "We are currently experiencing the same timeline as when the Apollo program ended," Zabala-Aliberto pointed out. But the current situation does pose an extra challenge for U.S. human spaceflight.

"This gives us a catalyst to fight more, to let the general public know, 'No bucks, no Buck Rogers," Zabala-Aliberto said.

The tools being used to get the word out include events like the ones organized through Yuri's Night, as well as online venues such as Facebook and Twitter, YouTube and Ustream, LinkedIn and Flickr. This year, Kobrick is aiming to have live updates posted to Live.Yurisnight.net, which is powered by Posterous. There's also a video series with the theme "I Celebrate Yuri's Night Because..."

"We've always had a foot in the door with all the different channels that have come out," he said.

But the key is to keep the spirit of Yuri's Night going for the rest of the year as well, and that's what Zabala-Aliberto and her colleagues are aiming to do — by working with other space-minded organizations, taking advantage of the technological tools at their disposal, and letting people know "that they do have a say in the space program, and they can make a difference."

"Yuri's Night gives everybody that sense that you can still be a part of it," Zabala-Aliberto said. "You're around like-minded people. ... It's not going to be a wake, that's for sure."

Join us for a Yuri's Night kickoff on "Virtually Speaking Science," and check out the Yuri's Night website for a party near you. While you're clicking,

"Virtually Speaking Science" takes place at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday at the MICA Small Auditorium at Stella Nova in Second Life and is broadcast on BlogTalkRadio. Many thanks to the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics for co-sponsoring the Second Life event. The hourlong show will be archived on BlogTalkRadio and iTunes. Check out these other podcasts from "#VSScience":

• JPL's Dave Beaty on the search for life on Mars
• Shawn Lawrence Otto on science and politics
• Ig Nobel impresario Marc Abrahams on silly science
• Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin on Mars exploration
• Propulsion expert Marc Millis on interstellar spaceflight
• Sean Carroll on the puzzling frontiers of physics
• Rand Simberg on the private-enterprise vision for spaceflight
• Martin Hoffert on the future of energy policy
• George Djorgovski on science in virtual worlds
• Alan Stern on suborbital research and NASA's mission to Pluto
• Col. 'Coyote' Smith on the outlook for space solar power
• Tim Pickens on rocket ventures and the Google Lunar X Prize

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 or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Dan Durda / SwRI

This concept art for a 2015 stamp celebrates NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto.

More than 11,000 people have signed an online petition to honor NASA's mission to Pluto and other denizens of the solar system's icy rim with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp — which is a fine way to celebrate the 82nd anniversary of Pluto's planetary coming-out party.

"I'm pretty happy," said Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who is the principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission. New Horizons is due to fly by the dwarf planet in 2015, and Stern is among the leading supporters of the stamp campaign.

"A lot of stamps get 1,000 petition names, and they're very happy with that," Stern told me. "Still, I'd rather have 12,000 than 11,000."

Tuesday marks the 82nd anniversary of the announcement of Pluto's discovery by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, and it also marks a turning point for the petition drive. Stern said he and his colleagues are now turning their attention to the preparation of a formal proposal that will be submitted to the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee next month.

Years-long process
Back in 1991, the U.S. Postal Service issued a set of stamps honoring NASA's interplanetary missions — but the set included a stamp picturing Pluto, with the legend "Not Yet Explored." The $700 million New Horizons mission aims to cancel that earlier stamp's sentiment, and Stern is hoping that a brand-new New Horizons stamp will provide a stickable way to set the record straight.

The half-ton, piano-sized New Horizons probe was launched in 2006 and has made its way well beyond the orbit of Uranus, but it'll probably be another three years before most people sit up and truly take notice of the mission, Stern said. New Horizons' view of Pluto's surface features should match the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope around April 2015.

Why start so early on the stamp? That's just the way things are done: Proposals for commemorative stamps are considered by the advisory panel, and recommendations are then forwarded to the postmaster general for a final decision. "I don't think we're going to hear anything for two to three years," Stern said.

That time frame sounds about right to Robert Z. Pearlman, editor of the CollectSpace online publication and an expert on space history and memorabilia. "We'll probably know if it's a success in mid-2014," he said. Pearlman based that estimate on the circumstances surrounding the stamp that commemorated NASA's Messenger mission to Mercury. In Messenger's case, postal officials announced in August 2010 that the stamp would be part of its lineup. That was followed by its issuance in May 2011.

Spacecraft in semi-slumber
The New Horizons spacecraft has been rousing itself from hibernation every week to transmit status signals confirming that it's still on course and healthy (the so-called "green beacon"). Stern said the spacecraft is due to wake up fully on April 30 for "a very intensive couple of months of activities," aimed at rehearsing the procedures that will be used for the flyby of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, in July 2015.

Pluto has been the subject of a lot of discussion since New Horizons was launched: In August 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted to classify the icy world as a "dwarf planet" rather than a major planet — a move that was widely seen as a demotion. March 13, the date on which Pluto's discovery was announced in 1930, has become known in some circles as "Pluto Day." It's a day to draw attention to the little guys of the solar system, and as the author of "The Case for Pluto," I can't help but keep it on my holiday calendar.

Glenn Fleishman via Twitpic

Tim Lloyd hoists a protest sign during a Pluto Day rally in Seattle on Saturday.

Over the weekend, I was among about 30 grown-ups and kids who attended an early Pluto Day rally at the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. in Seattle. At the appointed time, we raised our protest signs, marched down the sidewalk and shouted good-natured chants ("Can't stop the power, the power of the Pluto, 'cause the power of the Pluto don't stop") as well as edgier ones ("Hey, hey, ho, ho, the IAU has got to go"). My favorite placard read, "Keep your laws off my icy body."

At the end of the block-long march (on both sides of the street), we gathered at a local coffee shop for a teach-in about dwarf planets. The climax was a rock-paper-scissors contest to decide whether or not Pluto was an honest-to-goodness planet. I'm happy to report that I triumphed in a two-out-of-three match against University of Washington astronomer Toby Smith.

I'm also happy to report that two Cosmic Log correspondents have won 3-D glasses in last week's "Where in the Cosmos" contest on the Cosmic Log Facebook page, which had a Pluto-stamp theme. Congratulations to Allison Rae Hannigan and Jacob Smith! Pluto lives!

More about Pluto and other dwarfs:

• Scientists spot Pluto's fourth moon
• Carbon monoxide found in Pluto's air
• Join the search for icy worlds
• Interactive: The new solar system
• More about Pluto on Cosmic Log
• More about 'The Case for Pluto'

This false-color view of Toro Crater on Mars was captured on Dec. 1, 2011, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and released on Wednesday. The different colors reflect different mineral composition on the Martian surface.

There's not much red in this picture of the Red Planet, produced by the high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Browns and blues and greens and yellows and violets ... but red? Not so much. There's a method in this colorful madness: The riot of color tells scientists that, mineralogically speaking, this is a wildly diverse region of Mars.

The orbiter took this picture of Toro Crater in Mars' northern hemisphere back on Dec. 1, and the processed version was released just this week. The University of Arizona's Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or HiRISE, says the different colors point to different kinds of minerals that may have been altered through the action of liquid water and heat on ancient Mars.

HiRISE's views in different wavelengths can be tweaked to tell geologists things about surface composition that you might not notice in a "true color" photograph.

"In general, the blue and green colors indicate unaltered minerals like pyroxene and olivine, whereas the warmer colors indicate alteration into clays and other minerals," McEwen writes in his image advisory. "The linear north-south trending features are windblown dunes that are much younger than the bedrock."

Such hydrothermal alteration could get a closer examination elsewhere on Mars when NASA's Curiosity rover touches down in Gale Crater this August.

For more of this crazy imagery, check out this longer, higher-resolution view of the Toro Crater scene. If you've got red-blue glasses, you'll get a kick out of this 3-D version. The HiRISE home page will point you to thousands of pictures from Mars — some in true color, some in false color, some in black and white, and some in 3-D red and blue. Feel free to go crazy.

S. Robbins / Moon Mappers / CosmoQuest / NASA

This image of the moon shows craters that have been identified by citizen scientists as part of the Moon Mappers project. The blue circles indicate raw IDs by individual users, while the red circles indicate craters identified by a computer program that groups together individual markings.

Where in the Cosmos?
On the Cosmic Log Facebook page, we've been featuring a series called "Where in the Cosmos" — in which we put up a curious space picture for people to puzzle over. Last week, I posted a picture of some cratered terrain with red and blue circles all over it. It took less than 24 hours for Robert Dryden to figure out that the picture showed some of the first results from a citizen-science project called Moon Mappers.

Scientists have long studied craters on the moon to trace the evolution of the solar system. The distribution and estimated ages of lunar craters have led astronomers to conclude, for example, that the inner solar system weathered a hailstorm of impacts known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment" about 4 billion years ago.

Crater counting is a valuable exercise, but it's hard to automate. Moon Mappers, a project presented by the CosmoQuest website, is calling upon the wisdom of crowds to help scientists make sense out of the imagery being sent back to Earth by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Similar citizen-science projects, organized by Zooniverse, have yielded published research — and Moon Mappers is likely to be similarly productive. So if you want to take part in some real science, consider joining the Moon Mappers team.

The moon picture was doubly apt, because of the Moon Mappers angle as well as the past week's political debates over future moon missions. For the latest word in that debate, check out this commentary by NBC News' longtime Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree.

I posted this week's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle earlier today, and within an hour several Cosmic Log Facebookers figured out that it was a 3-D view of the Snowman crater chain on the asteroid Vesta, as seen by NASA's Dawn probe. This means that Jarin Udom, Joan Tweedell and Ryan Anthony Sebastian Carroll join Robert Dryden in the winner's circle. They're all eligible to receive 3-D glasses once I get their mailing addresses.

To get in on the next "Where in the Cosmos" puzzle, be sure to hit the "Like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page ... and if you're already a fan, thanks for being part of the community!

More fun with space pictures:

• Jan. 27: 3-D color map of the universe
• Jan. 20: Stephen Hawking's curios explained

Slideshow: Get an eyeful from outer space

ESO / VISTA / J. Emerson / EPA

Gaze into the Helix Nebula's golden eye and see the other cosmic highlights of January 2012.

Launch slideshow

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 or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

This concept art for a 2015 stamp celebrates NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto.

The next three years just might be prime time for poor little Pluto, thanks to NASA's New Horizons mission — and if the leaders of that mission are successful, a brand-new Pluto postage stamp will be part of the celebration. But they need your help.

Today marks the start of an online petition campaign at Change.org, calling for the creation of a stamp commemorating the $700 million mission and its 2015 Pluto flyby. It would mark only the second time the dwarf planet has appeared on a U.S. postage stamp. The first time was in 1991, when a 29-cent stamp labeled Pluto as "Not Yet Explored."

Back then, some planetary scientists saw that stamp as a challenge — and that gave an early boost to the efforts that eventually led to New Horizons' launch in 2006. The mission's principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, even included one of the old stamps as a pint-sized payload on the spacecraft. Now the postal connection is coming full circle, just in time to render that "Not Yet Explored" label obsolete.

"We're asking people to sign the petition because the post office considers not just the merits of a new stamp proposal, but also whether it is supported by a significant number of people," Stern said in today's kickoff announcement. "This is a chance for us all to celebrate what American space exploration can achieve through hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry and the uniquely human drive to explore."

USPS

The 1991 stamp was part of a solar-system set.

The petition, along with the formal stamp proposal, would be sent to the U.S. Postal Service's Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, which sifts through thousands of suggestions and recommends which subjects should be transformed into commemorative stamps. Last year, for example, one set of stamps paid tribute to Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard's history-making flight in 1961, as well as the Messenger mission to Mercury.

It takes about three years to move from the submission of a proposal to the issuance of a new stamp — which is why Stern and his colleagues are making a big push now for a stamp that would be unveiled in 2015. The more signatures they can get, the better the chances of winning the approval of the committee and the postmaster general.

"If we get 10,000 signatures, we'll get a stamp — that's the impression I get," Stern told me. "But we're aiming for 100,000."

Stern said he'd like to turn in the signatures as well as the stamp proposal during the week of March 13, which marks the 82nd anniversary of the announcement of Pluto's discovery. That's not entirely out of the question, even though the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. After all, how many other celestial bodies have been the subject of letter-writing campaigns, legislative action, street protests and petitions by planetary scientists?

Dan Durda, an artist and space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute whose works appear on the New Horizons website and in many other places (including my book, "The Case for Pluto"), has drawn up a concept for the Pluto stamp — but if the stamp proposal is approved, the stamp's design may well be out of his hands.

"Stamp designing is an unusual art form requiring exacting skill in portraying a subject within very small dimensions," the Postal Service says. "Due to the demands of stamp design and reproduction requirements, it is our policy not to review nor accept unsolicited artwork."

The design isn't uppermost in Stern's mind right now. "You know, I'm sure it will turn out fine," he told me. "Our goal is to commemorate the historic nature of the mission and celebrate U.S. leadership in space exploration. And involve the public."

That's where you come in.

"Sign the petition, and mention it on Facebook," Stern said. "Let's see how high we can drive the numbers for Pluto and for space exploration."

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 or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

GLOBE at Night

Students around the world are being asked to identify the stars of Orion in the night sky as part of a global project to study the effects of light pollution.

Citizen scientists around the world are being asked to watch the skies and report what they see as part of a years-long effort to monitor the effects of light pollution.

This year's "Globe at Night" project gets started on Saturday night. The job is simple: All you need to do is go outside and look for the constellation Orion, which is one of the easiest star patterns to find in the night sky. (It's the one with three stars in a row to represent Orion's "belt.") Fill in the blanks and click the choices listed on this Web app, then send in your observations over the Internet.

Globe at Night is designed to get students familiar with making sky observations, and to call attention to the problems created by excessive and/or inefficient artificial lighting at night. The issue should be of concern not just to astronomers, but to the wider public as well, Connie Walker of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory said during this week's American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.

"In many places, we are raising a generation of people who don't know what the Milky Way looks like," Spacewriter blogger Carolyn Collins Petersen quoted Walker as saying. Some studies have shown that excessive exposure to certain types of artificial light at night can even throw off our biological clocks.

Globe at Night data will be collected over the course of a week during each month from now until April. The project has been conducted annually for the past six years. Observers from 115 countries have contributed 66,000 measurements so far.

The visibility data gathered from different locales could help dark-sky advocates press for changes in lighting ordinances. Next week, for example, commissioners for Buncombe County in North Carolina will consider upgrades in outdoor-lighting standards. Such changes can be controversial, but if the transition from less efficient to more efficient lighting is handled properly, the upgrades can be energy-savers and cost-savers as well as sky-savers. For more on that angle, check out the International Dark-Sky Association's website.

The Globe at Night project isn't the only reason to explore the night sky: Tonight you can see a cool pairing of the moon and Mars, and over the next few nights, the International Space Station will be visible before dawn from many U.S. locations. Check NASA's sighting database to find out when and where to watch for the bright "star" of the space station passing overhead.

Who knows? You might even spot the fiery fall of Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe, which is due to come sometime between now and Monday. If you snag a picture of Phobos-Grunt's fall, or any other interesting sky phenomena, feel free to share it with us, either by posting it to the Cosmic Log Facebook page or submitting it to msnbc.com's FirstPerson in-box.

More resources for skywatchers:

• Dark Sky Discovery is ready for BBC's 'Stargazing Live'
• Sky and Telescope: This week's sky at a glance
• Astronomy Magazine: The sky this week
• StarDate: This week's stargazing tips
• Skywatching on Space.com

To learn still more about the negative effects of light pollution, on the body as well as on the soul, check out this commentary by Minnesota writer Peter M. Leschak, published last week in the StarTribune. The Globe at Night project is also discussed in this podcast from 365 Days of Astronomy.

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. 

Kyoto U. / INAH / The Daily Citizen / NBC

The weirdest science stories of 2011 include (clockwise from top left) the one about the game-playing chimps, the update on the 2012 Maya apocalypse, a bird-death epidemic and the zodiac debate.

Even with the supposed Mayan doomsday coming up, it's going to be hard for 2012 to match 2011 when it comes to weird science: What other year can boast a bird-killing "aflockalypse," a chupacabra prowling around the nation's capital, two Loch Ness-type monster sightings and two doomsday predictions. (News flash: The predictions were wrong.)

That's why the Weird Science Awards exist: To pay tribute to the strange but scientific (or pseudo-scientific) tales of each year. This year's winners of the fifth annual Weirdies will take their place alongside glow-in-the-dark cats and dogs, reattached rabbit penises, the 2,700-year-old marijuana stash and the Stone Age sex toy as talismans of this wacky age.

We're offering 30 nominees from the past year, and it's up to you to pick the top 10 award-winners. One of the nominees — the one about pee pressure — is a laureate from this year's Ig Nobel award ceremony, which honors "research that makes people laugh and then think." You can use that as your judging criterion, or you can go for the article that makes you laugh, and then ask, "What on earth were they thinking?"

Write-in votes and second-guessing are encouraged; you can register them in your comments below.

The 10 nominees that get the most votes as of noon ET on Jan. 3 will be recognized as the 2012 Weirdy winners, and to mark the occasion, we'll review the year in weird science on Wednesday with Ig Nobel creator Marc Abrahams.

Here are the nominees from the past year, in chronological order:

• Animals die in 'Aflockalypse'; technology gets blamed
• Pole shift forces makeover of airport runway
• 13th zodiac sign causes stir, but astrologers shrug
• World's smallest periodic table inscribed on shaft of hair
• Gorilla wows spectators by walking like a human
• Fungus turns ants into zombies to do its bidding
• Picture of 'Bownessie' monster causes a stir
• Microbes in lake and meteorite spark weird-life debate 
• Sugar wards off death for flies hooked on meth
• Chimps play video games with a sense of self
• He-she birds cross the animal world's gender lines
• Loch Ness monster-like beast filmed in Alaska
• Father of cryonics movement frozen for the future
• Dog's glow-in-the-dark effect has an on-off switch
• UFO fans latch onto report of underwater anomaly
• Mysterious orange goo gunks up Alaska shore
• Chupacabra? It's probably a mangy old fox!
• Science reveals how to win at 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'
• Dolphins learn how to use shells to catch fish
• Corpse-dissolving machine invented
• Cleverbot chats like human, passes Turing test
• Tool-using fish caught for first time on video
• Ig Nobel Prizes: Judgment clouded by pee pressure
• Preacher's doomsday prediction goes wrong ... twice!
• Roman-era couple held hands for 1,500 years
• Spot the devil that's hidden in Giotto fresco
• Mexico adds another brick to 2012 Maya legend
• These beds haven't been made in 77,000 years
• Scientists say Shroud had to be created in a flash
• Just this once, Samoa drops Friday from the calendar

Review the nominees, then cast your vote. We'll talk about the winners next Wednesday on "Virtually Speaking Science." In the meantime, take a walk down memory lane with these Weirdies from past years:

• 2011 Weird Science Awards
• 2010 Weird Science Awards
• 2009 Weird Science Awards
• 2008 Weird Science Awards

More year-end reviews:

• 11 scientific twists from 2011
• The biggest ancient mysteries of 2011
• The year in space | 2011 slideshow
• Who's on the A-list for bad celebrity science?

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. 

Copyright John Harrison Photography

Photographer John Harrison captured this view of the Dec. 10 total solar eclipse above San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. "I went out at sunrise this morning not sure what to expect," he wrote. "What an awesome sight! The blue skies at sunrise with the red moon overhead were just a sight to watch. It was worth the 3 a.m. start to our fun shooting." See more of his portfolio at the John Harrison Photography website.

Millions of people witnessed today's total lunar eclipse, and that means there were plenty of cameras snapping in the darkness. We've put together this sampling from the photos submitted via FirstPerson, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

This was the last total solar eclipse until 2014, but there'll be plenty of other sky phenomena between now and then — including an unusual "diamond ring" annular solar eclipse next May, a Venus transit in June, a total solar eclipse in November, and meteor showers galore. Please keep us in mind whenever you've got a cool picture of the cosmos, and thanks for passing along slick eclipse pics like these:

Humza Mehbub

Humza Mehbub sent this composite image of the lunar eclipse from Lahore, Pakistan. The multiple exposures show Earth's shadow creeping across the moon's disk from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in Lahore, when the eclipse hit its peak.

Anthony Citrano

Anthony Citrano, a fashion photographer from Venice, Calif., captured this pre-dawn view of the eclipse as seen over Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. "Before going to bed at 1 a.m. ... I considered setting my alarm to get up and shoot the eclipse," Citrano wrote. "I was feeling quite tired - and lazily decided not to set the alarm. But my subconscious mind was determined, because I nevertheless awoke four hours later. I got out of bed, looked out the window, and it was just starting to go into shadow. I shot a few hand-held shots from my home in Venice - and then hopped in the car and drove the mile or two to the Santa Monica bluffs. This shot is the result. ... Running out the door I didn't notice I was traveling with a nearly-dead battery - and no spares - and this lens is really hard on power. I ran out of juice just after this shot, so I'm glad I got it." To learn more about Citrano's day job, check out his portfolio at Zigzag Lens.

Daniel Fischer

German science writer Daniel Fischer captured this picture of the total eclipse during a trip to Ranihet, India. "Took a lot of pictures with different settings, as a guide for the next total lunar eclipse - which, unfortunately, is now 3 years away." For more, check out Fischer's Twitpic gallery and his Cosmic Mirror website.

Michael Zeiler

Cartographer Michael Zeiler sent in this composite photo that captures the last partial stages of the lunar eclipse as seen from Los Alamos, N.M. "Total lunar eclipse began two minutes after sunrise where I live," Zeiler wrote. "I tried to capture a photograph of the selenelion, but missed it by a couple of minutes." Zeiler's website is the aptly named Eclipse-Maps.com, and he has produced charts for the May annular solar eclipse as well as the November total solar eclipse. "My map of the transit of Venus is on page 70 of the January 2012 Sky and Telescope," he says.

Jim Werle

The lunar eclipse competes with the bright lights of Las Vegas in this photo from Jim Werle.

JoAnne and Michael Schnyder

JoAnne and Michael Schnyder sent this picture of the partial eclipse from Cape Verde, Ariz. This was the view at 6:45 a.m. MT, at a stage when Earth's shadow hadn't yet completely covered the moon's disk but you could already make out the reddish eclipse glow.

Adam Gray

For some observers in the western U.S., the eclipse provided the seemingly impossible opportunity to catch the sunrise and the moonset simultaneously - a phenomenon known as "selenelion." Adam Gray sent in these two photos that show the brightening sunrise sky in the east and the darkening moon in the west. "The marine layer started to roll in right at about the time of totality," Gray wrote.

This eclipse preview story provides further explanation of the "impossible" selenelion phenomenon (alternate spelling is "selenehelion"). While we're on the subject of selenelion, toy inventor Mark Burginger sent in a couple of photos from the parking lot at Tetherow Golf Course in Bend, Ore., that shows the eastward sunrise view as well as the westward lunar eclipse view.

Follow the links below to see eclipse photos from:

• C.J. Cassarino of Livermore, Calif.
• Dale Cunningham of Corona, Calif.
• Barbara Hewitt of San Marcos, Calif.
• Joe Leonard of Taos, N.M.
• Fran Pepoon of Roseville, Calif.
• Anthony Wells from Hawaii

Thanks again to these photographers as well as others who submitted eclipse pics. For still more about today's event and other eclipses, check out these links:

• PhotoBlog gallery of lunar and solar eclipses
• Interactive: What causes a lunar eclipse?
• Nine cool facts about the lunar eclipse
• Why an eclipse paints the moon red

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.