From NASA  --  More than 400 years after its discovery by astronomer Galileo Galilei, the largest moon in the solar system – Jupiter's moon Ganymede – has finally claimed a spot on the map. 

A white dwarf supernova was just discovered in the nearby starburst galaxy M82. Details are still coming in, but this will be an excellent chance to study this type of system up-close, plus it may come within visual range of your backyard telescope.

ScienceCasts, NASA’s new video series, offers middle and high school educators and the public a fast and fun way to learn about scientific discoveries and facts about Earth, the solar system, and beyond. The videos were produced by an astrophysicist and a team of agency narrators and videographers. The format is designed to increase understanding of the world of science through simple, clear presentations.  The videos are available in YouTube, Vimeo, and available for download.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission and The Planetary Society invite you to submit your name for a round-trip ride to asteroid Bennu. Your name will hitch a ride to the asteroid, spend 500 days there, and return in the Sample Return Capsule to Earth in 2023.

Plus your name will be on the spacecraft, which will remain in space long after returning the sample return capsule to Earth.

To add your name, visit: http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/messages/bennu/

There is much excitement in the space science community, with the successful landing of the Chang’E 3 spacecraft, carrying the Yutu (Jade Rabbit) surface rover on December 14.  These websites (in English) contain images, video, and some of the earliest data from the rover.

Share your students' visions of the 2019 issue of Cosmic Times with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Do your students have a vision for the 2019 issue of Cosmic Times? How much closer will we be to solving the mysteries of dark energy and the nature of the universe? What tools will we have then that we don't have now?

The Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures, featuring astronomers giving nontechnical lectures on recent developments in astronomy, are now available on their own YouTube Channel, at:
https://www.youtube.com/user/SVAstronomyLectures

The talks include:

From NSTA Science Matters  --  The Space Foundation will select the new flight of Teacher Liaisons in January 2013. Those eligible to be Teacher Liaisons include any PreK–20 educator or other professional or informal educator in the PreK–20 arena.

From NSF  --  Astronomers have collectively puzzled over two working theories for a conundrum involving the sun that have been discussed in Astronomy 101 classes for decades: Why is the sun's corona (the atmosphere beyond the sun) so hot? The sun's core is a searing 15 million degrees Kelvin, but by the time that heat reaches the sun's surface, it cools off to a mere 6,000 degrees, only to again heat up to more than a million degrees in the corona.

A new annotated guide to written, web, and audio-visual resources for teaching or learning about planets orbiting other stars is now available.  Materials in the guide to this rapidly-changing branch of astronomy include video and audio files of lectures and interviews with leading scientists in the field, phone and tablet apps, a citizen-science web site, popular-level books and articles, and more.

Published by the NASA Astrophysics Education and Outreach Forum and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the guide can be found as a PDF file at: