BOLDLY WE GO

Wharariki Arch at Te Rae, Tasman, New Zealand by James Gibson

Where to find aliens? In the bottom of the ocean

3.7 km (2.3 miles) under the Pacific Ocean between the Philippines and southern Japan, an extraordinary jellyfish was discovered during the deepwater exploration conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and partners.

I have scrolled past images of the amazing creature before, but I honestly thought it was a photoshopped spaceship.

The hydromedusa, not a spacecraft, was captured by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) aboard the Okeanos Explorer ship and has been identified as belonging to the genus Crossota. The exact species remains a mystery.

It has two sets of tentacles — short and long. The long tentacles are even and and when extended, the bell does not move. This suggests an ambush predation mode. Within the bell, the radial canals in red are connecting points for what looks like the gonads in bright yellow.

Beautiful image of Saturn’s rings perfectly aligned with Dione, one of the planet’s multiple moons. This new image was captured with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute