In pictures
Pluto's white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain captured by Hubble
NASA has released the most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy, mottled, dark molasses-coloured world undergoing seasonal surface colour and brightness... — full story
The stars behind the curtain
NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing... — full story
Leaves whisper their properties through ultrasound
The water content of leaves, their thickness, their density and other properties can now be determined without even having to touch them. A team of researchers from the CSIC Institute of Acoustics and the Agri-Food Research and Technology Centre... — full story
Craters young and old in Sirenum Fossae
The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera has imaged craters both young and old in this view of the Southern Highlands of Mars. Part of the Sirenum Fossae region in the Southern Highlands, the area in this image is centred at about 28 S... — full story
Apple launches iPad
Apple introduced iPad, a revolutionary device for browsing the web, reading and sending email, enjoying photos, watching videos, listening to music, playing games, reading e-books and much more. iPad's responsive high-resolution Multi-Touch... — full story
Black hole hunters set new distance record
The stellar-mass black holes found in the Milky Way weigh up to ten times the mass of the Sun and are certainly not be taken lightly, but, outside our own galaxy, they may just be minor-league players, since astronomers have found another black... — full story
Mars rover Spirit starts a new chapter
After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts... — full story
The first of many asteroid finds for WISE
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid, the first of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light. The near-Earth object,... — full story
On the trail of a cosmic cat
Few objects in the sky have been as well named as the Cat's Paw Nebula, a glowing gas cloud resembling the gigantic pawprint of a celestial cat out on an errand across the Universe. British astronomer John Herschel first recorded NGC 6334 in... — full story
Kepler discovers its first five exoplanets
'These observations contribute to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve from the gas and dust disks that give rise to both the stars and their planets,' said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field,... — full story
