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Last updated: Sunday, 7 February 2010 16:56 GMT
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Pluto's white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain captured by Hubble

Pluto's white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain captured by Hubble

— 7 February 16:56

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 changes... — full story


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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 astronomers with a local test bed for studying the intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their large distance. The newly released image, obtained with the FORS instrument attached to one of the four 8.2-m VLT Unit Telescopes at Cerro Paranal, Chile, is a three-color combination of exposures acquired through visible and near-infrared (V, R, I) filters. This image portrays a wider field around the stellar cluster and reveals the rich texture of the surrounding clouds of gas and dust. The field of view is 7 arcminutes wide, (c) ESOThe stars behind the curtain

— 4 February 10:35

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... — full story

Part of the Sirenum Fossae region in the Southern Highlands of Mars. The image shows the region centred at about 28 S / 185 E. It extends some 230 km by 127 km and covers 29 450 sq km, roughly the size of Belgium. The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA's Mars Express spacecraft during orbit 6547. The image resolution is about 29 m per pixel, (c) ESA, DLR, FU Berlin (G. Neukum)Craters young and old in Sirenum Fossae

— 4 February 10:09

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... — full story

This artist's impression depicts the newly discovered stellar-mass black hole in the spiral galaxy NGC 300. The black hole has a mass of about twenty times the mass of the Sun and is associated with a Wolf - Rayet star; a star that will become a black hole itself. Thanks to the observations performed with the FORS2 instrument mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have confirmed an earlier hunch that the black hole and the Wolf - Rayet star dance around each other in a diabolic waltz, with a period of about 32 hours. The astronomers also found that the black hole is stripping matter away from the star as they orbit each other. How such a tightly bound system has survived the tumultuous phases that preceded the formation of the black hole is still a mystery, (c) ESO/L. CalcadaBlack hole hunters set new distance record

— 28 January 08:43

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... — full story

This view from the front hazard-avoidance camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the position of Spirit's front wheels following a backward drive during the 2,154th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Jan. 23, 2010). The view is toward the north, (c) NASA/JPL-CaltechMars rover Spirit starts a new chapter

— 27 January 11:38

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... — full story

The red dot at the centre of this image is the first near-Earth asteroid discovered by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, (c) NASA, JPL-Caltech, UCLAThe first of many asteroid finds for WISE

— 23 January 09:25

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... — full story

The Cat's Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) is a vast region of star formation. This new portrait of NGC 6334 was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager instrument at the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, combining images taken through blue, green and red filters, as well as a special filter designed to let through the light of glowing hydrogen. NGC 6334 lies about 5500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius. The whole gas cloud is about 50 light-years across, (c) ESOOn the trail of a cosmic cat

— 20 January 16:17

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.... — full story


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This artist's conception shows the newly discovered super-Earth GJ 1214b, which orbits a red dwarf star 40 light-years from our Earth. It was discovered by the MEarth project - a small fleet of ground-based telescopes no larger than those many amateur astronomers have in their backyards, (c) David A. Aguilar, CfAAstronomers find super-Earth

— 17 December 10:59

Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a 'super-Earth' orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. They found the distant planet with a small fleet of ground-based... — full story


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