Found among the Small Magellanic Cloud's clusters and nebulae NGC 346 is a star-forming region about 200 light-years across, pictured above by the Hubble Space Telescope.
A European team of astronomers has measured the distance to the most remote galaxy so far. The galaxy they found was 13.1 billion light years away from Earth.
This is a shot of the lunar South Pole, which was targeted by a Centaur rocket aimed at a dark crater on the moon's surface. Measurements of the resulting plume of dust, debris and vapor showed evidence of water. NASA says there may be 1 billion gallons of water in the crater that was hit.
Image of 103P/Hartley obtained with the Suprime-Cam on Subatru Telescope
An unknown bright new celestial body was seen in the brighter part of this X-ray image observed by Japan's MAXI sky skanner.
Last year on October 9, NASA's Lunar Crater Remote Observation and Sensing Satellite) intentionally crashed its upper stage into a crater near the lunar south pole. Scientists wanted to measure debris from the bottom of the crater. The vehicle hit the surface at over 5,600 miles per hour, sending up a plume of material over 12 miles high.
Alaska's Susitna Glacier imaged by NASA's Terra satellite. This satellite image combines infrared, red, and green wavelengths to form a false-color image. Vegetation is red and the glacier's surface is marbled with dirt-free blue ice and dirt-coated brown ice.
Although spiral-shaped galaxies abound, no two look exactly the same. This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms.
A surprise discovery: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found that the hottest part of a distant planet, named upsilon Andromedae b, was not subject to the glare of its host star, as might be expected.
Artist's rendering of the Swift spacecraft with a gamma-ray burst going off in the background.
Astronomers have counted 278 giant planets who atmospheres are heated to thousands of degrees because of their relative proximity to the stars they orbit. Their nickname: Hot Jupiters. Using the XMM-Newton satellite to observe one hot Jupiter system located about sixty-three light-years away, they published a computer simulation of the magnetic field strengths of a star affected by the presence of a hot planetary companion orbiting nearby.