Stellary Starry Universe

A distant super-Earth named "55 Cancri e" is wetter and weirder than astronomers thought possible. The discovery has researchers re-thinking the nature of alien worlds.

Astronomers are still scratching their heads over Comet Lovejoy, which plunged through the atmosphere of the sun in December and, against all odds, survived. The comet is now receding into the outer solar system leaving many mysteries behind.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the tiniest solar system so far, composed of a red dwarf star with three rocky planets smaller than Earth.

The discovery of a towering mountain on Vesta could solve a longstanding mystery: How did so many pieces of the giant asteroid end up right here on our own planet?

NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft, on a mission to study the moon's gravitational field, are nearing their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day main-engine burns to place the duo in lunar orbit.