Astronomers studying a black hole in our Galaxy with ESA's XMM-Newton observatory have made a surprising discovery about the cocktail of particles that are ejected from its surroundings.

Astronomers at ESO have captured the best image so far of the curious clouds around the star cluster NGC 3572. This new image shows how these clouds of gas and dust have been sculpted into whimsical bubbles, arcs and the odd features known as elephant trunks by the stellar winds flowing from this gathering of hot young stars. The brightest of these cluster stars are much heavier than the Sun and will end their short lives as supernova explosions.

Mars was once on track to become a thriving Earth-like planet, yet today it is an apparently lifeless wasteland. A NASA spacecraft named MAVEN will soon journey to Mars to find out what went wrong on the Red Planet.

If any rocky planets beyond the solar system host microbes similar to the ones on early Earth, we should be able to spot their telltale purple hue
    

NASA has released a natural color image of Saturn from space, the first in which Saturn, its moons and rings, and Earth, Venus and Mars, all are visible.13-331

The US space agency releases a spectacular new picture of Saturn, acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on "the day the Earth smiled".

The first traces of life found in glass from an impact crater supports the idea that microbes travelling on space rocks could have seeded the solar system
    

An asteroid with a record number of dusty tails may be rotating so fast it is falling apart, which could help us understand the way asteroids die
    

Recently given up for dead, NASA's Kepler space telescope might get a new lease of life that will broaden the planet-hunting king's view of the sky
    

The Hubble telescope has spotted an asteroid radiating six comet-like tails, making it resemble a "rotating lawn sprinkler".

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a strange asteroid spewing six comet-like tails of dust. This could be a sign that the asteroid is breaking apart.

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It's not often that astronomers stumble across a celestial interloper that they can only describe as "weird and freakish." Hubble researchers say they were "literally dumbfounded" when they took a close-up look at an object that lives in the asteroid belt but superficially looks like a comet. It has no less than six dust tails that seem to be forming sequentially. The entire structure rotates like a bicycle wheel with spokes on one side.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a unique and baffling object in the asteroid belt that looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler or badminton shuttlecock. While this object is on an asteroid-like orbit, it looks like a comet, and is sending out tails of dust into space.

Astronomers viewing our solar system's asteroid belt with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Efforts to listen in to primordial dark matter are helping to refine recent models that suggest some of the elusive particles can build dark atoms
    

If life is common in the universe, we will have found signs of it by the middle of the next decade, thanks to a new generation of space telescopes
    

The threat of another asteroid strike like the one that hit Russia this year has been underestimated, a study suggests.

The Russian meteorite was the largest to hit Earth in a century. From sunburns to exotic chemistry, it sparked a flurry of forensic research
    

A dizzying display shows all 3538 known and candidate exoplanets in multi-planet systems that NASA's planet-hunting space telescope has discovered so far
    

A team of NASA and international scientists for the first time have gathered a detailed understanding of the effects on Earth from a small asteroid impact.