In celebration of the 24th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have captured infrared-light images of a churning region of star birth 6,400 light-years away.

The first clear detection of primordial gravitational waves allows us to peer back further than we thought possible - and could unlock many cosmic secrets
    

The cosmic marker that's caused such a stir

Scientists say they have found a signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that occurred just fractions of a second after the Big Bang.

To celebrate its 24th year in orbit, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has released a beautiful new image of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula. This colourful region is filled with young stars embedded within bright wisps of cosmic gas and dust.

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This colorful Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of a small portion of the Monkey Head Nebula unveils a collection of carved knots of gas and dust silhouetted against glowing gas. The cloud is sculpted by ultraviolet light eating into the cool hydrogen gas. As the interstellar dust particles are warmed from the radiation from the stars in the center of the nebula, they heat up and begin to glow at infrared wavelengths, as captured by Hubble. The space photo superficially resembles the "The Great Wave" print by 19th century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai.

The planet Mercury is about 7km smaller today than when its crust first solidified over four billion years ago.

Telescope captures view of gravitational waves

Nature 507, 7492 (2014). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/507281a

Author: Ron Cowen

Images of the infant Universe reveal evidence for rapid inflation after the Big Bang.

The planet Mercury is about 7km smaller today than when its rocky crust first solidified over four billion years ago - a greater degree of shrinkage than previously recognised.

The tiny world went on a serious diet in its youth, shedding about 11 kilometres of its original width as it cooled
    

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer has revealed the largest yellow star — and one of the ten largest stars found so far. This hypergiant has been found to measure more than 1300 times the diameter of the Sun, and to be part of a double star system, with the second component so close that it is in contact with the main star. Observations spanning over sixty years, some from amateur observers, also indicate that this rare and remarkable object is changing very rapidly and has been caught during a very brief phase of its life.

This rare type of rainbow has previously only been glimpsed on Earth – and could help solve a decades-old mystery about Venus's atmosphere
    

A strange cloud of carbon monoxide, probably from icy objects crashing together, may owe its existence to an invisible exoplanet
    

The RAS welcomes UK support for Square Kilometre Array and PLATO.

£113m in new funding was announced today by David Willetts.

https://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/news-archive/254-news-2014/2420-ras-welcomes-uk-support-for-ska-and-plato


RAS welcomes UK support for SKA and PLATO
www.ras.org.uk
The UK Science Minister, David Willetts MP, today announced a total of £113 million of new funding to support UK involvement in the world's most powerful radio telescope and a new space mission that will search for Earth-like planets around other stars.

NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter contest series will offer $35,000 in awards over the next six months to citizen scientists who develop improved algorithms that can be used to identify asteroids.

NASA astrophysicist Steve Howell is confident that a new method of aiming the crippled Kepler space telescope will convince the space agency to keep it alive
    

NASA astrophysicist Steve Howell is confident that a new method of aiming the crippled Kepler space telescope will convince the space agency to keep it alive
    

What are the strangest sounds in the universe?

Fresh evidence hints that most Martian rocks found on Earth could be from the same ancient terrain, but the claim has set off a firestorm among meteorite experts
    

After searching hundreds of millions of objects across our sky, NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up no evidence of the hypothesized celestial body in our solar system commonly dubbed "Planet X."