Claims that the Solar System has a tenth planet are bolstered by the finding by a group lead by Bonn astrophysicists that this alleged planet, announced last summer and tentatively
named 2003 UB313, is bigger than Pluto - Max Planck Society
NASA's Stardust spacecraft was placed into hibernation mode yesterday [Jan. 29]. Stardust successfully returned to Earth samples of a comet via its sample return capsule on Jan. 15. The spacecraft has logged almost seven years of flight - NASA
Water ice is present on the surface of Comet Tempel 1, but mostly held within – it is the first direct detection of exposed water ice on a comet - New Scientist
Some short gamma-ray bursts may be unleashed when ancient stars swap partners and merge rather than merging with their stellar siblings - New Scientist
A bound pair of icy comets similar to the dirty snowballs circling outside the orbit of Neptune has been found lurking in the shadow of Jupiter - UC Berkeley
A long Hubble Space Telescope observation of the Virgo Cluster is telling astronomers that the space between galaxies is not entirely empty - Sky and Telescope
A new analysis shows that dark energy, the engine driving the universe's speeding expansion, may be changing fast. Cosmologists aren't buying it — yet - Astronomy