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Morocco in 2011, and report that it is a new type of Mars rock with an unusually high water content.[8][9][10] American researchers state that a gene associated with active personality traits is also linked to

Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler space observatory announce the discovery of KOI-172.02, an Earth-like exoplanet candidate which orbits a star similar to the Sun in the habitable zone

13 January – Massachusetts doctors invent a pill-sized medical scanner that can be safely swallowed by patients, allowing the esophagus to be more easily scanned for disease

A newly discovered gaseous planet has been directly photographed orbiting a star about 300 light-years from Earth

this world may be the least massive planet directly observed outside of the solar system,

released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO)

NASA is sorting through a variety of possible uses for a pair of powerful spy satellite telescopes

SA asked scientists to suggest missions for the telescopes, which were donated by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and are comparable in size and appearance to the famous Hubble Space Telescope.

More than 60 serious proposals came

using data from NASA's Kepler mission

discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun

smallest is about the size of Mars

Pluto

In 1930, the planet Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, when comparing two photographic plates taken six days apart the previous month. He found a starry speck that changed position between them. The search for Planet X was started three decades earlier (before Tombaugh was born) at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by Percival Lowell. Deviations in the positions of Uranus and Neptune were suspected to be due to the gravity of an undiscovered ninth planet. Locating it meant sifting through the millions of star images for one dim dot that moved. Lowell was unsuccessful, but in his will decreed that the hunt should continue. Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farmboy when Lowell Observatory director Vesto Slipher hired him in 1929. Pluto was the only planet found by an American

Pluto

  In 1930, the discovery of a ninth planet was announced by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory. It is only one-tenth as large as Earth and four thousand million miles away. The planet was named Pluto on 24 May 1930.

Uranus

scientists have been watching through many observatories to see if the comet has already broken up under the intense heat and gravitational forces of the sun

The comet is too far away to discern how many pieces it is in, so instead researchers carefully measure how bright it is,

Less light can sometimes mean that more of the material has boiled off and disappeared, perhaps pointing to a disintegrated comet

as ISON got closer to the star

Analyses of light captured by NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft seemed to show the comet growing dimmer

Next, pictures from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which should have captured ISON on its closest approach to the Sun, showed absolutely nothing

The first Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of another star has been confirmed by observations with both the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory

The initial discovery, made by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, is one of a handful of smaller planets found by Kepler and verified using large ground-based telescopes

his Earth-sized planet, one of five orbiting this star, which is cooler than the Sun, resides in a temperate region where water could exist in liquid form

This week, an international team of researchers

announced the discovery of an exoplanet

155 light years

Astronomers using the Integral space observatory were able to watch as the planet was eaten by a black hole that had been inactive for decades

The observation was

from a galaxy that has been quiet for at least 20–30 years

A crowdfunded telescope

is now considering a search for alien planets.

Planetary Resources Inc. (the proposed asteroid miners) announced a new “stretch goal” for its asteroid-hunting Arkyd-100 telescope.

the latest orbital plot places the comet’s closest approach to Mars slightly closer than previous estimates

new data now significantly reduces the probability the comet will impact the Red Planet, JPL said, from about 1 in 8,000 to about 1 in 120,000.

The closest approach is now estimated at about 68,000 miles (110,000 kilometers). The most previous estimates had it whizzing by at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers).

Researchers are now posting all exoplanet sightings by the Kepler observatory into a single, comprehensive website called the "NASA Exoplanet Archive."

Instead of going through the long planet confirmation process before making data publicly available

So the day we know about the list, the archive knows about the list. And then everybody, including us, can work on that list. But that list is dynamic so if we, or a community person, makes an observation and says, 'Hey, I looked at this planet candidate but it's really an eclipsing binary,' then that entry in the archive will be changed."

The Kepler telescope went into safe mode on Jan. 17 for a planned 10 days, during which time the telescope's reaction wheels — spinning devices used by the observatory to maintain its position in space —will be rested

after researchers detected an unexpected increase in the amount of torque needed to rotate

"Resting the wheels provides an opportunity to redistribute internal lubricant, potentially returning the friction to normal levels," Kepler officials

Dark matter throws down the gauntlet to the so-called Standard Model of physics.

Elegant and useful for identifying the stable of particles and forces that regulate our daily life, the Standard Model only tells part of the cosmic story

it does not explain gravity, although we know how to measure gravity and exploit it for our needs

new gigantic nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory of the central portion of the Milky Way Galaxy

resolution of this image is so great, that if it was printed out in the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 meters long and 7 meters tall

The huge dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies