A Phoenix image of a Martian plain.

The red planet Mars conjures up images of rocks and arid, dusty plains, but last year NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander showed that it snows on Mars. The Phoenix robot observed ice crystals falling to the Martian surface. Now new research could shed light on the past and present water cycle on the Martian surface, and possibly characterize the potential habitability of the red planet.

• News release on Phoenix observing snow.
• Space.com on Phoenix's final tasks.

Artist's conception of CoRoT satellite

A massive star — 10 times the mass of the Sun — called V1449 Aquilla, turns out to have oscillations similar to the Sun. The observations were obtained over 150 days with the Convection, Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) satellite. No other massive star is known to have such oscillations, and the striking similarity to the Sun helps us study the Sun and understand the precursors to supernovae eruptions.

• The European Space Agency CoRoT page

A test image of galaxy M51 from the new Herschel Observatory. Credit: ESA

Two amazing telescopes were launched together in May 2009 by the European Space Agency (ESA). One telescope, Herschel, measures the light from star formation regions and builds three-dimensional pictures of nebulae. It is the most powerful infrared telescope yet launched into space. It should be ready for regular science operations in November.

The second telescope, Planck, measures the minute fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background through two radio detectors. Planck’s instruments have reached their chilly operating temperature and the telescope has entered its final orbit.

• ESA's Herschel page
• Space.com on Herschel's first pictures.
• ESA news release about the M51 image.

Servicing Mission 4 went off without a hitch in May, a team of astronauts successfully completing what was perhaps the most challenging Hubble mission ever. Since then, Hubble has been slowly coming awake as scientists and engineers carefully restore its many components to full power. It’ll be another month before the first official new images from Hubble, but in July an unexpected astronomical event gave us a sneak preview of one of the telescope’s new instruments.

• What's Next For Hubble?
• Hubble Captures Rare Jupiter Collision

Betelgeuse and its location in Orion.

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is shrinking, and astronomers aren’t sure why. One of the largest stars we know, Betelgeuse could occupy the space from the Sun out to the Planet Jupiter, engulfing the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Since 1993, it’s shrunk about 15 percent. Betelgeuse’s size determines that it will die as a supernova, lighting up Earth’s skies for months after the light from its explosion reaches us.

• New Scientist on Betelgeuse's size changes.
• HubbleSite on Betelgeuse.
• Universe Today on the biggest stars around.

The changing orbits of planets have the potential for danger.

Astronomers calculate that there’s a tiny chance, a billion or more years from now, that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth. The new finding comes from simulations that show how orbits of planets might evolve. There’s also a chance that Mercury could strike Venus and merge into larger planet, that Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter, or even that Jupiter’s gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of the solar system.

• BBC article and video clip on the potential orbits.
• Space.com story on planet collision.

Newborn stars in the center of the Milky Way

The center of our Milky Way galaxy is a chaotic, harsh place, home to shock waves, intense radiation, and a supermassive black hole. You might think all these elements would prohibit new stars from forming or rip apart any object shortly after it was formed. But a few years ago, infrared observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope indicated that clusters of stars could indeed form in this region. Now new observations have detected brand new stars near the galaxy center. The “baby” stars can be distinguished from similar-looking older stars because they are still imbedded in the molecular cloud in which they formed. Might these objects form planetary systems, since they have lots of dusty material around them?

• Spitzer Space Telescope news release on the discovery.

Hubble blocked the light of the central star to directly observe a planet, larger than Jupiter, in this solar system.

Astronomers are inventing new ways to find planets around other stars. Most of the methods used thus far don’t involve actually seeing the planet; its presence is inferred from observations of the parent star. A large, Jupiter sized planet can be detected b y the “wobble” its gravity causes in the parent star’s motion. Other planets pass in front of their host stars, making them detectable by the dimming of the stars’ light.
A new idea is to block out the light from a bright star so that faint planets can be detected. This technique would be used to obtain direct images of the planets that normally cannot be seen right next to the bright star.
The device that blocks the starlight is called a starshade and would be placed in orbit far from the main telescope. The starshade is a clever concept, but would be tricky to engineer.

• Scientific American on the starshade concept.