Using new tools to look at the universe, says Patrick Brady, often has led to discoveries that change the course of science. History is full of examples. Galileo was the first person to use the telescope to view the cosmos, says Brady, a UWM professor of physics. His observations with the new technology led to the discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter and lent support to the heliocentric model of the solar system........

Researchers scouting potential landing sites for NASA's next Mars rover mission are using new data from a powerful mineral-mapping camera to narrow the site selection. When NASA Mars Program officials and members of the Mars science community gather in California next week to pare down the list of candidate landing sites for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), they can refer to 125 new images from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). The images and accompanying analysis products are available on the CRISM Web site at http://crism.jhuapl.edu/msl_landing_sites/........

As the rings of Uranus swing edge-on to Earth - a short-lived view we get only once every 42 years - astronomers observing the event are getting an unprecedented, glare-free view of the rings and the fine dust that permeates them. The rings were discovered in 1977, so this is the first opportunity astronomers have had to observe a Uranus ring crossing and perhaps to discover a new moon or two........

The Origin of Galaxies remains one of the big questions in astrophysics, primarily because births of the first galaxies is largely hidden by (astrophysical) dust, tiny fragments of solid material in interstellar space. This dust hides the fundamental processes responsible for galaxy formation from traditional optical telescopes, as much of the optical light generated by the stars forming in the first galaxies is absorbed by the dust. However, this light is then re-radiated at longer wavelengths, mostly in the sub-millimetre (sub-mm) and far-infrared (far-IR) part of the electromagnetic spectrum........

The world is abuzz with the discovery of an extrasolar, Earth-like planet around the star Gliese 581 that is relatively close to our Earth at 20 light years away in the constellation Libra. Bruce Fegley, Jr., Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has worked on computer models that can provide hints to what comprises the atmosphere of such planets and better-known celestial bodies in our own solar system........

Travellers have relied on accurate timekeeping for navigation since the development of the marine chronometer in the eighteenth century. Galileo, Europe's twenty-first century navigation system, also relies on clocks - but they are millions of times more accurate than those earlier timepieces. The operational Galileo satellites will carry two types of clocks - passive hydrogen masers and rubidium atomic frequency standards. Each satellite will be equipped with two hydrogen masers, one of which will be the primary reference for generating the navigation signals, with the other as a cold (non-operating) spare........

A new NASA study has observed that an important counter-balance to the warming of our planet by greenhouse gases sunlight blocked by dust, pollution and other aerosol particles appears to have lost ground. The thinning of Earths "sunscreen" of aerosols since the early part of 1990s could have given an extra push to the rise in global surface temperatures. The finding, published recently in the journal Science, may lead to an improved understanding of recent climate change. In a related study published last week, researchers observed that the opposing forces of global warming and the cooling from aerosol-induced "global dimming" can occur at the same time........

The latest panoramic images from National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) twin STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft enable researchers to track solar storms from the sun to the Earth for the first time. "The new view from the STEREO spacecraft will greatly improve our ability to forecast the arrival time of severe space weather," said Dr Russell Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, the Principal Investigator of STEREO's Sun-Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI). "Prior imagery did not show the front of a solar disturbance as it travelled towards Earth, so we had to make estimates of when the storm would arrive. These estimates were uncertain by a day or so. With STEREO, we can track the front from the sun all the way to Earth, and forecast its arrival within a couple of hours"........

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of Jupiter early this morning, using the massive planet's gravity to pick up speed on its 3-billion mile voyage to Pluto and the unexplored Kuiper Belt region beyond. "We're on our way to Pluto," says New Horizons Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "The swingby was a success; the spacecraft is on course and performed just as we expected.".......

Eventhough very close to the minimum of its 11-year sunspot cycle, the Sun showed that it is still capable of producing a series of remarkably energetic outbursts - ESA-NASA Ulysses mission revealed. In keeping with the first and second south polar passes (in 1994 and 2000), the latest high-latitude excursion of the joint ESA-NASA Ulysses mission has already produced some surprises. In mid-December 2006, eventhough very close to the minimum of its 11-year sunspot cycle, the Sun showed that it is still capable of producing a series of remarkably energetic outbursts........

ESA-NASA Ulysses mission has marked another high point in its mission. For the third time in a long and highly successful career, Ulysses has reached its maximum south solar latitude of 80 degrees as it flies over the Sun's southern polar cap. Launched in 1990, the European-built spacecraft visits both polar regions once every 6.2 years as it circles the Sun in an orbit that is almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, the plane in which the Earth and the planets move........

On Saturday 27 January, Hubble's main camera, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), stopped working. Until a solution, at least in part, can be found, Hubble will be returned to work with the remaining instruments. On Saturday 27 January 2007 at 13:34 CET the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope entered into a protective "safemode" condition, most likely triggered by a short circuit in Hubble's main instrument the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). ACS had been running since June 2006 on its secondary backup electrical system........

By analysing the COSMOS survey - the largest ever survey undertaken with Hubble - an international team of researchers has assembled one of the most important results in cosmology: a three-dimensional map that offers a first look at the web-like large-scale distribution of dark matter in the Universe. This historic achievement accurately confirms standard theories of structure formation........

Astronomers peering into the dust surrounding a nearby red dwarf star have observed that the dust grains have a fluffiness comparable to that of powder snow, the ne plus ultra of skiers and snowboarders. This is the first definitive measurement of the porosity of dust outside our solar system, and is akin to looking back 4 billion years into the early days of our planetary system, say scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. That was the era after the formation of planets, but before the remaining snowball- or softball-sized rubble was ground into dust by collisions and blown out of the inner solar system........

Evidence for a significant new class of supernova has been found with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. These results strengthen the case for a population of stars that evolve rapidly and are destroyed by thermonuclear explosions. Such 'prompt' supernovas could be valuable tools for probing the early history of the cosmos........