Data from ESA’s Gaia star-mapping satellite have revealed tantalizing evidence that the famous V-shaped Hyades - nearest star cluster to our sun - is being disrupted. The culprit may be a suspected population of dark matter sub-halos. Wow!

This spectacular image features spiral galaxy Messier 106 and its diminutive neighbors, as well as a dense field of background galaxies and foreground stars.

A strong tropical depression picking up moisture from the warm ocean caused widespread flooding in the Hawaiian islands.

UK scientists and meteor experts have recovered pieces of a rare meteorite, just days after it entered Earth's atmosphere and streaked across the sky. Researchers are ecstatic. "Normally we have to send spacecraft to collect bits of other worlds, but this time one has fallen right into our laps!" one said.

Jet contrail shadows may appear to be cast by a low-altitude bright light shining upwards. In fact, this shadow is normally cast on clouds below the jet and its contrail.

We share your best photos of winter 2021!

In the animation in this post, the rhythmic movement of newly discovered planets around the star TOI-178 is represented through a musical harmony, created by attributing a note (in the pentatonic scale) to each of the planets. Hear the music of these planets.

Go outside, and look for the waxing gibbous moon tonight. Then notice the stars nearby. Tonight's moon is within the Winter Circle stars.

A commercial nanosat called SpaceTy Beihangkongshi-1 - launched November 2020 - has successfully used an iodine thruster to change its orbit around Earth. This new thruster might help clear space junk by steering small satellites, at the end of their missions, back into Earth's atmosphere where they'd burn up.

See a whole year of sun images, an image a day for 2020, taken by ESA's Proba-2 satellite.