Smaller in width than our Milky Way, their stars are packed 10,000 to a million times more densely than in our sun's neighborhood. Imagine the night sky!
For anyone who's been stirred out of bed in the middle of the night by a clap of thunder: Here's info about those intense storms that happen after the sun sets.
This region is on the Pacific Ocean's 'ring of fire' - where great land plates meet and one dives beneath another - and so is subject to frequent earthquakes.
Latest images from NASA's July 14, 2015 flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft, showing evidence of an active surface on Pluto with flowing nitrogen ice.
Two stars in a double system are not playing nice. One star, a pulsar, has punched a hole in the disk of the other, sending debris outward at 7% of light speed!
The Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone - or zone where liquid water can exist - around a sunlike star.