IAU approves 2nd round of names for Pluto features

New Horizons provided close-up images of Pluto in 2015. For many on Earth today, these spacecraft images provide a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of Pluto. Read about the new Pluto feature names.

Hubble’s new portrait of Jupiter

This new Hubble Space Telescope portrait of Jupiter reveals a smaller-than-usual Great Red Spot and an intense color palette in Jupiter's swirling clouds. NASA said, "The colors, and their changes, provide important clues to ongoing processes in Jupiter’s atmosphere."

Look around from Mars rover’s point of view

Here’s what the Curiosity rover is seeing after 7 years on Mars. Curiosity captured this 360-degree interactive panorama on June 18.

A mega-tsunami on ancient Mars?

It's likely Mars was once a water world with rivers, lakes and maybe even an ocean. New research lends support to the possibility that an asteroid slammed into Mars' ocean 3.5 billion years ago, creating a vast tsunami.

Astronomers map our local cosmic void

Our universe is a tapestry of galaxy congregations and vast voids. An international team of astronomers has now published a new study revealing more of this cosmic structure as it appears surrounding our Milky Way.

When our Milky Way merged with an ancient dwarf galaxy

Analysis of measurements via the Gaia space telescope - of star positions, brightnesses and distances - has let astronomers probe a merger 10 billion years ago between the primitive Milky Way and a dwarf galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus.

A closer look at Io’s weird volcanoes

Io's volcanoes have fascinated scientists since the Voyager 1 spacecraft first discovered them nearly 40 years ago. Now a comprehensive new report - based on ground-based studies - unveils new mysteries about the most volcanically active world in our solar system.

These 2 dead stars whip around each other in minutes

The newfound dynamic duo of white dwarfs- called ZTF J1539+5027 - orbit each other every 7 minutes.

A mountain on dwarf planet Ceres

Here's a reconstructed "perspective view" of the tallest mountain on Ceres, which in turn is the largest world in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Earthly astronomers call the mountain Ahuna Mons.

Check out this cool video map of known exoplanets

This short video, just over a minute long, takes you on a journey from 1991, when no exoplanets were known, to today's 4,003+ known exoplanets. Why the plus? According to the NASA Exoplanet Archive, the number of known exoplanets has already jumped up to 4,031 and counting!