A few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-size planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. So argues an European team of scientists.

Chaotic networks of dust and gas signpost the next generations of massive stars in this stunning new image of the Cygnus-X star-nursery captured by ESA’s Herschel space observatory.

An international team of astronomers led by David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire has found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has a temperature of just 400^oC and its discovery could be a key step forward in helping astronomers distinguish between brown dwarfs and giant planets.

NASA Dawn mission researchers undertaking the first global analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta have looked back at the history of our solar system and found evidence of surprisingly recent collisions that left large impact basins.

The Hubble Space Telescope has made detailed observations of the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366. While it lacks the elegant spiral arms of many larger galaxies, NGC 2366 is home to a bright, star-forming nebula and is close enough for astronomers to discern its individual stars.

The arirborne 2,7m SOFIA telescope has detected interstellar deuterated hydroxyl OD around the star IRAS16293-2422 in the Rho-Ophiuci star-forming nebula.