The South Pole Telescope is 75 feet (22.8 meters) tall, 33 feet (10 meters) across and weighs 280 tons (254 metric tons).

In February, a new telescope opened its gaze to the sky. A new telescope isn’t that unusual, but this one’s location stands out. The telescope is located at the South Pole.

The South Pole Telescope, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, is designed to help answer some fundamental questions about the universe. Many of the telescope’s observations will be focused around dark matter and dark energy, twin mysteries that present a major hole in our understanding of the cosmos.

• South Pole Telescope Web site.
• National Science Foundation telescope animations and news.

Artist's conception of the Ulysses satellite.

We know quite a bit about the Sun’s surface and what goes on at the Sun’s equator, but the poles remain a puzzle. We can’t see the poles very well, and most solar satellites have viewed the sun from mid-latitudes.

The Ulysses satellite has been circling the Sun over the poles to sample these exotic regions. The poles spew out charged particles in a blast of plasma. Observations taken in February 2007 of the Sun’s south pole will be compared with observations of the north pole in 2008.

• Science@NASA discusses the Sun's south pole flyby.
• Ulysses finds one of the Sun's poles is cooler than the other.

This image compares Titan's large "sea" and Earth's Lake Superior.

Titan, the mysterious moon of Saturn, has surprised scientists again. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected what looks like large seas in Titan’s northern hemisphere. The largest of the seas is bigger than either our Lake Superior or the Black Sea. The seas are not filled with water, but rather methane and ethane.

• Cassini mission's home page.
• BBC talks about the Titan seas.

A spinning neutron star pulls gas from a nearby star.

One of the strangest objects we know of is a neutron star, which forms upon the death of a star about twice the mass of the Sun. At the end of its life, the massive star collapses into a tiny object just 6-12 miles (10-20 km) in diameter. Because so much mass is crushed into such a small space, neutron stars are incredibly dense. A thimbleful of neutron star material weighs a hundred million tons.

Neutron stars are often found spinning, and can emit X-rays as they spin. A recently discovered neutron star called XTE J1739-285 appears to be the fastest spinning neutron star known. It spins 1122 times every second.

• The European Space Agency discusses the newly discovered neutron star.

X-ray images of galaxy clusters help identify elements in the clusters.

The universe is full of calcium – the same substance that helps clot blood and fortifies bones. Calcium, in fact, is the fifth most common element on our planet. We know that elements like iron and sulfur come from the nuclear reactions in exploding stars. It turns out that these supernovae explosions also produce calcium.

New X-ray observations taken at the XMM-Newton Observatory indicate that the universe has more calcium than previously thought, giving rise to new theories about the formation of elements and the role of supernovae in their creation.

• NASA talks about the calcium discovery.
• The European Space Agency discusses the X-MM Newton observations.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been watching a supernova in progress since its launch in 1990. The stellar explosion, which first appeared in 1987, is known as SN1987A. Hubble has observed over the years as the shockwave from the explosion slams into the rings of gas circling the dying star. This is astronomers’ first close-up and personal view of the death of a massive star.

“Hot Jupiters,” huge gas planets located perilously close to their parent stars, appear to be scattered throughout our galaxy. One such planet is so close to its star that its atmosphere has puffed up from the heat and is boiling off into space. Hubble is helping astronomers get a glimpse at what that atmosphere is like.

The New Horizons space probe, on its way to Pluto, recently swung by the planet Jupiter. The planet’s gravity helped slingshot the probe deeper into space. But while it was there, New Horizons took pictures of the gas giant. Hubble took images of Jupiter at the same time, allowing scientists to compare and contrast pictures from both missions.

• NASA's Hubble Telescope Celebrates SN 1987A's 20th Anniversary
• Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby

A test model of the Planck probe.

How did the universe come into being? To figure out where the universe came from and how it’s evolving, we need to look at what was happening very early, right after the Big Bang.

Scientists can look for “first light,” the leftover glow from the Big Bang. The leftover heat is part of the microwave spectrum. Two earlier satellites, the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe studied this “cosmic background radiation.” The satellites were designed to be extremely sensitive to changes in temperature, and mapped the radiation throughout the sky.

Now a new satellite, the European Space Agency’s Planck probe, will examine that background radiation. Planck, set to launch in 2008, will map the sea of microwaves with a precision that was unattainable earlier

• Planck's home page.
• WMAP's NASA page.
• COBE's NASA page.

Artist's illustration of planet HD 209458b.

A large planet, the size of Jupiter, orbits the star HD 209458. The planet, creatively called HD 209458b, has been studied extensively since its discovery in 1999. Its orbit periodically brings the planet between its star and us, allowing astronomers to detect it using a technique called spectroscopy. The planet’s orbit is short, about 3.5 days, because the planet is very close to the parent star. Observations by Hubble found sodium, carbon and oxygen in the planet’s atmosphere. Newer observations show that the star is heating up the outer atmosphere of HD 209458b so much that hydrogen is streaming off of it into space.

• HubbleSite on the planet's streaming atmosphere.