The blast's X-ray glow lights up its corner of space. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler

A huge celestial blast spotted 12.2 billion light years from Earth is possibly the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected. NASA’s Fermi Telescope detected a massive explosion in the southern constellation Carina that produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than 5 billion times that of visible light.

• NASA news release on the blast.
• Science@NASA on gamma ray bursts.
• Universe Today reports on the blast.
• Astronomy.com discusses the blast.

Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned a telescope toward the night sky and launched the field of astronomy. To celebrate this anniversary, 2009 has been declared the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). Events are occurring worldwide at museums, observatories, universities and more to direct attention to the study of the universe. Check your local science center or planetarium for an event near you!

• International Year of Astronomy Web site.
• United States IYA projects.
• NASA's IYA page.
• National Public Radio talks about the IYA.

Caption: An artist's rendition of the STEREO spacecraft.

NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft are now showing us the first glimpse side of Sun that faces away from Earth, a perspective never seen before. Launched on October 2006, the twin spacecraft will eventually move until they can monitor the entire surface of the Sun — both the side facing Earth and the far side, giving us a better view of solar storms as they form and develop.

• Space.com on the STEREO spacecraft.
• NASA facts on the STEREO mission.
• STEREO Web site.

Speedy stars create "bow shocks" in space.

Young stars may get kicked out of their orbits and race through space, creating arrowhead-shaped “bow shocks” – similar to ripples in the water created by a speed boat — in the interstellar medium. The stars are plowing through the gas that drifts through space, bunching it up. Astronomers have not found many of these stars, but there’s no set place to look – so there may be many more out there.

• HubbleSite news release on the fast stars.

The typical, corkscrewing path of a "co-orbital" asteroid. Credit: Paul Weigert

Asteroids that drift around the solar system at nearly the same distance from the Sun as the Earth’s orbit, can “corkscrew” into Earth’s vicinity as they pass by. These are not common but they do occur. The most recent one, 2009 BD, passed within 400,000 miles of Earth. It is corkscrewing near Earth, and then in the future may drift away.

A similar object, called 2003 YN107, came by in 2003 and departed the vicinity of the Earth in 2008. It might return in 60 years.

• Space.com on 2009 BD.
• Space.com on a previous corkscrewing asteroid.
• Spaceweather.com notes the flyby.

Comet Lulin. Credit: Lulin Observatory

A new comet will likely become visible in dark skies in late February. Comet Lulin was discovered in July 2007 and should be just on the edge of naked-eye visibility in dark, moonless skies. It should be easily seen in binoculars, but note that comet brightness estimates are notoriously unreliable since comets can change their appearance dramatically and quickly.

• Universe Today on the approach of Comet Lulin.
• Visual Astronomy discusses Comet Lulin.
• Sky and Telescope gives viewing information.

A composite image of Tycho’s supernova remnant in infrared and X-rays.

In 1572, a “new star” appeared in the sky, stunning astronomers and challenging ancient theories of the universe. The brilliant supernova, recorded by the astronomer Tycho Brahe, was even visible during the day. Now astronomers have been able to capture faint “light echoes” of original explosion, helping to determine the exact type of supernova Tycho saw. It was likely caused by a white dwarf star undergoing titanic, thermonuclear explosion.

• Science Centric on the supernova remnant.
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space on Tycho's supernova.

A composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Credit: NASA, JPL, ESA, and Q.D. Wang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and S. Stolovy (Spitzer Science Center/Caltech)

Our Milky Way galaxy is known to be massive, but new observations of the speed of star formation along its spiral arms indicate it is much more massive than previously thought. The observations of radio emissions from star formation regions were taken with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a suite of radio telescope scattered across the globe that work together to map details of regions in the galaxy.

• National Radio Astronomy Observatory news release on the discovery.