An artist's depiction of the orbiting black holes. Credit: NOAO

Astronomers recently found what looks like two massive black holes orbiting each other in the center of a distant galaxy. It’s long been thought that twin black holes might exist, but a new, innovative search was needed to find this rare pair. The discovery may lead to a greater understanding of how massive black holes form and evolve at centers of galaxies.

• National Optical Astronomy Observatory news release on the discovery.
• Discover Magazine on the binary black holes.
• Astronomy.com discusses the discovery.

The newly discovered moonlet, positioned in a gap between Saturn's rings.

Saturn has a complex system of moons and rings. Scientists have thought that moons, or smaller bodies called “moonlets,” have something to do with the formation of Saturn’s rings. Recent images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft turned up a small moonlet in the G-ring of Saturn’s system. The G-ring is a diffuse ring, nearly the last ring in the system. It contains a curious arc that is probably due to material crashing into the little moonlet embedded in it.

• Cassini Mission news release on the moonlet.
• NASA's Cassini Mission page discusses the news.

The Ares V rocket.

Getting crisp, clear images of objects billions of light years away requires big space telescopes. But the size of telescopes sent into orbit is constrained by the size of the rockets that carry them.

NASA’s new Ares V rocket may completely change rules of the game. The Ares V, which will carry the next lunar lander to the Moon, is big enough to hold eight school buses. It can haul six times more mass and three times the volume the Space Shuttle can.

• Science@NASA on the Ares V.
• Space.com talks about the Ares V.

Artist's rendition of the Dawn mission examining Vesta.

NASA’s Dawn mission is on its way to the asteroid belt. Once there, the spacecraft will orbit two asteroids, Ceres and Vesta, gathering information with its two cameras. The asteroids are pieces left over from the formation of the solar system, so scientists hope the mission will help us understand how the solar system evolved.

• The Dawn Mission Web site.

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.