A swarm of "smart dust" spacecraft, positioned at a sweet spot between the Earth and the sun, could alert us to the approach of dangerous space storms well before a conventional craft can. The first prototypes are due for launch into low-Earth orbit this year, perhaps as early as May.

The subtle signal of ancient helium has shown up for the first time in light left over from the big bang. The discovery will help astronomers work out how much of the stuff was made during the big bang and how much was made later by stars.

A new group of spots is traversing the face of the sun. Sunspot group 1045 is an active region that has produced moderate (M-class) solar flares.

The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that a period of increased seismic activity occurred on Feb. 2, beginning at 3:30 p.m. MST.

Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be low with a chance for an M-class event.

The star TW Hydrae is located about 150 light-years from earth in the direction of the constellation of Hydrae, the Water Snake. This star is relatively young -- at about 10 million years old it has passed out of its infancy but is not yet mature.

Galaxies come in all sorts of shapes. But in the past, the various galaxy shapes used to be more diverse and "peculiar" than they are now.

NASA's effort to hunt down and identify nearby asteroids that may one day threaten all life on Earth may be starved for funding, according to a recent report, but two potential space telescopes - and an influx of cash - could go a long way toward safeguarding the planet from catastrophe.

Are the relativistic jets of long gamma ray bursts (GRBs) produced by brand new black holes? Do some core-collapse supernovae result in black holes and relativistic jets?

Pluto-philes (and astronomers, too) have always bemoaned the fact that the best image of the principal dwarf planet wase just a fuzzy, pixelized haze.

Baku. Kamala Guliyeva - Lokbatan mud volcano that falls under the State Natural Reserve of Baku and Absheron Peninsula Mud Volcanoes Group erupted, press service of Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry told APA.

Japan's coast guards filmed a large smoke explosion 1,300 kilometers (about 800 miles) south of Tokyo that is believed to be an active underwater volcano on Wednesday (February 3).

The glow of methane has been detected in the atmosphere of Jupiter-sized alien planet orbiting close to its parent star.

Another technique has been added to the exo-planet hunters' toolkit, and it doesn't require huge ground-based telescopes or space-based observatories. A group of astronomers developed the new technique by using a relatively small Earth-based infrared telescope to identify an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet nearly 63 light-years away.

With the new 2011 NASA budget allowing for more space science activities, the space agency has extended the Cassini mission to explore Saturn and its moons to 2017. "This is a mission that never stops providing us surprising scientific results and showing us eye popping new vistas," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division.