The Herschel Space Observatory has shown galaxies with the most powerful, active black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes. The results are the first to demonstrate black holes suppressed galactic star formation when the universe was less than half its current age.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the detection is a historic step toward the eventual search for signs of life on other planets.

Images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal an old star in the throes of a fiery outburst, spraying the cosmos with dust. The findings offer a rare, real-time look at the process by which stars like our sun seed the universe with building blocks for other stars, planets and even life. The star, catalogued as WISE J180956.27-330500.2, was discovered in images taken during the WISE survey in 2010, the most detailed infrared survey to date of the entire celestial sky. It stood out from other objects because it glowed brightly with infrared light. When compared to images taken more than 20 years ago, astronomers found the star was 100 times brighter.

While some galaxies are rotund and others are slender disks like our spiral Milky Way, new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

New data from the Herschel Space Observatory suggest comets are constantly smashing together around the star Fomalhaut.

The WISE all-sky image is now available for projection on "Science on a Sphere" (see http://sos.noaa.gov/ for info). Science On a Sphere is a large visualization system that uses computers and video projectors to display animated data onto the outside of a sphere. Said another way, SOS is an animated globe that can show dynamic, animated images of the atmosphere, oceans, and land of a planet.

NASA is extending three missions affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. -- Kepler, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the U.S. portion of the European Space Agency's Planck mission -- as a result of the 2012 Senior Review of Astrophysics Missions.

Information about NASA's 2009 Decadal Process.

The Keck Observatory Archive (KOA) has released raw and calibrated images from the Near Infrared Camera 2 (NIRC2). This is the first imaging instrument archived in KOA, and the third instrument altogether. As of May 7, 1,240 nights of NIRC2 data have been archived, and 932 nights are public. These data include all four observing modes. New data will be added whenever NIRC2 is scheduled on the telescope. The NIRC2 data may be accessed through the KOA search page.

The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Science Data Center at IPAC announces the release of the Dark Energy Performance Calculator (DEPC). The DEPC is based upon Chris Hirata's “Space-Based Galaxy Survey Exposure Time Calculator” code, and provides a user-friendly tool foruse in optimizing the WFIRST configuration and observing strategy.

They say there is no place like home. For Caltech's George Helou, the essence of that phrase carries over to the recognition of his accomplishments. This past year, he has received numerous honors from Lebanon, his country of origin, including his election to the Lebanese Academy of Sciences. The tributes bestowed by the Mediterranean nation cite Helou's distinguished career in astronomy in the United States and Europe.

Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of one planet for every star on average, according to a new statistical study.