SUNSET: 
Test Flight Success for Orion Spacecraft
On December 5th, NASA successfully launched the first test flight of its Orion capsule. Scheduled to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit in the 2020s, the spacecraft is NASA’s first deep-space people transporter since the Apollo days.
Bright Spot in Uranus’s Atmosphere
Amateur astronomers have confirmed the presence of a large, bright storm cloud on the ice giant Uranus.
Two Exocomet Populations Around Beta Pictoris
The comets in the infant planetary system around the star Beta Pictoris fall into two distinct families, with one reminiscent of the solar system’s Kreutz sungrazers.
G2 Survives Black Hole Pass
The gaseous object G2 has survived its swing around the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, but the questions of what it is and where it comes from remain unanswered.
Gamma-ray Novae Explained?
Astronomers might have an explanation for why some classical novae erupt in gamma rays.
Mergers Create Disk Galaxies
Observations from several radio telescopes reveal that, when two galaxies merge, their progeny often have gaseous disks—a hypothesis that before now didn’t have solid observational evidence.
Dust Makes Cosmic Inflation Signal Iffy
A new analysis of Planck data bolsters the claim that the polarization signal heralded as evidence for cosmic inflation is from dust instead.
The Quasar Main Sequence
A new diagram might link the diverse visible-light characteristics of quasars to two physical properties — essentially, their accretion rate and orientation. If the analysis holds up, it could point the way toward a long-sought unification.
Laniakea: Our Home Supercluster
Astronomers have mapped the cosmic watershed and discovered a massive supercluster that extends more than 500 million light-years and contains 100,000 large galaxies. The Milky Way sits on the edge of this humongous structure.
Building Big Elliptical Galaxies’ Cores
Astronomers are tracking down the seeds that likely grew to become today’s most massive elliptical galaxies.
Distant Black Hole’s Spin Clocked
A new measurement could be the farthest back in time astronomers have ever reached when measuring a black hole’s spin.
Fingerprint from the First Stars
Astronomers might have found a star that was infected by the explosive death of one of the universe’s first stars.
Culprit for Enigmatic Supernova?
Astronomers have detected a star in pre-explosion images of the peculiar supernova 2012Z. The detection is the first discovery of a potential progenitor for the oddball class of stellar explosions dubbed Type Iax.
Novae Surprise with Gamma Rays
Astronomers have detected gamma-ray emission from three classical novae, an unexpected discovery that has left them perplexed.
Cosmic Rays Hint at Hotspot
A cluster of detections in the Northern Hemisphere sky might point to a source for the most energetic particles bombarding Earth's atmosphere.
The Planet That is No More
A new analysis confirms that an exoplanet thought to orbit in the habitable zone of the star Gliese 581 actually doesn’t exist.
Rosetta's Comet Sleeps Again
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko only woke briefly before starting another nap, expected on-again-off-again behavior that bodes well for the comet-chasing spacecraft's arrival in August 2014.
Sea Changes on Saturnian Moon
Fleeting radar features in a sea in Titan’s northern hemisphere are a tantalizing possibility of seasonal changes.
Big Bang Inflation Evidence Inconclusive
New analyses suggest that observations heralded as evidence for the universe’s brief growth spurt don’t conclusively show what researchers thought they did.
Rosetta's Comet Awakens
The Rosetta spacecraft took these images of Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko as it approaches the nucleus. It'll launch its lander, Philae, in November onto the nucleus's surface.
