SUNSET: 
Sneaky Star Dating
How old are the Sun's stellar neighbors? An inventive approach suggests that the birth rate for the nearest stars has had two peaks instead of one — meaning two distinct generations are mixing in the neighborhood.
One Gap, No Planets
There's a big gap in the dusty disk around the young star V1247 Orionis. Such a gap should be carved out by one or more planets, but astronomers can't find any.
Tiniest Exoplanet Around a Sunlike Star
The Kepler mission has discovered an exoplanet smaller than Mercury orbiting a Sun-like star.
Stellar Senior Citizen
Astronomers have confirmed that the star HD 140283 is nearly as old as the universe.
Dead Stars: Good Exoplanet Targets?
White dwarfs can have stable habitable zones for a few billion years, and planets with Earth-like atmospheres might be much easier to detect around these stellar remnants than normal, hydrogen-fusing stars.
Making Planets Around Brown Dwarfs
Astronomers searching for forming planets have a new place to look. Even the thin disks around brown dwarfs are capable of forming grains large enough that, one day, they could potentially coalesce into a rocky planet.
Making Mini-Oort Clouds
A new set of simulations shows that systems with so-called "hot Jupiters" might also have mini-Oort clouds detectable by today's space telescopes, giving astronomers a new potential tool for finding exotic extrasolar systems.
Fomalhaut b: An Exoplanet Redeemed
New analysis suggests that Fomalhaut b — an exoplanet discovered in 2008 and disputed ever since — really does exist.
Auroras Grace Stellar Skies
Stunning auroras play in Earth's upper atmosphere, and similar cascading curtains grace the skies of giant planets, brown dwarfs — and even small stars.
Four Mammoth Cameras Take On the Sky
The Dark Energy Camera is one of four new cameras that started taking images of big chunks of the night sky this past month.
