A new series of telescope images taken with conventional cameras, high-resolution ground telescopes, and the Hubble Space Telescope show glittering details of this colorful star cluster in the Southern Cross constellation.

To learn about other recent astronomical discoveries, visit the Science Bulletins website.

On April 23, 2009, NASA’s Swift satellite captured a glimpse of the most distant astronomical object ever seen—the fading afterglow of a massive stellar explosion called a gamma-ray burst. Astronomers calculated that the light from this burst took 13 billion years to reach Earth. This means the star exploded 13 billion years ago, just 630 million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers hoped that this event would offer the first observational evidence of an elusive class of stars called Population III. These are the Universe’s earliest stars, which contain a mixture of hydrogen, helium, and a bit of lithium created in the Big Bang. As Population III stars exploded and died, they combined these lighter elements into heavier ones that seeded subsequent generations of stars, including our own Sun, a Population I star. “Population III stars are very likely to look quite different from stars that we are used to,” says University of Leicester astronomer Nial Tanvir, whose team closely studied the April 23 gamma-ray burst. “They also likely undergo rather different evolutionary histories. One would be rather surprised if any gamma-ray bursts they produced didn't also look different.” Did this record-breaking explosion have telltale signs of a dying Population III star? Or must astronomers continue their quest? View the latest Astro Bulletin, below, to find out.

To learn about other recent astronomical discoveries, visit the Science Bulletins website.

Evidence is mounting of a widespread yet faint signature of water on Earth’s moon that is strongest near the poles. See the signature in the Astro Bulletin from October 19, 2009 along with recent images from NASA’s water-seeking LCROSS mission, which crashed part of its spacecraft into a frozen crater at the Moon’s south pole on October 9, 2009. We’ll be keen to know if LCROSS mission scientists confirm traces of water ice in the faint plume of debris kicked up by the impact. NASA will reveal results in the coming weeks.

This Astro Bulletin from July 21, 2008 highlights a previous discovery of lunar water dissolved inside tiny, glassy rocks that astronauts on the Apollo missions brought back from the Moon about 40 years ago. Clues to the water content in these volcanically formed beads have turned up since the 1980's, yet technology is only now sufficiently advanced to detect such trace amounts.

To learn about other recent astronomical discoveries, visit the Science Bulletins website.