Bugs home in on seeds by detecting infrared radiation.

New information from space missions suggests the rings surrounding Saturn may be older and have more mass than scientists thought.

A plan to switch the Hubble Space Telescope to a backup system works, waking up the telescope after more than two weeks of silence. (p. 8)

Planetary scientists have gotten their closest look yet at polar storms on the ringed planet. These polar cyclones are big enough to engulf Earth. (p. 9)

NASA scientists are cleared to remotely switch equipment on the Hubble Space Telescope in the hopes of restoring the orbiting observatory’s function by October 16.

If asked to name stupendously amazing things in space, most people would probably pick black holes. These evil-tinged clowns of the universe are definite wows. Insatiable is their middle name. Grand and merciless, voracious and monstrous, pure appetite and deep mystery. The biggest fatten themselves in galaxy cores mainly via a seemingly limitless hunger for a main source of sustenance: fat, circular wads of gas that gather around the black holes and are sometimes given a name to delight any glutton, Polish doughnuts. Black holes cloak their innards behind an “event horiz... (p. 18)

Featured blog: In the last debate, McCain denounced proposed federal spending on a multimillion dollar "overhead projector."

The NASA MESSENGER spacecraft completed its second flyby of Mercury, yielding crisp new images of a large swath of the planet not seen before. (p. 8)