Newly released Hubble images of Pluto show an abrupt and unexplained color change.

Satellite images reveal new aspects of Big Bang’s relic radiation.

A galactic collision a billion years ago may have halted stellar formation by exhausting gaseous building blocks.

A new simulation that combines supernova winds with the mysterious material known as cold dark matter almost perfectly accounts for the structure of dwarf galaxies in nearby reaches of the universe.

A newly released multiwavelength image portrays 12 billion years of cosmic history, depicting the assembly of galaxies in unprecedented detail.

The NASA mission uncovers one Neptune-like and four Jupiter-like bodies. (p. 12)

Potential finding uses data that push limits of current technology. (p. 5)

Beyond Neptune lies a reservoir of rejects — icy debris left to roam the solar system’s dim outer limits having never coalesced into planets. But these frozen relics preserve a trove of clues about the earliest history and architecture of the solar system, astronomers are discovering. Named for astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who in 1951 predicted the existence of this 3-billion-kilometer-wide swath of icy chunks, the Kuiper belt didn’t begin to reveal itself to observers until 1992. Since then, researchers have found more than a thousand bodies filling a doughnut-shaped belt, which extends... (p. 16)

Radio observations of a dark, dusty cloud in a nearby star-forming region have revealed one of the earliest phases of star formation and may reveal new insights on starbirth. (p. 12)

A recently launched infrared observatory has discovered about 700 newly forming stars. (p. 12)

Events in underground experiment too few for certainty, but match the signature of WIMPs. (p. 8)

The new instrument promises to discover millions of infrared-bright galaxies and thousands of previously unknown asteroids and brown dwarfs.