Observing the image of a faint object that lies close to a star is a demanding task as the object is generally hidden in the glare of the star. Characterising this object, by taking spectra, is an even harder challenge. Still, thanks to ingenious scientists and a new ESO imaging spectrograph, this is now feasible, paving the way to an eldorado of many new thrilling discoveries.

A young star's strange elliptical ring of dust likely heralds the presence of an undiscovered Neptune sized planet, says a University of Rochester astronomer in the latest Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Using a suite of four telescopes, astronomers have captured an image of Altair, one of the closest stars to our own and a fixture in the summer sky.

XMM-Newton has surveyed nearly two hundred stars under formation to reveal, contrary to expectations, how streams of matter fall onto the young stars' magnetic atmospheres and radiate X-rays.

An international team of astronomers with the Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey today announce the discovery of their third planet, TrES-3. The new planet was identified by astronomers looking for transiting planets - that is, planets that pass in front of their home star - using a network of small automated telescopes in Arizona, California, and the Canary Islands.

The world's largest and most prolific team of planet hunters announced today (Monday, May 28) the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, increasing to 236 the total number of known exoplanets.

Astronomers, including UC Riverside's Gabriela Canalizo, have used powerful adaptive optics technology at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawai'i to reveal the precise locations and environments of a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of an ongoing collision between two galaxies 300 million light-years away.

ESA's Cluster was in the right place and time to make a shocking discovery. The four spacecraft encountered a shock wave that kept breaking and reforming - predicted only in theory.

An exploding star first observed last September is the largest and most luminous supernova ever seen, according to University of California, Berkeley, astronomers, and may be the first example of a type of massive exploding star rare today but probably common in the very early universe.

A massive faraway star explosion was the biggest supernova that scientists have ever seen.

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers has shown how to use the chemical composition of stars in clusters to shed light on the formation of our Milky Way. This discovery is a fundamental test for the development of a new chemical tagging technique uncovering the birth and growth of our Galactic cradle.