Images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal an old star in the throes of a fiery outburst, spraying the cosmos with dust.

The findings offer a rare, real-time look at the process by which stars like our sun seed the universe with building blocks for other stars, planets and even life.

 The star, catalogued as WISE J180956.27-330500.2, was discovered in images taken during the WISE survey in 2010, the most detailed infrared survey to date of the entire celestial sky.

It stood out from other objects because it glowed brightly with infrared light. When compared to images taken more than 20 years ago, astronomers found the star was 100 times brighter.

"We were not searching specifically for this phenomenon, but because WISE scanned the whole sky, we can find such unique objects," said Poshak Gandhi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), lead author of a new paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Results indicate the star recently exploded with copious amounts of fresh dust, equivalent in mass to our planet Earth. The star is heating the dust and causing it to glow with infrared light.

"Observing this period of explosive change while it is actually ongoing is very rare," said co-author Issei Yamamura of JAXA.

"These dust eruptions probably occur only once every 10,000 years in the lives of old stars, and they are thought to last less than a few hundred years each time. It's the blink of an eye in cosmological terms."

The aging star is in the "red giant" phase of its life. Our own sun will expand into a red giant in about 5 billion years.

When a star begins to run out of fuel, it cools and expands. As the star puffs up, it sheds layers of gas that cool and congeal into tiny dust particles.

This is one of the main ways dust is recycled in our universe, making its way from older stars to newborn solar systems.

The other way, in which the heaviest of elements are made, is through the deathly explosions, or supernovae, of the most massive stars.

"It's an intriguing glimpse into the cosmic recycling program," said Bill Danchi, WISE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Evolved stars, which this one appears to be, contribute about 50 percent of the particles that make up humans."

NASA Cassini: Snowballs caught crashing into Saturn's weirdest ring

Saturn's weirdest ring is known for its sparkling displays, but now it's been caught in the act. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured the first video of snowballs crashing into the planet's distant F-ring, creating a mini-jet of sparkling ice crystals.

The event was captured while Cassini was filming Saturn's moon Prometheus approaching the ring. The moon, which orbits just inside the F-ring, following an elliptical path, brushes up against it every 17 years. During its approach, it's thought to create a ripple in the icy ring's geometry which causes snowball-like pieces to break off. These icy fragments are then thought to quickly crash back into it causing a sparkling mini-jet.

Based on the video, researchers were able to calculate the orbital direction and speed of the snowballs. Results indicate that they followed a very similar orbit to Prometheus and hit at a slow speed of about one meter per second. This points to the culprit being small snowballs created during the moon's previous approach, which survived and went on to strike through the F-ring itself.

"We had seen these mini-jets right from day one but, like most things with the F-ring, it's trying to understand what you're seeing," says Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at University of London in the UK. The group has found 500 such mini-jets after looking through 25 images of the F-ring. They now plan to examine them more closely to see if they fit the same description as the one caught on film.

NASA PLANET: The Milky Way's 100 Billion Planets

This artist's illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way.

The planets, their orbits and their host stars are all vastly magnified compared to their real separations.

A six-year search that surveyed millions of stars using the microlensing technique concluded that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception.

The average number of planets per star is greater than one. This means that there is likely to be a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth.

The results are based on observations taken over six years by the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration, which was founded in 1995. The study concludes that there are far more Earth-sized planets than bloated Jupiter-sized worlds.

This is based on calibrating a planetary mass function that shows the number of planets increases for lower mass worlds. A rough estimate from this survey would point to the existence of more than 10 billion terrestrial planets across our galaxy.

The results were published in the Jan. 12, 2012, issue of the British science journal Nature.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Kornmesser (ESO)

Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron

Small, water-rich near-Earth asteroids can be captured by spacecraft, allowing their resources to be extracted, officials with the new company Planetary Resources say.

CREDIT: Planetary Resources, Inc.

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself but it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson reported.

"They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

Planetary Resources to Create 'Gas Stations' in Space

Planetary Resources says it has developed the first line in a family of deep-space prospecting spacecraft, the Arkyd-100 Series.

The craft is essentially a space telescope that will help scientists identify and prioritize near-Earth asteroid targets.

A company based in the northwestern United States called Planetary Resources says it plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals.

Planetary Resources' co-founder Peter Diamandis is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, medical doctor and CEO of the X Prize Foundation.

Speaking at a news conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, Diamandis said he has wanted to be an asteroid miner since he was a teenager.

"The vision of Planetary Resources is to make the resources of space available to humanity, both in space and here on Earth, whether it's propellent from water on asteroids or strategic metals and minerals that are important to promoting and creating a world of abundance here on Earth," said Diamandis.

Company officials say resource extraction from asteroids will grow to be valued at tens of billions of dollars annually, but they stress that that kind of payday is decades away. They add that asteroid mining will provide a sustainable supply of precious metals to Earth's growing population.

Along with Diamandis, Eric Anderson is the co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources.

While precious metal such as platinum would be welcome, Anderson says they also want to mine for elements found in abundance here on Earth - namely hydrogen and oxygen, which are the basis for water...and rocket fuel.

"If we're able to successfully, successfully deploy and mine for water, we're going to create a network of propellant depots, of gas stations, that literally open up the roadways to the rest of the solar system," said Anderson. "So it's going to drastically reduce the cost of deep space exploration."

Planetary Resources says it has developed the first line in a family of deep-space prospecting spacecraft, the Arkyd-100 Series. The craft is essentially a space telescope that will help scientists identify and prioritize near-Earth asteroid targets.

The company says this spacecraft will be launched in about two years. Beyond that, officials said the plan is to mass produce follow-on Arkyd-300 series spacecraft and send them off in swarms on expeditions. Planetary Resources says its mining would be done robotically.

Officials say they hope to identify asteroids to prospect within the decade.

The company's financial backers include billionaires such as Google's CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Planetary Resources counts famed film director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron as a project advisor, but some news reports have identified him as a financial backer. Cameron told VOA that his involvement in this project has been overstated in media reports.

ESA's Latest CryoSat results revealed

After nearly a year and a half of operations, CryoSat has yielded its first seasonal variation map of Arctic sea-ice thickness. 

Results from ESA's ice mission were presented at the Royal Society in London. In June 2011, the first map of Arctic sea-ice thickness was unveiled, using CryoSat data acquired between January and February of that year.

Now, the complete 2010-11 winter season data have been processed to produce a seasonal variation map of sea-ice thickness.

This is the first map of its kind generated using data from a radar altimeter at such a high resolution compared to previous satellite measurements.

CryoSat's altimeter makes precise measurements of its height above the ice by measuring the time interval between the transmission and reception of very short radar pulses.

Readings over the Arctic from October 2010 to March 2011 were processed to map the seasonal formation of floating ice.

ESA and NASA have been collaborating to perform carefully coordinated flights directly under CryoSat's orbit over the Arctic, gathering data to ensure the accuracy of the satellite measurements.

This first validated CryoSat dataset demonstrates the full potential of this innovative ice mission.

Owing to the high rate of change in the Arctic Ocean, this has a special relevance for climate change research.

Other significant results from this collaborative European mission will be presented and discussed, with perspectives from UK industrial and scientific communities.

This event is being jointly organised by ESA and the UK Space Agency as part of the wider celebration of the 50th anniversary of the UK in space.

The map, along with a full digital elevation model of Greenland and other scientific results from the collaborative European mission, were presented at the Royal Society in London.

The event was jointly organised by ESA and the UK Space Agency as part of the wider celebration of the 50th anniversary of the UK in space.

"Within the 50th anniversary celebrations of space activities in the UK, we have seen how the UK has been able to contribute to and lead in the many aspects of ESA's CryoSat mission," said David Williams, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency.

Director of ESA's Earth Observation Programmes, Volker Liebig, outlined the dramatic effects that climate change has had on the Arctic, and how satellites have been monitoring sea-ice for over 30 years.

"In the coming years, the Arctic will become a very important geo-political region," said Prof. Liebig.

"15 to 20 per cent of the world's oil and gas reserves are expected there, and we will find shorter shipping routes as the ice melts. Satellites will play and ever-important role in the sustainable management of this sensitive region."

Link to ESA Portal Cryosat-2 and animation of Results Summary

Every year, the Arctic Ocean experiences the seasonal formation and then melting of vast amounts of floating ice. Over the past decade, satellites have seen an acceleration in the rate of overall sea ice loss.

Radars on satellites such as ESA's CryoSat can acquire high-resolution images through clouds and darkness. This is particularly useful when observing the inaccessible Arctic, which is prone to long periods of bad weather and extended darkness.

In the coming years, CryoSat data will map precise changes in sea-ice thickness year to year, furthering our understanding of the effects that climate change has on the Arctic.

ESA's SMOS mission is providing complementary information on sea-ice cover and the thickness of thin ice.

NASA - The Sombrero Galaxy's Split Personality

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The infrared vision of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed that the Sombrero galaxy -- named after its appearance in visible light to a wide-brimmed hat -- is in fact two galaxies in one. 

It is a large elliptical galaxy (blue-green) with a thin disk galaxy (partly seen in red) embedded within. 

Previous visible-light images led astronomers to believe the Sombrero was simply a regular flat disk galaxy.

Spitzer's infrared view highlights the stars and dust. The starlight detected at 3.5 and 4.6 microns is represented in blue-green while the dust detected at 8.0 microns appears red. 

This image allowed astronomers to sample the full population of stars in the galaxy, in addition to its structure.

The flat disk within the galaxy is made up of two portions. The inner disk is composed almost entirely of stars, with no dust. 

Beyond this is a slight gap, then an outer ring of intermingled dust and stars, seen here in red.