Understanding the enigmatic black holes becomes easier now that nasa has unveiled the first all-sky images from the world

Los Angeles: The sun

Astronomers have detected the most distant gamma-ray burst ever found. The cosmic explosion came from a star that detonated about 12.8 billion light years from earth.

The biggest planet in the Solar System Jupiter's

Calcutta and most of eastern India will be witness to the spectacle of Mars and Saturn nudging each other, with a crescent moon watching over them, this weekend. This rare conjunction after sunset on July 6 will be topped by Regulus (Megha), the brightest star in the Leo constellation, making an appearance in the same patch of the western sky. After dusk on July 10, Mars and Saturn will be just 0.38 degrees apart, which is the closest they'll get until 2022. According to astronomers, the two planets were last seen near each other

Bizarre microbes flourish in the most punishing environments on Earth from the bonedry Atacama Desert in Chile to the boiling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park to the sunless sea bottom vents in the Pacific. Could such exotic life emerge in the frigid arctic plains of Mars? Nasa's Phoenix spacecraft could soon find out. Since plopping down near the Martian north pole a month ago, the three-legged lander has been busy poking its long arm into the sticky soil and collecting scoopfuls to bake in a test oven and peer at under a microscope.

Paris: European and US scientists will bid a fond farewell on July 1 to the space probe Ulysses, which has circled the Sun gathering data for 17 years, almost four times its expected lifetime. The first major collaboration between Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1990, "changed forever the way we view the Sun and its effect on the surrounding space,' David Southwood, ESA's director of science, said in announcing the end of mission. Stuffed with 10 observational instruments, the 370-kg probe is the only satellite to have circled the Sun's poles.

There is no conflict in believing in God and having some "extraterrestrial kinsmen'. It's not Steven Spielberg saying this but Jose Gabriel Funes, Vatican's chief astronomer. "The possibility of life

London: For decades, astronomers have pictured our galaxy as sporting four major, spiral arms, however new images effectively sever two appendages, revealing the Milky Way has just two major arms. An astronomer is calling for demoting two entire arms of our galaxy, after they failed to turn up in a sensitive new map of the Milky Way's stars. According to a report in New Scientist, the astronomer in question is Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, US.

Capa Canaveral (Florida): Nine months ago, Nasa's Phoenix probe blasted off for Mars with an unprecedented mission to sample water on another world. Before that can happen, however, the space agency faces a formidable challenge: landing. The odds are not great. Historically, 55% of all attempts to land on Mars have failed and the method being used for the touchdown of the Phoenix spacecraft on May 25 hasn't been attempted in 32 years.