Phil Plait has news of an exciting development in astronomy - the first optical images of planets orbiting other stars.

Yet there they are, proof that our planetary system is not the only one in the Universe… There, with your own eyes, you can see for yourself that other planets exist. They are not Earthlike, not even a little… they are massive, young, hot planets that are probably mostly gaseous and completely inhospitable. But there they are.

Read the full story (and see the pictures) on Phil’s Discover Magazine blog: http://tinyurl.com/6lvxru

If you really want to know, Phil Plait has done the maths. Read the full article on his Discover blog by clicking here.

According to space.com, scientists now believe that massive objects outside our universe are drawing clusters of galaxies toward themselves in a process they’ve dubbed “Dark Flow”:

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can’t be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon “dark flow.”

From Cosmos magazine:

“A spectacular, rotating binary star system is a ticking time bomb, ready to throw out a searing beam of high-energy gamma rays – and Earth may be right in the line of fire.”

From the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (and reported on Futurismic):

“The diameter of the tenuous dust atmosphere of the comet was measured at 1.4 million kilometers (0.9 million miles) on 2007 November 9 by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. They used observations from a wide-field camera on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), one of the few professional instruments still capable of capturing the whole comet in one image. Other astronomers involved in the UH program to study the comet include Bin Yang, Nuno Peixinho and David Jewitt. The present eruption of comet Holmes was first reported on October 24 and has continued at a steady 0.5 km/sec (1100 mph) ever since. The comet is an unprecedented half a million times brighter than before the eruption began. This amazing eruption of the comet is produced by dust ejected from a tiny solid nucleus made of ice and rock, only 3.6 km (roughly 2.2 miles) in diameter.”

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency has released the first HDTV images of the surface of the Moon, taken by its KAGUYA probe from an altitude of 100 kilometres.

After examining data from space probes sent to investigate passing comets, researchers at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology claim to have found strong evidence that life began in space.

Full story: www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/articles/life-on-comets.html

According to the BBC, UK engineers are saying that tiny “smart” devices that can be borne on the wind like dust particles could soon be used to explore other planets.

According to New Scientist, aliens haven’t contacted us yet because it’s a big galaxy, and they haven’t had time to find us… Follow the link for the full story.

According to this story on CNN, Martian microbes may have been discovered - and accidentally killed - by NASA probes in the 1970s.