A possible underground ocean could affect Titan's rotation.

Saturn’s moon, Titan, may have a deep, hidden ocean. The second largest moon in the solar system, Titan has long been thought to have an environment similar to that of early Earth, before life began putting oxygen into atmosphere. If the ocean prediction is true, Titan will join three other solar system moons suspected of hiding underground oceans.

• NASA's Cassini page.
• Solar Views images of Titan.
• National Geographic on Titan's potential ocean.
• Discovery.com on Titan's possible ocean.

For the first time, an organic molecule has been located in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system. The planet itself can’t sustain life, but could the molecule’s presence is good news for life elsewhere.

Back on Earth, art and science merge as the Walter’s Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., displays Hubble images on its walls. The special exhibit is the brainchild of a group of curating students at Johns Hopkins University, who worked with astrophysicists to create the display.

• Hubble Finds First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet
• The Aesthetics of Hubble Images Showcased at Walters Art Museum

View of rock layers in Mars' Victoria Crater.

Mars was too salty to sustain life for much of its history, new evidence from the Opportunity rover on the Martian surface indicates. Minerals deposited in sedimentary rocks suggest they formed in extremely salty water — even saltier than oceans on Earth. Such conditions would have made it inhospitable to even the toughest micro-organisms.

• The BBC reports on the rover finding.
• Bad Astronomy discusses the finding.

Could a huge collision have formed our neighboring planet?

Venus is much like planet Earth its composition, but also very different in other ways — it’s bone-dry with little sign of water, experiences temperatures hot enough to melt lead, is enshrouded in a thick poisonous atmosphere of CO2 and sulfuric acid, and even rotates “backwards.”

Now we may have an explanation for this weirdness — a tremendous head-on collision of two bodies may have formed our planetary neighbor.

• Space.com on the Venus collision.
• Daily Galaxy discusses the Venus formation theory.

Gravitational lenses magnify light behind them.

Gravitational lenses are like giant magnifying glasses in the sky. They occur where huge accumulations of matter, like galaxy clusters, create enough gravity to warp and magnify the light of objects beyond them. This enables us to see objects normally too far away to be viewed by even the most powerful telescopes.

Gravitational lenses were once thought to be rare. But astronomers using Hubble have found several, and new sky surveys found more. Scientists are now training a “digital robot” to find additional lenses.

• HubbleSite news release on new gravitational lenses.

Artist's conception of LCROSS on its way to the Moon.

A mission to the Moon will search for water. Scientists would like to know if the Moon does have residual water, as hinted at by earlier missions.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite will send an impactor into a dark crater at the Moon’s south pole. Instruments will measure the plume produced by the impact to see what materials are present, looking particularly for water. LCROSS will launch in October 2008 and the impact will take place early in 2009.

• NASA LCROSS Web site.

Gravitational lensing is highly useful quirk of the universe. When vast amounts of matter accumulate — as in enormous clusters of galaxies — the intense gravity created distorts and magnifies the light of objects behind the cluster. The effect is like creating a giant magnifying glass in space. Astronomers recently used the effect to find one of the youngest galaxies ever seen, and track the placement of dark matter.

• The Violent Lives of Galaxies: Caught in the Cosmic Dark Matter Web
• Astronomers Find One of the Youngest and Brightest Galaxies in the Early Universe

Stars are forming in this galaxy's long, comet-like tail.

Stars were recently found forming in a long tail of gas trailing away from a galaxy. We normally would not expect to see stars being born so far from their parent galaxy. Scientists believe the pressure of the galaxy’s motion through space as it plummeted toward the center of a huge cluster of galaxies stripped away the gas that formed these “orphan stars.”

• NASA's Chandra page.
• Chandra news release on the discovery.