July 31, 2008 The First Stars The universe began with the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. Very soon after that event, the first stars formed. Today, those stars are dead and gone leaving little evidence of their size and composition behind.  Read More...

June 03, 2008 Milky Way's Inner Beauty Revealed We live in the Milky Way galaxy - a disk-shaped collection of about 400 billion stars including the Sun. Many of those stars and much of the dense gas between the stars concentrate into large arms that spiral outward from the galactic center.   Read More...

June 03, 2008 Milky Way Mapping Project Finds Surprisingly Slow Stars On Earth, making a map is as easy as taking aerial photographs or surveying a patch of land on foot. In contrast, mapping the Milky Way galaxy is a tremendous challenge.   Read More...