Planck and Herschel have begun returning vibrant new images of the Milky Way Galaxy. The satellite duo is scanning the sky at infrared wavelengths that have not been well-studied in the past.

NASA’S Hubble Space Telescope has looked into deeper into the universe—and further back in time—than ever before. And it’s turned up a suite of galaxies that are new to astronomers.

NASA's latest infrared space telescope—the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE—was launched on December 14, 2009. It recently began a six-month survey of the entire sky around Earth.

European scientists recently used a telescope instrument called HARPS to measure the chemical content of 500 stars similar to the Sun, some with known planetary systems and others without.