Much like quiet, middle-aged baby boomers peacefully residing in some of the world's largest cities, families of some galaxies also have a hidden wild youth that they only now are revealing for the first time, according to research by astronomers at Texas A&M University.

In ongoing observations of one of the universe's earliest, most distant cluster of galaxies using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by Texas A&M's Dr. Kim-Vy Tran has discovered that a significant fraction of those ancient galaxies are still actively forming stars.

Yesterday MESSENGER passed within 0.308 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun (one AU is Earth's distance from the Sun, approximately 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles), providing MESSENGER scientists with another opportunity to search for vulcanoids.

Named after the hypothetical planet Vulcan, whose existence was disproven in 1915, vulcanoids are asteroids that orbit the Sun inside the orbit of the planet Mercury.

Astronomers using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have found the first fast X-ray pulsar to be eclipsed by its companion star. Further studies of this unique stellar system will shed light on some of the most compressed matter in the universe and test a key prediction of Einstein's relativity theory.

The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star -- the crushed core of a massive star that long ago exploded as a supernova. Neutron stars pack more than the sun's mass into a ball nearly 60,000 times smaller, with estimated sizes between 16 and 24 kilometers (10 and 15 miles) across.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has captured a favorite observing target of amateur astronomers -- Omega Centauri. Also known as NGC 5139, this celestial cluster of stars can be found in the constellation Centaurus and can be seen by the naked eye to observers at low northern latitudes and in the southern hemisphere.

Omega Centauri contains approximately 10 million stars and is about 16,000 light-years away. This image spans an area on the sky equivalent to a grid of about 3 by 2 full moons.

At first glance, the scatter of pale dots on this Hubble Space Telescope image looks like a snowstorm in the night sky. But almost every one of these delicate snowflakes is a distant galaxy in the cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 and each is home to billions of stars.

This apparently placid scene also hides a storm of epic scale.

Since its October 2008 launch, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has mapped the invisible interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, surpassing its mission objectives with images that reveal the interactions between our home in the galaxy and interstellar space to be surprisingly structured and intense.

Less than two years later, its science program has also flourished into multiple research studies extending way beyond the original scope of the mission.

Astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected gamma-rays from a nova for the first time, a finding that stunned observers and theorists alike. The discovery overturns the notion that novae explosions lack the power to emit such high-energy radiation.

A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. The outburst occurs when a white dwarf in a binary system erupts in an enormous thermonuclear explosion.

Saturn's moon Titan ripples with mountains, and scientists have been trying to figure out how they form. The best explanation, it turns out, is that Titan is shrinking as it cools, wrinkling up the moon's surface like a raisin.

A new model developed by scientists working with radar data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows that differing densities in the outermost layers of Titan can account for the unusual surface behavior. Titan is slowly cooling because it is releasing heat from its original formation and radioactive isotopes are decaying in the interior. As this happens, parts of Titan's subsurface ocean freeze over, the outermost ice crust thickens and folds, and the moon shrivels up. The model is described in an article now online in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The following featured images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) are now available:

• Volcanoes in Lacus Mortis (Released 10 August 2010)
  Most of the craters on the Moon formed through impact processes.
• Photogrammetric Processing of LROC NAC Stereo Images (Released 12 August 2010)
  High-resolution 3D Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of a lunar crater created from a LROC NAC stereo pair.

The following new images taken by the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on the Cassini spacecraft are now available:

• Spokes Before Night (Released 9 August 2010)
  Bright spokes can be seen on Saturn's B ring just in front of the shadow cast on the rings on the night side of the planet in this Cassini spacecraft image.
• Atmospheric Aspects (Released 10 August 2010)
  Cassini examines the characteristics of Titan's atmosphere as it peers at Saturn's largest moon using a filter sensitive to visible violet light.
• Rhea, Rings and Shadow (Released 11 August 2010)
  Saturn's moon Rhea is gently lit in front of a background of the planet with a wide shadow cast by the rings which are seen nearly edge-on.
• Yin and Yang (Released 12 August 2010)
  With its light and dark surface, Iapetus appears almost like a yin and yang symbol or a comma punctuation mark in this image.
• Closest Daphnis (Released 13 August 2010)
  Cassini captures here one of its closest views of Saturn's ring-embedded moon Daphnis.

The following new images taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft are now available:

• Chaos Margin (Released 9 August 2010)
  What appear to be channels in this VIS image is the dissection of the higher elevations on the margin of Chryse Chaos.
• Ganges Chasma (Released 10 August 2010)
  This VIS image shows multiple landslide deposits within Ganges Chasma.
• Streamlined Island (Released 11 August 2010)
  These dark dunes are located on the floor of Danielson Crater in Meridiani Planum.
• Danielson Crater Dunes (Released 12 August 2010)
  These dark dunes are located on the floor of Danielson Crater in Meridiani Planum.
• Windstreaks (Released 13 August 2010)
  This VIS image of part of Meridiani Planum contains windstreaks that formed in several directions around a single crater.

Curling around itself like a question mark, the unusual looking galaxy NGC 4696 itself begs many questions. Why is it such a strange shape? What are the odd, capillary-like filaments that stretch out of it? And what is the role of a large black hole in explaining its decidedly odd appearance?

This picture, taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, is not just a beautiful snapshot of NGC 4696, the largest galaxy in the Centaurus Cluster (galaxy cluster Abell 3526). It is also an illustration of the rich variety of objects that astronomers can see with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronomers have found mysterious, giant loops of ultraviolet light in aged, massive galaxies, which seem to have a second lease on life. Somehow these "over-the-hill galaxies" have been infused with fresh gas to form new stars that power these truly gargantuan rings, some of which could encircle several Milky Way galaxies.

The discovery of these rings implies that bloated galaxies presumed "dead" and devoid of star-making can be reignited with star birth, and that galaxy evolution does not proceed straight from the cradle to the grave.

This image captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) highlights the Small Magellanic Cloud. Also known as NGC 292, the Small Magellanic Cloud is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years away.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is named after the Portuguese explorer Fernando de Magellan who observed it on his voyage around the world in 1519. Since it is visible to the naked eye in dark-sky conditions, it is likely that people in the southern hemisphere observed the galaxy long before Magellan recorded it.

NASA's first microsatellite designed to create a capability that increases opportunities for secondary, scientific and technology payloads, or rideshares, to be flown at lower cost than before has arrived at Kodiak Island, Alaska, to begin final launch preparations.

The Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite, or FASTSAT, arrived at the Kodiak Launch Complex on Aug. 10 from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Following final checkout, the just under 400-pounds satellite will be integrated on a Minotaur IV launch vehicle as one of three secondary payloads.