25 September 2008 —The discovery of one of the nearest supernovas to Earth to occur in the last 25 years will be revealed in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The object -- an exploding star that briefly shined brighter than billions of stars combined -- has now been positively identified as a supernova more than a decade after it first occurred and has been named SN 1996cr.

Thanks to a fortunate observation with NASA's Swift satellite, astronomers, for the first time, have caught a normal supernova at the moment of its birth--the first instant when an exploding star begins spewing its energy into space, transforming into a supernova that during its brief lifetime will shine brighter than billions of stars combined.

20 May 2008 —NASA's Swift satellite has picked up the brightest flare ever seen from a normal star other than our Sun. The flare, an explosive release of energy from a star, packed the power of thousands of solar flares. It would have been visible to the naked eye if the star had been easily observable in the night sky at the time.

April 2008—In the early morning darkness on April 15, 1912, as the R.M.S. Titanic was sinking in the freezing Atlantic, survivors witnessed a large number of streaking lights in the sky, which many believed to be the souls of their drowning loved ones passing to heaven.

Says Kevin Luhman, what they most likely were seeing was the peak of the Lyriad meteor shower, an annual event occuring in mid-to-late April.

20 March 2008—A powerful stellar explosion -- a gamma-ray burst -- has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye and also ranks as the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe. The explosion was detected on 19 March 2008 by NASA's Swift satellite, which is controlled by Penn State from its Mission Operations Center at University Park.

4 February 2008—A team of astronomers has discovered a neutron star emitting an extended stream of powerful X rays, marking the first time such an extended X-ray jet has been detected originating from any class of object other than black holes. "This discovery shows that the unusual properties of black holes -- such as the lack of an actual surface -- may not be required to form powerful X-ray jets, as was previously thought," said Penn State Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Niel Brandt, one of the scientists on the team that made the discovery with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

10 January 2008—A new study using results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory provides one of the best pieces of evidence yet that many supermassive black holes are spinning extremely rapidly, according to a research team led by a Penn State astronomer. The whirling of these giant black holes drives powerful jets that pump huge amounts of energy into their environment and affects the growth of galaxies.

10 January 2008—A team of scientists will announce on 10 January 2008 the beginning of a new multi-year survey -- the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey -- which will use a suite of new instruments to investigate a wide range of scientific topics.

9 January 2008—A team of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) scientists, led by Princeton University's Reinabelle Reyes and including astronomers at Penn State, has identified a large number of "hidden quasars" -- supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies that are shrouded in light-absorbing dust and gas.

8 January 2008—Astronomers at Penn State and Rutgers universities have discovered galaxies in the distant universe that are ancestors of spiral galaxies like our Milky Way. These ancient objects, some of the first galaxies ever to form, are being observed as they looked when the universe was a mere two-billion years old. Today, scientists peg the age of the universe at 13.7-billion years, so light from these galaxies traveled almost 12 billion years to reach Earth.