Nova Close, Water Closer.

Water, water everywhere: ESA’s Herschel space observatory discovers that Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, is emitting plumes of water. “The discovery of Ceres’ plumes comes at a fortuitous time. NASA currently has a probe, the Dawn spacecraft, speeding toward the object. Dawn will arrive and enter orbit around Ceres in 2015, giving researchers a front-row view of the activity.” (Ceres image via here.)

Also in recent discoveries among the stars: A supernova erupts in the relatively nearby galaxy M82, 11.5 million light years away (meaning it blew 11.5 million years ago.) “It is one of the closest and brightest supernovae seen from Earth since the 1987 observation of a supernova just 168,000 light years away…[B]ecause these supernovae are used to calibrate distances in space, understanding them better may help clarify the shape of the Universe.” (M82 image via Earl Foster, here.)