Palomar 2 is part of a group of 15 globulars known as the Palomar clusters. These clusters, as the name suggests, were discovered in survey plates from the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey in the 1950s, a project that involved some of the most well-known astronomers of the day, including Edwin Hubble. They were discovered quite late because they are so faint — each is either extremely remote, very heavily hidden behind blankets of dust, or has a very small number of remaining stars.

This particular cluster is unique in more than one way. For one, it is the only globular cluster that we see in this part of the sky, the northern constellation of Auriga (The Charioteer). Globular clusters orbit the center of a galaxy like the Milky Way in the same way that satellites circle around the Earth. This means that they normally lie closer in to the galactic center than we do, and so we almost always see them in the same region of the sky. Palomar 2 is an exception to this, as it is around five times further away from the center of the Milky Way than other clusters. It also lies in the opposite direction — further out than Earth — and so it is classed as an “outer halo” globular.

via NASA – Hubble Sees a Unique Cluster: One of the Hidden 15.

Three unusually long-lasting stellar explosions discovered by NASA’s Swift satellite represent a previously unrecognized class of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Two international teams of astronomers studying these events conclude that they likely arose from the catastrophic death of supergiant stars hundreds of times larger than the sun.

via NASA – Dying Supergiant Stars Implicated in Hours-long Gamma-Ray Bursts.

This artist’s concept from 1978 shows an asteroid retrieval mission. (NASA)View larger image

Within NASA’s new FY2014 budget proposal lies a project known as the Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization Mission. This project would be the first to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and safely redirect it to a lunar orbit so that astronauts can visit and explore it. Such a mission would expand scientific knowledge of the origins of both humanity and the universe.

The goal of asteroid retrieval is not a new endeavor for NASA. In fact, the idea dates to the earliest days of the agency. In a 1964 document that looked at “long range future mission planning,” NASA expressed an early aspiration to visit asteroids through unmanned probes by the end of the 1970s. NASA did indeed send a probe through the asteroid belt early in that decade – Pioneer 10 safely traversed the Belt on its way to Jupiter in 1972. By 1969, according to a “Five Year Plan” laid out by the Office of Manned Space Flight, NASA was already looking at plans to send crewed missions to asteroids. However, at the time, the then-latest technology was insufficient to pursue this goal. NASA

via NASA – The Long and Storied Path to Human Asteroid Exploration.