http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/science/space/18star.

html

Visions of Ancient Night Sky Were Hiding in Plain Sight for

Centuries

Hipparchus' star catalog, which was thought to have been lost, now
appears to be represented on an ancient Greek statue located in
Naples. From photos of the statue of Atlas bearing a celestial
sphere of the heavens on his back, B.E. Schaefer was able to
pinpoint the year (roughly 125 BC) when the stars were in the
position depicted. The year is during the period when Hipparchus
was compiling his catalog, and there are other pieces of evidence to
suggest that the sculptor didn't use any other sources for depicting
the stars.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/trifid_nebula_incubators.html?1312005

Stellar Incubators in the Trifid Nebula

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has new observations of the Trifid

Nebula showing dozens of embryonic cores that will eventually birth
stars near the center of the nebula, as well as more than 100 young
protostars that are less obscured and further out from the center.
Star formation tends to occur in batches, and the Trifid Nebula is a
good example of this phenomena. However it only has one single,
massive star at the center, whose winds and UV radiation have carved
out the distinct clover-leaf shape of the nebula out of its parent
molecular cloud.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/blobs_merging_galaxies.html?1212005

Blobs Could Be Merging Galaxies

Proof that new discoveries of previously unknown astronomical

objects continue even today. Found only 5 years ago, "blobs" are
giant clumps of hot hydrogen gas, located in distant superclusters
of galaxies. A typical blob is about 10 times larger than galaxies,
but seem to clump up around chains of galaxies. New Spitzer Space
Telescope observations of one of these blobs show that it contains
three galaxies falling inward. These galaxies appear to be some of
the most brilliant in the universe, emitting the light of several
trillion Suns (10 times brigher than our own Milky Way). Exactly
how giant luminous galaxies relate to blobs via mergers is still an
topic of debate.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/swarm_black_holes.html?1012005

Swarm of Black Holes in the Milky Way

The center of our Milky Way has long been known to contain a 3
million solar mass black hole (known as Sagittarius A*, but also
nicknamed "Sagittario"). However monitoring by the Chandra X-ray
telescope show 7 X-ray sources that are bright, and highly variable,
which would indicate they are stellar-mass black holes (perhaps no
more than 10 times the mass of the Sun) in a binary pair (i.e.,
orbiting an ordinary star). These black holes are thought to have
migrated inward toward the Galactic Center via a process known as
dynamic friction, and based on the current observations, there may
be as many as 10,000 stellar mass black holes in the core of our
Galaxy.