Washington, Jan 17 : A team of scientists has presented the largest-to-date genetic snapshot of Iceland as it was about 1000 years ago.

The scientists, from deCODE genetics, completed the largest study of ancient DNA from a single population ever undertaken.

Analyzing mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to offspring, from 68 skeletal remains, the study provides a detailed look at how a contemporary population differs from that of its ancestors.

Washington, Jan 17 : Scientists are using a NASA radar flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft to get their first look inside the moon's coldest and darkest craters.

The Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, has passed its initial in-flight tests and sent back its first data.

The images show the floors of permanently-shadowed polar craters on the moon that aren't visible from Earth.

Washington, Jan 16 : The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped images of a unique planetary nebula, which is nestled inside a star cluster, 10,000 light-years away from Earth.

The Hubble image was taken in November 2008 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The colors in the image represent a range of emissions coming from the clouds of the nebula: red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen.

The nebula, known as NGC 2818 is inside the open star cluster NGC 2818A. Both the cluster and the nebula reside over 10,000 light-years away, in the southern constellation Pyxis (the Compass).

NGC 2818 is one of very few planetary nebulae in our galaxy located within an open cluster.

Washington, Jan 16 : In a new research, a Cornell University led team of astronomers has observed dust forming around a dying star in a nearby galaxy, giving a glimpse into the early universe and enlivening a debate about the origins of all cosmic dust.

The research, led by Cornell research associate Greg Sloan, was based on observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The researchers used Spitzer's Infrared Spectrograph, which was developed at Cornell.

Dust plays a key role in the evolution of such galaxies as our Milky Way. Stars produce dust - rich with carbon or oxygen - as they die.

But less is known about how and what kind of dust was created in galaxies as they formed soon after the big bang.

Washington, Jan 16: In a new research, scientists have solved the longstanding astronomy mystery of how massive stars form without blowing away the clouds of gas and dust that feed their growth.

The research, by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, has shown how a massive star can grow despite outward-flowing radiation pressure that exceeds the gravitational force pulling material inward.

Using 3-D radiation hydrodynamics simulations, the group, which includes Livermore's Richard Klein, who also is an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, and his LLNL postdoc Andrew Cunningham, unexpectedly discovered that these massive stars also tend to occur in binary or multiple star systems.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has declared the Chandrayan has sent more than 40,000 images to the base station in the last two months. This simply means that Chandrayan is sending nearly 535 images daily to its base station. The Indian Moon mission was launched on October 22 last year.

"In last two months Chandrayan-1 has sent more than 40,000 images to the base station," said an elated Chairman G Madhavan Nair.

At present, the members of ISRO are analyzing these images and it is believed that these will certainly prove very useful to the scientific community.