[Hip Priest]

Links to four decent spacey stories this week:

A team of NASA scientists led by a member of the Spitzer Science Center believe they have found a way to predict the color of plants on planets in other solar systems.

or

Using a quartet of space observatories, University of Maryland astronomers may have cracked a 45-year mystery surrounding two ghostly spiral arms in the galaxy M106..

or

Chefs have long used a simple trick to differentiate between a raw and hard-boiled egg. By spinning an egg and watching how it behaves when the spin is disrupted, it's easy to tell whether its interior is solid or liquid. Applying a similar test to the planet Mercury, astronomers have found strong evidence that the planet closest to the sun has a fluid core...


or
For the first time, astronomers have created a rough map of a planet orbiting a distant sun-like star, employing a technique that may one day enable mapping of Earth-like worlds...