Imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing a pair of bright stars. When sunrise comes, you see not one, but two suns rising on the horizon. That's what the residents of the planet of star system HD 98800 would see if it ever forms and bears life.

Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists observed the star system 150 light years away. What they know about the system is that it is made of two pairs of stars. Two stars circling each other make one pair, and then that pair is circling around another pair. The two pairs of twins are only a bit farther than how the Earth is as far from Pluto.

They also know that circling one of the pairs of stars are two pairs of dust rings. The first ring is made up of dust grains and sits away from the twin suns as much as the Earth is from the Sun. The second ring is about four times farther than that, and is made up of larger material like asteroids or comets.

Scientists now believe that the empty space between the rings may be the path of a newly forming planet. Elise Furlan of NASA describes it this way: "Planets are like cosmic vacuums. They clear up all the dirt that is in their path around the central stars." It won't be easy to see a planet as a massive cosmic dust bunny, but that's essentially what it is. She also relates how life may be able to exist on planet dust bunny as long as the star system has a stable orbit.

The galaxy known as Andromeda is situated some 2.5 million light-years from our location, riding like a majestic counterweight to the Milky Way (which it is believed to resemble) on the other end of the Local Group.

This spectacular infra-red photo was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope, a composite of over 3,000 individual frames. In this image, interstellar gas appears red, while older stars show up in blue. Young stars located in the galaxy's spiral arms are clear in the visible light spectrum, but when the infra-red filter is added, trails of dust lead back toward the core.

The purpose behind this image was to  explore Andromeda's infra-red brightness and determine the nature of its stellar population. Although as a "spiral"-type galaxy, Andromeda - with around one trillion stars - is well over twice the size of the Milky Way.