... Six years ago, a cluster of three ultraviolet telescopes flew into orbit on the Astro-2 mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. ... Awash in a sea of plasma and anchored in magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized, dark islands in the solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. ... When did the Cigar Galaxy light up? ... NGC 1818: A Young Globular Cluster . ... Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy. ...