A bit of luck allowed astronomers in March to document the brightest gamma-ray burst every observed. Here, an artist's illustration offers a close-up view of the burst and shows how material likely shot outward in a two-component jet (white and yellow beams).
Credit: NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith &John Jones

Called giant honeybees for a reason, these natives of tropical Asia and Southeast Asia grow bulkier and about twice as long as western honeybees — and get tough on defense. Full story.
Credit: Kastberger

Pictured is an embryonic stem cell. The latest Science News features two stories on stem cells: One about the challenge of understanding embryonic stem cells and another on progress in making stem cells without creating embryos.
Credit: Annie Cavanagh, Dave McCarthy

The first close-up portraits of asteroid 2867 Steins were taken by the Rosetta spacecraft during a flyby on September 5. The large crater seen at the top of Steins in this series of images is 1.5 kilometers wide.
Credit: ESA ©2008 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPM/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

A crab spider attacks a bee, offering a real-world version of the predation recently mimicked by a robotic device. Full Story
Credit: Ings

While a mighty new particle accelerator is starting up in Europe, Fermilab’s Tevatron, outside Chicago, still has a few cards up its sleeve. Physicists working at the DZero detector (hosted in the facility on the top right, along the accelerator’s 6.3-kilometer ring in the background) announced the discovery of a new particle called the omega-b-minus.Full Story
Credit: Fermilab

A human version of a stretch of DNA, when inserted into a mouse embryo, cranks up the activity of genes in the developing thumb (shown blue). But this activity was much lower with the chimp or rhesus macaque version of the same DNA sequence. The difference could point to the kinds of developmental changes that make us human. Full Story
Credit: AAAS/Science

GALAXY PORTRAIT. An array of radio telescopes allowed the closest look yet at the Milky Way’s center, which may appear as it does in this illustration. Yellow and red depict radio emissions from Sagittarius A*, which appears to be located off-center from the black hole that is thought to reside at the galaxy’s center. Full Story
Credit: S. Doeleman, M. Weiss/CXC, S. Noble, C. Gammie, NASA

The strongest North Atlantic hurricanes, such as 2005’s Wilma (seen in visible light at left and in false color denoting cloud heights at right), have been getting even stronger in recent years, a new analysis suggests.Full Story
Credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team

This optical image, taken by the Large Binocular Telescope in Safford, Arizona, confirmed that the fuzzy blue dot is 2XMM J083026+524133 — the most massive, distant cluster of galaxies found to date. The blue represents the cluster’s X-ray emissions.Full Story
Credit: ESA XMM-Newton, EPIC, LBT, LBC, AIP, J. Kohnert

A researcher grasps the lid handle to a 3,000-year-old beehive, part of an extensive apiary in ancient Israel containing the oldest known remnants of beekeeping. Full Story
Credit: Mazar, Tel Rehov Project

Pictured is an embryonic stem cell.
Credit: Annie Cavanagh, Dave McCarthy

The wild tobacco lures pollinators, such as hummingbirds, with a suite of floral traits that includes chemical attractants. The plants' nectar is also laced with poisonous nicotine that prevents visitors from loitering at a single flower for too long, a new study finds. Full Story
Credit: D. Kessler

During a clash of galactic clusters, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope teamed up to produce this composite image, which shows clear evidence for dark matter. Ordinary matter, mostly gases, is shown in pink, dark matter in blue.
Credit: NASA, CXC, Stanford, S. Allen; Optical-Lensing: NASA, STScI, UC Santa Barbara, M. Bradac

Roosters that readily call out in alarm when danger looms tend to win favor with hens and sire plenty of chicks. Full Story
Credit: C. Evans