New Mars photos, plus more space news...

The European Space Agency has released some stunning photos (taken by their Mars Express space probe) of Martian polar ice, as well as signs of volcanic and glacial activity - and even a frozen equatorial sea.

In other recent space news, astronomers have discovered what appears to be an invisible, star-less galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter some 50 million light-years away. And just 50,000 light-years from us in the constellation Sagittarius, a massive stellar explosion recently unleashed "more energy in a 10th of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years" - so powerful that it briefly altered Earth's atmosphere. "Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have triggered a mass extinction."

Closer to home (and far more innocuously), three new moons of Saturn (discovered by the Cassini space probe) have been provisionally named Methone, Pallene and Polydeuces.

P.S.: BTW, you can download some really stunning desktop photos from the Hubble Space Telescope here. (And check out the largest, most detailed portrait of Saturn ever, comprised of 126 separate photos taken by Cassini last year.)