We're used to a tidy Solar System. But there are some pretty strange planets orbiting stars far, far away. On one it doesn't rain water, it rains rock. Another has the density of cork. Some have two suns. And what would you do with a diamond the size of a planet?

A flying horse on feathered wings - it's the constellation Pegasus. You can spot it by its most noticeable feature, the Great Square of Pegasus, though one star of the square belongs to poor Princess Andromeda. There's also a star in Pegasus very like our Sun with a planet circling it.

More fantastic astronomy pictures from around the world were sent to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England in 2011. Exquisite skyscapes and landscapes, aurorae and nebulae, and the expanding shock wave of an ancient supernova explosion. Young astronomers also continue to impress.

Pluto's not the last planet, it's the first Kuiper Belt Object. The Kuiper Belt is made up of millions of icy bits left over from the beginning of the Solar System. It starts at 30 AU - that's 30 times farther from the Sun than the Earth. From there it stretches for another 2 billion miles!

In the film Deep Impact a teenage astronomer discovers a comet with a small telescope. In reality, teenage astronomers are more likely to make their discoveries in front of a computer - finding supernovae, pulsars, asteroids. The youngest discoverer was ten. Let them inspire you.

Here is an entertaining overview of astronomy small enough to put in your pocket. Not only the Big Bang, black holes, exploding stars, visiting Mars and all the rest of the cosmos, but plenty of laughs along the way. I enjoyed it - you must know someone who would too.

How much do people know about our next-door neighbor the Moon? For example, does the full moon drive people crazy? Apparently not - unless maybe they're astronomers trying to observe faint nebulae. Here are ten common moon myths and lunar lapses.

Music of the spheres? Here’s a harp to play it on: Lyra, the harp of Orpheus, that almost brought his beloved back from death. The constellation has one of the sky’s brightest stars, a star that is really four stars, and a colorful donut.

Someone must have left the door open, because the skies are full of dogs. You can see the dogs of Orion and the hunting dogs of the shepherd Bootes in pursuit of the Great Bear. There is also the Running Dog Nebula, and the memory of poor Laika, the first cosmonaut, who perished in space.

Pluto was once the last outpost of the Solar System. Now we realize that it's the gateway to the Kuiper Belt, a disk made up of rubble left over from the formation of the Solar System. The Kuiper Belt is big and cold and the Sun would just look like a bright star from there.