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14 November 2006: Astronomers have identified 20 new stellar systems in our local solar neighborhood, including the twenty-third and twenty-fourth closest stars to the Sun. When added to eight other systems announced by this team and six by other groups since 2000, the known population of the Milky Way galaxy within 33 light-years (10 parsecs) of Earth has grown by 16 percent in just the past six years.

1 August 2006: As part of an ongoing search for Earth’s nearest stellar neighbors, astronomers have determined the distance to a stellar-like body known as DEN 0255-477 and discovered that it is the nearest-known L dwarf. This body is now also the faintest object outside our solar system for which its intrinsic visual brightness has been measured.

8 June 2006: Massive star supernovae have been major "dust factories" ever since the first generations of stars formed several hundred million years after the Big Bang, according to an international study to be published in Science magazine on July 14, 2006.

5 June 2006: These results were announced by two teams of researchers during a press conference at the meeting that also included the release of new images of the entire span of M31 obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Gemini teams included Canadian researcher Tim Davidge (NRC, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Victoria BC) and Knut Olsen of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The new data about individual stars in M31 obtained with the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, demonstrate dramatically the complementarity of ground-based telescopes, which can record images with unprecedented spatial resolution, and space-based facilities, which have higher sensitivity.

4 June 2006: Two new images from Gemini Observatory released today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Calgary, Canada, show a pair of beautiful nebulae that were created by two very different types of stars at what may be similar points in their evolutionary timelines. One is a rare type of very massive spectral-type "O" star surrounded by material it ejected in an explosive event earlier in its life. It continues to lose mass in a steady "stellar wind." The other is a star originally more similar to our Sun that has lost its outer envelope following a "red giant" phase. It continues to lose mass via a stellar wind as it dies, forming a planetary nebula. The images were made using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South as part of the Gemini Legacy Imaging program.

3 May 2006: Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, Australian astronomers have found a predicted "companion" star left behind when its partner exploded as a very unusual supernova. The presence of the companion explains why the supernova, which started off looking like one kind of exploding star, seemed to change its identity after a few weeks.

7 April 2006: A new Gemini Observatory image of NGC 246, nicknamed the "Skull Nebula," shows what can happen as the outer atmosphere of a fast-moving, dying star like the Sun (in several billion years) pushes through the complex soufflé of gas and dust that lies between the stars of our galaxy.

11 January 2006: An artist’s rendition shows a planet orbiting a very young, active star pocked with dark star spots and speckled with flares and other surface activity.

10 January 2006: New Spitzer Space Telescope observations of an unusual class of interacting binary stars detected excess amounts of infrared radiation, suggesting that these odd objects are surrounded by large disks of cool dust.

10 January 2006: Strong darkening observed around the equator of Vega suggests that the fifth brightest star in Earth’s sky has a huge temperature difference of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit from its cool equatorial region to its hot poles.

9 January 2006: In a feat resembling an intergalactic autopsy, astronomers have used the Gemini South telescope in Chile to obtain a detailed spectrum of an echo of light from an ancient supernova that enables them to identify the original star’s cause of death.

9 January 2006: The glowing gas of the interstellar medium (ISM) is the breeding ground for the formation of new stars, and the cemetery where the ashes of dead stars ultimately return.

21 December 2005: A team of astronomers has found faint visible echoes of three ancient supernovae by detecting their centuries-old light as it is reflected by clouds of interstellar gas hundreds of light-years removed from the original explosions.

6 December 2005: More than half of the largest galaxies in the nearby universe have collided and merged with another galaxy in the past two billion years, according to a new study using hundreds of images from two of the deepest sky surveys ever conducted.

20 October 2005: Like the little engine that could, geologic activity on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan–maybe outgassing cracks and perhaps icy Cryovolcanoes – is belching puffs of methane gas into the atmosphere of the moon, creating clouds.

15 September 2005: When NASA’s Deep Impact mission ploughed into comet 9P/Tempel 1 on July 4th of this year, the giant telescopes on Mauna Kea had a unique view of the massive cloud of dust, gas and ice expelled during the collision.

12 September 2005: Fulfilling one of its central operational goals in a big way, the SOuthern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) on Cerro Pachón in Chile made the first observations of the glowing remains of the most distant explosion ever seen in the Universe. The international telescope then provided the first accurate measurement of just how incredibly far away this explosion appears to be.

8 September 2005: Astronomers have glimpsed dusty debris around an essentially dead star where gravity and radiation should have long ago removed any sign of dust. The discovery might provide insights into our own solar system’s eventual demise several billion years from now.

30 August 2005: A comprehensive survey of more than 4,000 elliptical and lenticular galaxies in 93 nearby galaxy clusters has found a curious case of galactic “downsizing.”

10 August 2005: Like archaeologists unearthing a 'lost city,' astronomers using the 8-meter Gemini South telescope have revealed that the galaxy NGC 300 has a large, faint extended disk made of ancient stars, enlarging the known diameter of the galaxy by a factor of two or more.