Here's an old picture of Jupiter's famous red spot, taken by the Voyager spacecraft. According to scientists at U.C. Berkeley, the spot shrunk about one kilometer a day, between 1996 and 2006. We don't know exactly why it's shrinking - or why it changes colors - but it's a storm, and storms have a natural growth and disintegration rate, say scientists.

Meanwhile, it turns out the earliest photographed exoplanet was back in 1998 - a new technique stripped out starlight from a 1998 image to reveal a previously unknown planet orbiting the distant star HR8799. Here's a lovely artist's impression, with the actual image as an inset:

Finally, NASA is digitally restoring and cleaning up images from the lunar probes of 40 years ago, resulting in new images of the moon that include way more detail and depth:

[Eric Africa]