Hubble reveals Andromeda has made contact with our galaxy The Hubble Space Telescope mapped the halo of the Andromeda galaxy, revealing our galactic neighbor in a new light. Halo… halo… halo… is there anybody out there? The halo was found to possess a layered structure containing a pair of distinct nested shells of gas. Examination of this halo, which supplies material for the formation of stars, can reveal information about the birth and deaths of stars within the Andromeda Galaxy....

Hubble spots remains of a supernova humans saw explode 1700 years ago 1E 0102.2–7219 — Charming name. Rolls off the tongue… The eruption forming the nebula was seen on Earth 1,700 years ago, but the explosion was not recognized by astronomers until recently. Seen in the Small Magellanic Cloud (a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way 200,000 light years from Earth), this nebula was first seen, in X-ray light, by NASA’s Einstein Observatory....

Renowned Kenyan crowdsourcing site,Ushahidiis set to launch a new site that will help monitor government effectiveness. The new site is calledHuduma. Huduma (which is a Swahili word for “service”) enables people to submit reports on the performance of services in their district by text, e-mail or Twitter. The reports are then mapped on the Huduma site for public viewing. The service is a modification of the Ushahidi platform, an open source technology that crowdsources crisis information via SMS and the web and then maps the reports for viewers....

AOL’sHuffington Postcontinues to grow under its new owners, having announced today that it hit 1 Billion page views for the first time in September, with 37 million unique visitors. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post Media Group has announced that it’s acquiring an online platform for the discussion of local issues calledLocalocracy. While the news is yet to officially hit the wires,All Things D‘s Kara Swisher has got hold of the press release....

Following its recentacquisitionby AOL,the Huffington Postis readying expansion from the US to boththe UKandCanada. Now the first job ads for the publication’s British operation have been posted online, revealing a little about what we can expect when it launches later this year. Seven roleshave been advertised on recruitment site Gorkana Jobs – a Managing Editor, a Political Editor, News Editor, Homepage Editor, Communities & Blogs Editor, plus Assistant Editors. The job descriptions show that the new site plans to make original political reporting a priority....