American and Australian researchers are working on a method to develop a 3-dimensional map that will show how the Universe evolved during its first billion years. Unlike the map of cosmic background radiation, which is our current first look at the Universe, their method uses the radiation from early clouds of neutral hydrogen atoms. The first stars to ignite should have blown out bubbles of open space inside these clouds, and it's these bubbles that the astronomers should be able to see in the radio spectrum.

Researchers have used the Cassini spacecraft to make observations of Saturn's rings with tremendous clarity, resolving images down to the size of a football field. A team from the University of Colorado at Boulder have used a technique called "stellar occultation" to look through the rings at a distant star, and then watch how the ring particles obscure it. The ring material bunches up into denser areas, with gaps between them as small as 50 metres (160 feet). This is unusual, because they should be spreading out in the vacuum of space - this means that small objects, like moons, are stirring up the material in the rings like ripples in a pond.

Is Pluto a planet or just a really large Kuiper Belt Object (KBO)? Those arguing that it doesn't deserve planetary status will have to reconsider because of new research from the Spitzer Space Telescope. It was previously believed that KBOs were fairly dark, with a similar reflectivity to comets. From the reflectivity, astronomers guessed that KBOs are quite large, some getting as big as 700 km (434 miles) across. But new observations from Spitzer show that they're probably more reflective than previously thought, and therefore much smaller. This means that Pluto is probably still significantly larger than other objects in the Kuiper Belt.

The countdown has begun for the launch of the Planetary Society's Cosmos 1 spacecraft; the first ever to be powered by a solar sail. The privately built spacecraft will be lofted into orbit atop a Volna rocket on March 1, 2005. Once Cosmos 1 is in orbit, it will unfurl 8 triangular solar sails, and then use the sails to propel the spacecraft through the pressure of light from the Sun. Cosmos 1 wasn't designed for a long-term trip into space, so it's likely not to last too much longer than a few weeks, or months at the most, but it should serve as a working concept to help designers plan future spacecraft.

NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory took this image of red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbour (after the Sun, of course). The image shows that its surface is in a constant state of turmoil, with flares occurring almost continuously. Proxima Centauri has only 1/10th the mass of our own Sun, and the conversion of hydrogen to helium happens much more slowly. This creates turbulent, convective motion throughout its interior, which stores up magnetic energy - the energy is what creates all the flares.

New images released from the Spitzer space telescope are helping scientists understand how clouds of gas and dust come together to form new solar systems. One image shows a dim object at the heart of an icy cloud, which resembles our own early solar system. This object isn't a star... yet, but it could be a young failed star, a brown dwarf, a star which has yet to ignite, or something else entirely. In another image, Spitzer looked at the centre of a dusty disc around a young star and found icy building blocks that will eventually form into planets - similar to how our planets looked when they were only a few hundred thousand years old.

Cassini's close flyby to Titan in October has only added to the mystery of what the Huygens probe will find on the moon's surface when it tries to land in January. It could land on a hard surface of rock and ice, or maybe it'll land with a squelch into a slurry of organic materials, or maybe it'll splash down into a hydrocarbon lake. Fortunately, the probe is designed to handle all three landing surfaces, and it should be able to transmit details about Titan as long as it survives.

Since supermassive black holes were first discovered, astronomers have been wondering if the hole was created first, and then the galaxy formed around it, or if these monsters tend to form at the heart of galaxies over time. Astronomers using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array have discovered a distant galaxy that's less than a billion years old, but seems to have a supermassive black hole - but no massive bulge of stars. The black hole is 1 billion solar masses, so it should be surrounded by several trillion solar masses in stars. This provides evidence that it's the black hole that forms first, then the galaxy.

A Soyuz 2-1a rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia yesterday, completing a test of this modernized version of the launcher. It was carrying a mock-up of an unspecified satellite called Oblik. The Soyuz 2 is more powerful that the earlier model, and equipped with a digital control system, requiring less people to oversee its launch and monitor its flight.

Greetings fellow skywatchers! We're in for more excitement this week as the Moon occults not one, not two, but three observable planets! But that's not all the action, while we're in a "planetary" frame of mind, we'll also study two planetary nebulae, the M57 and M27, as well as seek out a "planetary" located inside a globular cluster. Other studies for both telescopes and binoculars will include instructions for "visiting with Vesta" as we explore one of our Solar System's brightest asteroids. We'll learn about easily observed variable stars and double your pleasure - double your fun as we explore two open clusters instead of just one! This week will also include a minor meteor shower and things for the Southern Hemisphere skywatchers to do. There are challenges here, as well as a bit of history and a lot of fun! So mark your calendars - because here's "What's Up"!

The early explorers sailed into a void not knowing what beasts, storms or cliffs might await their travels. Their shear audacity and pluck carried them through their adventures. The Gemini program is the equivalent for space travel and David Harland gives a great recount in his book ,How NASA Learned to Fly in Space. He takes the reader on a rollicking good drama of the pilots and support crew as their space vessels sail through the uncharted realms toward the stars.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this image of Titan as it sped past the moon on Oct. 26, 2004. It was taken from an altitude of 2,500 km (1,553 miles) using the spacecraft's aperture radar, which can penetrate thick clouds and reveal the texture of the ground underneath. The dark regions are areas which are smooth, and the bright areas are more bumpy. It could be that the smooth areas are cryovolcanic flows, where water-rich liquid has welled up from inside Titan's warmer interior and spread out on the surface.

Futures: 50 Years in Space, The Challenge of the Stars, a superb new art book/astronomy guide by David A Hardy and Sir Patrick Moore was published in May 2004 (read the Universe Today review here). David took some time out of his busy schedule to talk with Richard Pearson about his passion for both art and space, and his long-lasting friendship and working relationship with Sir Patrick Moore.

It's been 10 months since the Mars Exploration Rovers arrived at the Red Planet, and their full suite of scientific tools are still working perfectly. Spirit is now discovering further evidence of past water on a slope of layered bedrock, which was once layers of volcanic ash altered by water over a long period. Opportunity is heading towards the base of "Burns Cliff", a tall exposure of layered rock in wall of Endurance Crater. The rover is taking advantage of a mysterious power boost that happened about a month ago to get more scientific work done.

A French/US team of astronomers have discovered a second black hole is lurking at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, completely separate from the supermassive black hole that we've known about for years. This new object, IRS 13E, contains only 1,400 stellar masses, which is much less that the 4 million stellar masses of our supermassive black hole. IRS 13E probably used to be located far away from the galactic centre, where a cluster of stars could safely form. All that's left now are a few massive stars whipping around the black hole as it spirals towards the centre of our galaxy.

The Hubble Space Telescope took this rare picture of a triple eclipse on Jupiter, an event that only happens once or twice a decade. Io is near the middle, Ganymede on the planet's left edge, and Callisto is near the right edge. Astronomers tested a new technique with Hubble when taking this picture. They sped up Hubble's tracking system so that Jupiter passed through its field of view more quickly than normal. This allowed them to take rapid-fire snapshots of the planet and its moons to build into a single image that shows more detail than one single image.

European astronomers have produced the first image of an object using high energy gamma rays - the most penetrating form of radiation known. The image is of a supernova remnant called RX J1713.7-3946, which exploded 1,000 years ago. Over time, a ring of material has expanded to twice the diameter of the Moon in the sky. If you had gamma ray eyes, you would be able to see a large ring in the sky every night. This also helps solve a 100 year mystery about the origin of cosmic rays; the remnant seems to be acting as a particle accelerator.

As the ESA's Huygens probe makes its descent into Titan's thick atmosphere in January, telescopes here on Earth will be watching carefully to help understand the global condition of the moon's atmosphere. Cassini's job will be to communicate with Huygens, so it won't actually be able to take pictures of the moon while it's performing this vital task, so it's up to the Earth-based telescopes. There's a remote possibility that Hubble or the giant 10-metre Keck observatory will see a tiny fireball as Huygens enters Titan's atmosphere.

The start of the winter season brings many unpleasant memories, but putting on a favourite, well worn glove helps diminish the spectre of the upcoming season. Andrew Chaikin's book Space - A History of Space Exploration in Photographs feels like one of these favourite gloves. Its many photographs engenders a warm, comforting feeling of the fantastic progression we've made. Just like a well worn glove, this book may not have many surprises but reading it can provide a warm feeling of what may be upcoming for humankind in space.

This image is of a region of Mars called Tithonium Chasma, which is at the western end of the enormous Valles Marineris Canyon system. The whole canyon system was created through a combination of geologic factors, including tectonic rifting, water, and wind action, volcanism, and glaciers. The canyon floors have a dark, layered material, which is probably sedimentary material, though it's still under much speculation from scientists. The picture was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft.

In two weeks, NASA's Swift observatory will take to the skies atop a Delta II rocket to scan the Universe looking for the most powerful known explosions. It's believed that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) happen when a new black hole is born - an event that typically happens once a day in our skies. Swift will be able to locate a GRB within 20 to 75 seconds, and then automatically turn its instruments on the explosion. It will also communicate the coordinates of the event to a network of observatories so they can also study the region and afterglow from the explosion.

A new report by the UK House of Commons science and technology select committee pins the blame for the loss of the Beagle 2 lander on a lack of early money. Because the UK government failed to provide adequate funds early on in the lander's development, the developers had to chase celebrities for sponsorship when they should have been testing their equipment. The government eventually poured in ?25 million as the project started to stall, but it was too late to make up time by that point as Mars Express had a firm launch date.

Although Australia's Mt. Stromlo was devastated in January 2003 by wildfires, the first stage of reconstruction is complete, and the observatory is back in business. The observatory's visitor centre opened its doors to the public on October 30, and gave visitors a chance to explore the reconstruction and do a little skywatching with its rebuilt and brand new telescopes. Before the fire, Stromlo saw 70,000 visitors a year, and researchers used its instruments to make many important contributions to astronomy. Phase two of the reconstruction is now underway.

Hello fellow stargazers and welcome to this week's edition of what's new and fun to do under the skies. For all of you who took the time to view last week's total lunar eclipse? Congratulations! This week's planetary actions will blow you away. On the 3rd, the real "Lord of the Rings" - Saturn - will accompany the Moon across the night. The solar system excitement continues as before local dawn on November 4th and 5th will be a superb visual pairing of Venus and Jupiter at less than one degree apart. The Southern Taurid meteor stream will be active and it has produced fantastic fireballs seen around the world! For those of you craving a bit of deep sky work? The time is right to do a little "Wild Duck" hunting. Here's what's up!

Physicists have puzzled for more than a century about the nature of time. Why does it go in one direction? Time could go backwards, and physics formulas would still work properly. Researchers from the University of Chicago think they might have an answer: we live in a universe of ever increasing entropy. Instead of one Big Bang going off, and then the Universe expands and cools forever, small fluctuations in nearly empty space could set off new Big Bangs - the Universe would never reach equilibrium.

Grounded since the Columbia disaster, the space shuttles are tentatively expected to return to flight as early as May 2005, according to NASA officials. The agency updated their launch schedule on Friday, targeted Discovery's launch window to be open from May 12 to June 3, 2005. The shuttles have a lot of work to do; current plans are calling for 28 more flights until 2010 to complete the construction of the International Space Station, after which the shuttles will be retired.

This relatively boring picture of Spirit's calibration target, with a bit of rocky ground in the background is the 50,000th photograph sent back by NASA's twin rovers since they arrived on Mars in January, 2004. There are now more than twice as many images returned by the rovers as all three previous landers combined: Viking 1, Viking 2, and Mars Pathfinder. Both rovers have completed their three-month primary missions, and first extensions; they started their second extensions on Oct. 1.

As the Earth rushes to the point in its orbit known as the Winter Solstice, those in the Northern hemisphere see the days getting shorter and the nights are getting longer. This is good news for sky watchers, especially those willing to rise before dawn. This November offers a chance to witness a beautiful and somewhat rare sight, a close conjunction between the planets Venus and Jupiter.

Researchers from the University of Michigan have recently published their findings about methane in the Martian atmosphere. The methane was discovered using the planetary Fourier spectrometer, which is one of seven instruments on board the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, which was launched to Mars in 2003. The spectrometer has detected methane at an average of 10 parts per billion by volume; a very small amount compared to 1700 ppbv found here on Earth. Earth-based methane is created almost entirely by life, so the researchers hope that the same process is happening on Mars.

Researchers from the European Space Agency are considering ways that astronauts could hibernate on the 6-9 month trip to Mars, consuming significantly less food, air and water. The researchers have been studying mammals which hibernate, and it turns out, they do their tricks in different ways. A dormouse goes into a deep sleep; its temperature drops nearly to zero, and its metabolism is dramatically suppressed. A brown bear hibernates at almost its regular temperature, and slows its heart rate slightly, but it still doesn't need to eat or drink for 3-7 months. A chemical called DADLE has been able to induce a hibernation-like slowdown in rats.

This image of Titan was taken when Cassini reached the closest point of its flyby on October 26. At this point, it was only 1,600 km (994 miles) above the surface of Titan. The brighter areas are thought to be rougher terrain on the surface, while the darker areas are probably smoother; the interconnected dark spots could be lakes.

Today is only a short moment from the future. To get there from here, you can follow a preset path that leaves little margin or opportunity for error. Another route is to strike out on your own toward a destination that has few signposts showing the way. John Spencer and Karen Rugg are heading in a very new direction and in their book Space Tourism - Do You Want to Go?, they present a comprehensive, near term space industry focused entirely on space tourism. After all, the future is what you make of it.

The Sun is more active today than it has been in 8,000 years, according to new research from the Max Planck Institute. Researchers discovered that a certain isotope of carbon, C-14, depends on the amount of cosmic rays that reach the Earth's surface. When solar activity is high, the Sun's magnetic field provides a shield against these cosmic rays, and when it's low, the Sun lets more cosmic rays reach the Earth. By measuring C-14 levels in dead trees which were buried in the ground, the scientists were able to build up a historic record of solar activity. Scientists have found that solar activity levels only slightly influence the Earth's climate and global temperature.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have located what they think is the burned out star at the heart of Tycho's Supernova Remnant, which exploded in 1572. This discovery provides the first direct evidence that these kind of supernovae, called Type 1a, occur when a white dwarf consumes material from a binary companion until it reaches a certain point and explodes. They discovered the star, which is similar to our own Sun, because it's moving away from the explosion three times faster than other objects in the region - it was sling shotted away when its dancing partner vapourized.

This image of Titan was taken yesterday during Cassini's 1,200 km (750 mile) flyby past its surface. It's actually a false colour image of the moon, built by merging together four images taken in different wavelengths of light. The red and green colours show areas revealed in infrared light, and the blue is ultraviolet wavelengths. Full colour visible light images are still in processing, and should be released later this week.

Astrophysicists using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio observatory have revealed new details about a puzzling object called SS 433; a microquasar with bizarre corkscrew-shaped jets blasting out. SS 433 is probably a black hole or neutron star that's feeding on material from a normal companion star. Some of this material is consumed, but much of it is blasted back out at a quarter the speed of light. SS 433 wobbles like a child's top every 162 days, which causes the unusual corkscrew shape of the jets.

NASA unveiled its new supercomputer on Tuesday, which took the lead as the fasted computer in the world. Named "Columbia", to commemorate the space shuttle, the supercomputer is built up from 10,240 Itanium 2 processors, and is capable of 42.7 teraflops (trillion calculations per second). Columbia is so powerful that scientists used it to accurately predict the path of hurricanes five days in advance. Complex aircraft analysis that used to take years can now be performed in a single day. Amazingly, the computer was built and installed in only 120 days at NASA's Ames Research Center.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft swept past Titan on Tuesday, and returned the most detailed images ever taken of its surface - from an altitude of only 1,200 km (miles) above its surface. Previous attempts to see the moon's surface have been frustrating because of its thick atmosphere. Scientists still aren't sure what the various light and dark areas are; they could be solid landmasses surrounded by oceans of liquid ethane and methane. The spacecraft took more than 500 images, so they're going to take a while to completely transfer to Earth - better pictures should be revealed in the next few days.

Astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have discovered a huge halo of dark matter around an isolated elliptical galaxy; an object that shouldn't have such a halo, according to optical observations. The galaxy, NGC 4555, is unusual that it's a large elliptical galaxy which isn't part of a larger cluster of galaxies. It's surrounded by a cloud of gas, twice the size of the galaxy itself, that's been heated to 10-million-degrees Celsius. This gas could only get that hot if it was being constrained by a halo of dark matter ten times the mass of the stars in the galaxy.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will pass only 1,200 km (745 miles) above the surface of Titan today, delivering the most detailed pictures ever taken of the mysterious, methane covered moon. This image was taken on October 24, when the spacecraft was still more than 1.2 million km (745,000 miles) away, so the view is going to get much better. The photo was taken using a special filter that allows Cassini to mostly peer through the enshrouding methane atmosphere and see some of the moon's surface features, such as the bright, continent-sized Xanadu region.

Greetings, fellow sky watchers! As October ends, we have another exciting week in astronomy for you. This week's highlight is a total eclipse of the Moon! On October 27/28 our "nearest astronomical neighbor" will slide quietly into the Earth's dark cone of shadow called the umbra, providing most of us from Europe through North America with an inspiring view - but that's not all. There will also be many other great things to explore this week such as lunar features Tycho, Grimaldi, Langrenus, Mare Crisium and Hercules. We'll locate the 12th brightest star in the sky and do a "double take" as we learn about Albireo. Rich star cluster, M45 is waiting on you to explore with binoculars, telescopes -- or just your eyes and imagination. There's a little history here and a lot of fun. Now it's time to mark your calendars...

Because here's what's up!

Last week, Mark Mortimer reviewed Dennis Wingo's new book, Moonrush - Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources, about the prospects of getting our future materials from space. Well, we had a few more questions for Wingo, about property rights, related projects here on Earth, and the possibility that we could wreck our environment so badly that getting into space is totally out of reach. Read on for this bonus interview with Dennis Wingo.

The ninth crew to man the International Space Station safely returned to Earth on Saturday. Commander Gennady Padalka and NASA Science Officer Mike Fincke landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan after being in space for 188 days - Russian test pilot Yuri Shargin was also along for the return trip to Earth (he was only in space for a little more than a week). After a few weeks of medical tests and debriefings, the team will travel to Houston for further post-flight activites.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will make its first close approach tomorrow to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The spacecraft will skim within only 1,200 km (745 miles) of the moon's atmosphere, which should allow its radar to penetrate through its thick methane atmosphere and reveal details about its surface. Scientists have theories, but they really have no idea exactly what Cassini is going to discover; whether it's covered in ancient craters, or there are ongoing geologic processes that are reshaping its surface continuously. Cassini will also gather data about Huygens' potential landing site when it arrives at the moon in a couple of months.

Firefly has just published a package, Moonwatch - A Complete Starter Pack for the Lunar Observer that shows they're already into the Christmas season. Three great aids for viewing Earth's moon are within this sharp looking, light cardboard enclosure. These are; a book, a moon map and a sheet of photographs. As written on the package's front, together these make a comprehensive, complete starter pack for lunar observing.