Forget about nuclear weapons, if you need to move a dangerous asteroid, you should use a tractor beam. Think that's just Star Trek science? Think again. A team of NASA astronauts have recently published a paper in the Journal Nature. They're proposing an interesting strategy that would use the gravity of an ion-powered spacecraft parked beside an asteroid to slowly shift it out of a hazardous orbit. Dr. Stanley G. Love is member of the team and speaks to me from his office in Houston.

ESA's first Galileo satellite blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday, atop a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket. The global positioning spacecraft is called Giove A, and it will demonstrate key technologies that the future Galileo satellites will use as well. It's also carrying radiation detectors on board, to give mission planners an idea of the radiation environment where the constellation will fly.

A team of scientists turned the Chandra X-Ray Observatory back at the Earth, and closely observed the north polar region ten times during 2004. They have discovered low-energy (0.1 - 10 kilo electron volts) X-ray emissions from the Earth's auroral activity. The colour of the X-ray arcs represent the intensity of the X-ray generation, with red indicating the maximum brightness.

Television, with its 20 second sound bites, has done much to alter our attention spans and our expectations for news delivery. Robert Godwin takes on this challenge and has prepared the pocket space guide Apollo 11 for our reading pleasure. Though needing a little bit longer than the typical TV newsclip, it is perfect for those wanting a colourful, informative guide about this space flight without getting into the nitty gritty details.

In this image of Saturn's moon Tethys, it's possible to see the giant Ithaca Chasma cutting a swath across its surface. The chasm is 100 km (60 miles) long and 4 km (2 miles) deep in places. Cassini took this photograph on November 28, 2005 when the spacecraft was approximately 1.1 million km (700,000 miles) away from Tethys.

Hulett Keaton took this picture of the Northern Horizon on a clear North Georgia night. Keaton used a Cannon AE-1 riding atop Celestron GT scope.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

Hulett Keaton took this picture of Kembles Cascade on crisp, cold North Georgia night. Keaton used a Cannon AE-1 riding atop Celestron GT scope.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

A planet forming disk located about 375 light-years from Earth has been found to contain some of the building blocks of life: acetylene and hydrogen cyanide. The chemicals were discovered around "IRS 46" using NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. When mixed with water in a laboratory, these chemicals create a soup of organic compounds, including amino acids and a DNA base called adenine.

A team of Italian astronomers have discovered that a pulsar racing through the Milky Way has a comet-like trail blazing behind it. The object is called Geminga, and it was previously found to have twin jets of material blasting from its poles. This new, longer tail, was uncovered by studying data archived by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Geminga is only 500 light-years away from Earth, and moving quickly across our field of view giving astronomers a unique opportunity to study such an exotic object.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers... I hope everyone around the world is enjoying the peace and joy the holidays bring. Why not stay up late and view one of the bluest objects in the cosmos - the "Hubble Variable Nebula!" Let's not forget Venus, the "Witch Head" or the "Rosette." For viewers in northern Australia, you're in for a year end treat as the Moon occults Antares. The year ends on a dark note as we reach New Moon and the "Hunter" becomes the hunted. Be sure to keep your eyes on the skies because...

Here's what's up!

Have you ever wondered if meteors are raining down on the Moon? On November 7, NASA scientists used a special video camera to record a small explosion on the Moon. Travelling at a speed of 27 km/s (17 miles/s), the small meteoroid slammed into the lunar surface close to Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains). NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke suggests that the meteoroid was part of the Taurid meteor shower that hit Earth between late October and early November 2005.

Two ESO telescopes captured stars at different points of the stellar lifecycle in this photograph of star cluster NGC 2467. This cluster, located in the southern constellation Puppis, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right). And at the heart of Haffner 18 the stars at various ages. Mature stars are in the middle; a newborn star that has just started blazing is in the bottom left; and a dust cloud containing embryonic stars is in the right-hand corner.

The Meridiani Planum region on Mars is currently the home of NASA's Opportunity Rover. But scientists believe that the entire region was covered with water millions of years ago, and could have been home to life. A new study is proposing that the area might have been much less wet than previously believed. A key element discovered by Opportunity could have been created by sulphur-bearing volcanic steam, and not water sediment layered down.

The Christmas Tree Cluster, also known as NGC 2264, is a well known star cluster in the Monoceros (the Unicorn) constellation. It got its nickname because it looks like a tree in visible light. But this view, taken with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, shows what it looks like in infrared light. Normally obscured by thick dust, individual newborn stars packed together in the cluster can be seen shrouded in the nebula.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has helped discover new rings and two small moons orbiting Uranus. The largest ring is twice the size of the planet's previously known rings, and went undiscovered until now because they're so far away from the planet. Scientists think that particles in these rings are slowly spiraling away from Uranus, so there must be some source constantly replenishing them with new material.

Cassini took this beautiful image of Titan with its orange surface shining against the purple halo of its atmosphere. The photograph was made by using separate blue, green and red spectral filters and then combining this with an ultraviolet image. This image was taken by Cassini's narrow-angle camera on the May 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Titan.

ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft is using a new technique to reveal details on the surface of the Moon. The spacecraft has been taking a series of images, only seconds apart, with its Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) instrument. The same location is imaged at different infrared wavelengths. Scientists back at ESA can then stack up the images to see the same spot on the Moon, imaged in all these different wavelengths, and notice any unusual features on the lunar surface.

An Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from the Guiana Space Centre on December 21, carrying two satellites into orbit: ESA's MSG-2 satellite and India's INSAT-4A telecommunications satellite. Ground tracking stations received good telemetry information from both satellites, indicating they were put into their proper orbits. ESA's MSG-2 will provide high-resolution images of the Earth's weather activity, while INSAT-4A will provide broadcast television and high-speed data services above the Indian subcontinent.

Want to know where new galaxies are going to be born? Just look for clumps of dark matter. Although dark matter is completely invisible to any kind of detector we have today, this mysterious substance can warp radiation by its gravity. Astronomers have used Hubble and the Subaru Telescope to map out the distribution of dark matter in an area of sky 5 times larger than the full Moon. Wherever dark matter is at its thickest, galaxies are likely to form.