Scientists from the University of Arizona think they have an explanation for a strange bright spot on the surface of Titan. It originally wasn't clear whether this crescent-shaped feature was a mountain, cloud, or even a geological hotspot. By comparing observations of the region in both visible wavelengths and microwave radiometry, the scientists were able to rule out hotspots. It hasn't moved for years, so it's probably not a cloud. They currently think this region must be a bright patch with a different composition to the surrounding areas.

NASA engineers tested out a prototype unmanned sailplane this week at the Dryden Flight Research Center in California. This robotic aircraft is capable of detecting and using rising air thermals, similar to a glider or bird, to gain altitude. It launched from the ground, and navigated to a likely location for updrafts. Once it found a thermal, it turned off its engine and circled to stay within the updraft. NASA hopes to develop techniques for using thermals that could extend the range of unmanned aerial vehicles that often have very limited fuel.

An international team of astronomers think they've solved the mystery of short gamma-ray bursts. These powerful explosions shine brighter than a billion suns for only a few milliseconds and fade away quickly. But now, thanks to NASA's Swift satellite, which can detect and analyze these blasts anywhere in the sky, astronomers were able to measure short bursts. The evidence now points to the theory that these bursts occur when a black hole consumes a neutron star, or two neutron stars collide together.

Tour guides add vibrant, often personal accounts of locales along your travels. They impart much more knowledge than simply standing in front of a building and reading some brief nameplate. By including a relative context, they tie a building to its neighbours and even substantiate its mere existence. Ron Miller and William K. Hartmann in their book The Grand Tour, A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System equally provide this important service for worlds within our solar system. They take the reader along on a detailed tour, and, without assuming prior knowledge, they vividly distinguish and join each of the worlds into a technical and visual journey.

Tom Davis wows us again with this astonishing picture of M45 (aka Pleiades). It was taken using his AP 155 EDF f/7 refractor and STL-11000M CCD camera.

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.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this beautiful photograph of supernova remnant N132D, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud - a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. By measuring the wispy cloud, astronomers estimate that the original star probably detonated about 3,000 years ago. A supernova-generated shockwave is traveling through space at a velocity of more than 2,000 kilometers per second (4 million mph), and colliding with surrounding material. This causes the material to heat up to millions of degrees so we can see it from here on Earth.

Astronomers knew something was hiding inside a dark, dusty cloud, but they weren't sure exactly what it was. The Spitzer Space Telescope confirmed a faint infrared object within the cloud. But by focusing the Hawaii-based Submillimeter Array on the object, astronomers learned that the hidden object has a weak outflow of material, which was predicted by star formation theories. This revealed the object to be a young star, perhaps only 10,000 to 100,000 years old with only 25 times the mass of Jupiter.

Australian researchers are using ESA's Envisat Earth Observation Satellite to peer down and help judge the health of the Great Barrier Reef. Envisat's MERIS sensor can detect coral bleaching down to 10 metres below the surface of the water. This bleaching occurs when the symbiotic algae living with the coral are expelled when ocean temperatures rise. Since Envisat images the entire planet every three days, scientists will be able to watch this bleaching process on a weekly basis to see how the reefs are doing.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! We hope that the skies were cooperative for today's annular eclipse. This week we'll explore the "Helix" nebula, begin tracking a new comet, remember our history, visit the lunar surface, watch Mars and be treated to two meteor showers. So open your eyes to the skies, because...

Here's what's up!

Christophe Bogaert captured today's annular eclipse from Beligium. This partial eclipse was taken using an 8" newtonian telescope with a Canon EOS 300D camera. The final photograph is a stack of three 1/640 sec. exposures.

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.

The newly discovered 10th planet - which the discoverers have dubbed "Xena" - appears to have a moon of its own. Nicknamed "Gabrielle", this moon is 100 times fainter than Xena, and seems to orbit the planet once every couple of weeks. It's estimated to be 1/10th the size of Xena, so approximately 250 km (155 miles) across. The powerful Hubble Space Telescope will be turning its gaze on the pair in November/December, and should reveal even more details.

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying the crew of Expedition 12 and space tourist Greg Olsen docked with the International Space Station on Monday. The visitors were greeted by the crew of Expedition 11, who have been on board the station for nearly 6 months. Olsen will conduct several experiments on the station, and then return with the crew of Expedition 11 in about a week.

Efrain Morales took this recent photograph of Mars. He took 750 individual frames of the planet with his telescope in Puerto Rico, and then merged them on computer to build these composite photographs.

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.

According to Genesis, 'First there was light.'. According to scientists, this initial light is still about us, shining down from the heavens. Not only does it shine, it's red-shifted, and, depending on its composition, it indicates whether the universe is static, expanding or contracting. All we need do is detect this light to learn about our origin. This is the story in Michael Lemonick's book Echo of the Big Bang. In particular, he tells the tale of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), its place in remote sensing and its role in cosmology. From it, we learn a little more about the first light and we know it is good.

NASA is planning on sending rovers to crawl around the surface of Mars for the foreseeable future, but there's only so much terrain they can explore. Global Aerospace Corporation is proposing a future balloon mission that would float just a few kilometres above the surface of Mars, and explore a much larger territory in tremendous detail. The balloon would trail a wing beneath that would work like a rudder, and allow it to steer itself in the Martian winds.

The massive Keck Observatory at the top of Hawaii's Mauna Kea has learned a new trick: it can block the light from stars to see faint objects near them. This will be an invaluable tool for analyzing young star systems, since planetary disks are often impossible to see next to the dazzling light of a star. This new instrument is called a "nuller", and it's able to reduce the light from a star by a factor of 100 times. Similar technology will be used in future planet hunting missions to see dim planets lurking beside their stars.

Cassini made its first flyby of Saturn's moon Hyperion last week, and took this amazing photograph. The spacecraft got within 500 km (310 miles), and you can clearly see how unusual this spongy-looking moon is. Scientists think that Hyperion is little more than a pile of rubble, loosely held together by its own gravity because much of its mass is just empty space. Hyperion is only 266 kilometers (165 miles) across, has an irregular shape, and spins in a chaotic rotation.

With the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis, scientists have proposed that our planet was once encased under a thick layer of ice and snow. Life could only survive huddled around hot vents deep under water. But now scientists have found fossil evidence of creatures that lived during this period, but were photosynthesizing. This means they needed to live under thin enough ice for sunlight to get through. It's possible that the entire planet wasn't encased in ice, instead there were large patches of thin ice, or even open water near the equator.

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope took this incredible image of galaxy NGC 1350, which is located 85 million light years away in the Fornax constellation. Astronomers classify it as an Sa(r) type galaxy, which means it's a barred spiral with two central regions. It is 130,000 light years across, so it's a little larger than our own Milky Way.

Here's an amazing picture of the Antares-Rho Ophiuchus region of the Milky Way taken by Thomas Davis from his home observatory.

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.