The most successful comet hunter in history is actually the ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft, which spends its time gazing at the Sun. Since many comets streak past the Sun all the time, they often get caught in SOHO's cameras. Toni Scarmato from Calabria, Italy discovered both SOHO's 999th comet, and then 5 minutes later he discovered its 1,000th as well. Almost all the discoveries have been made using SOHO's LASCO instrument, which images the Sun's large corona.

Even after all their safety improvements, NASA engineers weren't able to completely solve the problem of foam shedding off the space shuttle's external fuel tank. During Discovery's launch a large piece flew off; fortunately it completely missed the orbiter, but the risk remains. In order to give engineers time to come up with a solution, NASA is targeting March 2006 for Discovery to return to the launch pad and continue construction of the International Space Station.

NASA's Swift satellite has found brand new baby black holes, just seconds after birth. These newborn black holes are created at the heart of massive star explosions, called gamma ray bursts, and actually generate multiple blasts over the next few minutes. Nearly half of the gamma ray bursts seen by Swift follow a similar model, where there's an initial release of gamma rays, and then followed by several X-ray after-explosions as matter falling into the new black hole clogs up and releases more energy.

Pamela Conrad is an astrobiologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She recently gave a lecture explaining how to searching cold deserts on Earth will help scientists understand environments that life could be hiding in the rest of the Solar System. The following article is the first part of an edited transcript of her presentation.

One of the most famous supernovae in recent memory is SN 1987A, which exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Before its death, the star produced a ferocious stellar wind that carved out a large bubble in the surrounding, colder gas. When it went supernova, a shockwave traveled out in space, and astronomers have been waiting in anticipation for the shockwave to slam into the edge of this bubble. New images from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows that this stage now appears to be underway.

Saturn's rings are separate from the planet they circle, and then even have an atmosphere of their own. During several flybys, Cassini has been able to detect very small amounts of molecular oxygen floating around the rings. Molecules of water are broken apart by ultraviolet light from the Sun; the hydrogen and some of the oxygen is lost into space, and some of the oxygen is frozen back into the rings. But there's enough of a cloud of these atoms around the rings that this process must be ongoing and kept in a continual balance.

John Bunyan took this picture of green aurora on the 5th August from Washington, USA. This image was taken with a Canon rebel.

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.

When astronauts will be spending more time in space, it'll be helpful to know when there'll be clear "space weather", to minimize their exposure to dangerous amounts of radiation. NASA scientists have developed a better understanding of the underlying causes of solar flares, and think they can now predict times for "clear skies". Areas likely to explode as flares happen when magnetic fields of different alignments merge together on the Sun's surface. Electrical currents must then build up for several hours before a flare erupts.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this picture of Rhea, one of Saturn's moons. The reasonably close view is of the moon's southern polar region which has been extensively cratered during its long history. Cassini acquired this view on July 14, 2005 when it made a close flyby, passing only 239,000 km (149,000 miles) away from the moon. The large, well-defined oval-shaped crater on the upper right is approximately 115 km (71 miles) across.

A new NASA-funded study has discovered that sea ice in the Antarctic might actually be on the increase as global temperatures go up. There has been overwhelming evidence that sea ice is decreasing in the Arctic ocean, but scientists didn't realize there might be a difference between the two poles. As temperatures rise, it seems to create more precipitation around the southern pole, which falls as snow. The weight of the snow pushes sea ice below sea level, and causes the snow to melt and then freeze as additional ice.

Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have created a detailed survey of the structure of the Milky Way. Based on this evidence, they think the shape of the Milky Way is more complex than a plain old spiral. Our galaxy seems to have a long central bar, approximately 27,000 light-years in length. From our vantage point going around the Sun, we see this bar at a 45-degree angle.

David Moth took this picture of NGC 185 from Weymouth, England. David used 10" Newtonian and a Starlight Express MX5C.

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.

Bob Sigall took this picture of Venus and Moon setting behind the ridge in Kalihi valley on the 7th August from Honolulu, Hawaii. Bob used an Olympus C740 10x 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 Cassini spacecraft took this image of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on July 7, 2005. In it, it's possible to see the bright Xanadu region on the moon's right side - where the Huygens probe. Scientists think this area consists of upland terrain that isn't contaminated by the darker material visible in the low lying regions. Near the moon's south pole, Cassini has previously found what looks like a large lake of hydrocarbons.

With Friday's launch, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is now on its way to the Red Planet. One of the instruments on board is CRISM, or the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. This instrument will search for evidence of past water on the surface of the planet, by locating the residues left by minerals that formed in water. It'll have 20 times the resolution of any previous instrument sent to Mars to do this task. With data gathered by CRISM, researchers should have a wealth of potential targets for future rovers and landers.

Hi folks, I just wanted to give you a warning that Universe Today might be spotty for the next week. I'm attending a convention in Indianapolis called Gencon from Thursday to Sunday, so my regular schedule will be all mixed up. I will be taking my laptop and should be able to update the site, and answer emails, but I can't promise it'll come out on regular days, etc. If you're attending Gencon too, or live in the Indianapolis area and want to have a meetup, drop me an email. I'll try and set something up. Can anyone recommend a venue?

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

P.S. Here's a shameless picture of me and the kids having a picnic here in Courtenay. I'm actually happier than I look. :-)

Greetings fellow SkyWatchers! Let's start the week off colorfully as we view the mighty Albireo. We'll explore lunar features and learn about the Blue Moon. Keep an eye on the dance of the planets and on Cygnus as the Kappa Cygnid meteor shower peaks. We'll learn about M39 and more. So, get your binoculars and telescopes aimed at the sky, because...

Here's what's up!

In this photograph of Saturn, it's possible to see the faint filaments that circle around major storms on the planet. Scientists still don't know what these filaments are; they might be material connecting two storms together after they've split up. The could also represent wind flow in Saturn's atmosphere. Cassini took this image on July 6, 2005 when it was 2.4 million km (1.5 million miles) away from the planet.

Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is about to break the record for human spaceflight on Tuesday. Currently on board the International Space Station, he will tie the current record holder, Sergei Avdeyev, when reaches 748 days in orbit. Krikalev has been on two long-duration stays on the Mir space station, two flights on the Space Shuttle, and two trips on the Space Station. He was aboard Mir when the Soviet Union collapsed, the first Russian to fly on the Shuttle, and a member of the first crew for the International Space Station.

New research from the University of California, San Diego suggests that the cloud of gas and dust that would eventually turn into the Sun was already hot and glowing. The ultraviolet radiation blazing off this protosun played a big part in chemically shaping the early Solar System, including many of the organic compounds that make up life on Earth. The scientists detected it by finding evidence of high-energy solar wind in ancient meteorites.