Sailing through space on nothing but photons from the Sun is a nice dream, but we're still years away from the reality. NASA took their next step in June, however, when they tested a 20-metre (66-foot) prototype solar sail at their Plum Brook research facility. They successfully deployed the sail using an inflatable boom designed to unfurl the sail from a box the size of a suitcase and then keep it rigid in space.

Take your estimate for the amount of neon in a star, and triple it. At least, that's what a team of astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have concluded. They performed a detailed survey of 21 nearby sun-like stars within a distance of 400 light-years from Earth, and found they all contained an average of 3X the neon traditionally predicted for our Sun. Neon is difficult to find in stars because it doesn't give off any light in the visible spectrum. But when heated to millions of degrees, for example, in a star, this elusive element blazes in the X-ray spectrum.

NASA has confirmed that the space shuttle Discovery launched safely into orbit yesterday. During their 12-day mission to the International Space Station, Commander Eileen Collins and 6 other astronauts will test a series of techniques and equipment designed to make the shuttles safer. The crew of Discovery will spend seven hours today examining every inch of the shuttle with a camera attached to its robotic arm to look for any damage. The shuttle is expected to dock with the space station on Thursday.

Most teenagers go to summer camp in order to learn arts and crafts, hang out beside a lake in the northern wilderness, and perhaps learn to horseback ride. Nevertheless, every year a small handful of teenagers opt out of the traditional camp and travel to the desert of the American Southwest. Instead of learning how to build a fire they discover how to use research-grade telescopes, instead of discussing the latest fashions they debate planetary formation, and instead of identifying plant types they identify the hydrogen line in Vega. What kind of person spends free time doing that?

Humans have really raced up the evolutionary ladder in the last 40,000 years. From dragging knuckles on the ground to speeding jets over the sands of the Mojave desert, we've come a long way. Of course progress wasn't continuous. There were some good years and some bad years. Many people think 1905 was particularly good. John Stachel in his book, Einstein's Miraculous Year gives credit to this statement. Within it are the five papers that Einstein wrote then. With time and much investigation, his papers were fully appreciated and with this hindsight, 1905 does appear to have been particularly good.

Cassini took this beautiful photograph of Saturn's unlit side, with its rings deep in shadow. Reflected light from the sunlit portion of the rings casts an eerie glow across the portion in shadow. This image was taken on June 8, when the spacecraft was approximately 477,000 km (296,000 miles) away from the planet.

A clever new telescope design could allow engineers to pack larger folding space telescopes into smaller spaces on rockets, dramatically reducing their weight and launch costs. Inspired by amateur telescopes which can be disassembled for transport, this design could allow fleets of low cost space telescopes with bigger mirrors than Hubble. They could be used for detailed Earth observation, astronomical observations, or even be sent to other planets and moons to examine their surfaces in extreme detail.

With the discovery of methane in Mars' atmosphere, scientists are trying to find out what the source is. Since methane is destroyed by sunlight, there has to be an active source constantly producing it. Here on Earth, methane is largely produced by living bacteria, called methanogens, which convert carbon and hydrogen into methane. The problem is that Earth bacteria go into a dormant state when exposed to the low pressure Martian atmosphere. So they're probably deep underground, and the methane they produce slowly moves to the surface.

NASA and Volanz Aerospace have announced the next Centennial Challenge prize: to build a better set of gloves for astronauts. Teams will compete for a $250,000 prize to build a pair of gloves which are strong, easy on astronaut hands, and provide better dexterity than the gloves NASA currently uses. The competition is scheduled for November 2006, where various teams will submit their glove designs to a series of tests.

Astrophotographer Chris Cook took this picture of the The Rho Region - Scorpius on May 8, 2005 from Gila, New Mexico. This image was taken with a Pentax 67 camera, Pentax 165mm @ f/2.8 lens and Astro-Physics 400GTO mount.

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Christopher J. Picking took this picture of the Full Moon at perigee on the 21st, July 2005 from Wairarapa, North Island, New Zealand. This image was taken with a Canon 10D camera, Saxon 70 x 900 refractor, 1/180 exposure at ISO200.

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Mike O'Brien took this picture of the Solar eclipse on December 4th 2002 from Lyndhurst, South Australia. This image was taken with a 3mp Fuji Finepix 6800Z camera set on default settings.

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A new report from the National Academies' National Research Council says that NASA will need to be more careful to prevent Earth microbes hitching a ride on spacecraft from contaminating Mars. Recent findings show that there could be liquid water underneath the ground on Mars, and some Earth bacteria can survive in such hostile environments. According to the report, NASA is planning to implement new techniques that would reduce the risk for spacecraft flying after 2016.

Cassini has obtained fascinating new images of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The spacecraft made its closest flyby so far on July 14, when it passed only 175 km (109 miles) within the moon's southern pole. This region is strangely free of impact craters, but it is littered with house-sized ice boulders. Enceladus has the most reflective surface in the solar system; it's as pure and white as freshly fallen snow. These gigantic blocks of ice were a complete surprise to scientists and they'll take some time to figure out what could have caused them.

The European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft took this image of the Hadley Rille on the south-east edge of Mare Imbrium on the Moon. The bright bumps on the lower part of the image are the Appenine mountains, which formed a backdrop during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. The Hadley Rille is a 120 km (76 mile) long gully - probably a collapsed lava tube - that formed about 3.3 billion years ago.

Astronomers have discovered that a relatively nearby galaxy is undergoing a tremendous amount of new star formation. This is very unusual, since galaxies normally only went through this phase billions of years ago, when the Universe was much younger. Seen in visible light, NGC 4625 only showed a diffuse halo, with a hint of spiral arms. But in the ultraviolet gaze of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, it clearly has vast spiral arms which extend four times the size of the galaxy's core.

Cassini has captured some strange-sounding radio emissions coming from Saturn's north and south poles. These emissions, called Saturn kilometric radiation, are generated by the planet's auroras. The changing frequencies probably come from tiny radio sources moving up and down the planet's magnetic field lines, but scientists are entirely sure what causes them. Cassini will fly close, or possibly even through, this region in 2008, so scientists will have a great opportunity to study them up close.

By creating a detailed map of Asteroid 433 Eros, a researcher from Cornell University has helped answer questions about its interior. Even though Eros is largely pockmarked from thousands of meteor strikes, it does have a few puzzling smooth parts. The smooth parts appear to have been caused by seismic waves that passed through the asteroid's interior and shook the ground smooth after it was hit by large impacts. This means that Eros' interior is cohesive enough to transmit these seismic waves.

Shevill Mathers took this picture of the Moon, Jupiter and Spica on the 13th July, 2005 from Tasmania, Australia. This image was taken with a Nikon D100 digital SLR with a Nikkor 80 to 200 f/2.8 zoom lens.

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.