Even in X-rays, Saturn is beautiful. The latest image taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory shows how the rings sparkle in this wavelength. These X-rays are created by solar X-rays striking the ice particles in Saturn's rings, and being refracted towards the Earth. Astronomers aren't exactly sure why these flashes are happening, but one theory is that they're caused by micrometeorites striking through Saturn's rings and causing a brief puff of ice particles which can cause a more irregular scattering of X-rays from the Sun.

The Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) has been asleep for the past 11 months, but now it's being woken up for a very important task: to watch the collision between Deep Impact and Comet Tempel 1. SWAS completed 5.5 years of service to the astronomical community, and it was put into hibernation for just something like this. The spacecraft is especially good at measuring the abundance of water molecules in ice and dust, so it should be able to help analyze the ejected material when the spacecraft slams into the comet on July 4.

If you're an astronomer and you want to escape the Earth's hazy atmosphere, you need a space telescope... right? Not necessarily, sometimes all you need is a balloon, and some clear arctic skies. An international team of researchers traveled to Sweden and deployed a 33-storey tall balloon carrying the BLAST telescope, designed to study the birth of stars and planets. Gaelen Marsden is a member of the team, and researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

The dance of the planets continues as we watch Mercury, Venus and Saturn shuttle around the twilight sky. Mars and the Moon are going to join the show in the morning hours, and the time for viewing Comet 9/P Tempel 1 is now! We'll explore the "Cocoon Galaxy", Eta Carinae, and enjoy two meteor showers as well. So open your eyes to the skies, because...

Here's what's up!

Now that NASA has committed itself to returning humans to the Moon, they're looking to overcome one of the major risks to anyone staying in space for a lengthy amount of time: radiation. In deep space, and on the Moon, astronauts would be bombarded by radiation from the Sun, and cosmic rays from space. NASA is considering an electromagnetic shield of highly charged inflatable spheres. These could be erected above a potential lunar base to attract the radiation and channel it safely away.

The Hubble Space Telescope was lucky to watch a jet of dust streaming off of Comet Tempel 1; a prelude to next week's smashup between the comet and NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. These observations show that Hubble will be a good instrument to observe the collision, as it was able to see many details on the comet and jet. The image was taken on June 14, and the jet extends 2,200 km (1,400 miles) long, and points towards the Sun. Astronomers aren't sure why jets like this occur.

Workers at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab have begun pre-firing one of the 8.4 metre mirror segments as part of the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). When it's finally completed in 2016, the GMT will be the largest telescope in the world, consisting of 7 of these 8.4 metre mirrors aligned to work as a single mirror 25.6 metres across - with 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

This satellite view of Istanbul, taken by the ESA's Envisat satellite, was taken using its Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). Radar doesn't actually build up images in colour, it just measures different textures. So the colour in this image represents different times that the radar images were acquired. It's possible to see the bridges that span the narrow Bosporus channel, dividing Europe and Asia. You can even see a few ships sailing up the channel as little points of light.

The European Space Agency's new powerful 35-metre radio antenna in Cebreros, Spain came online earlier this month, to assist communications with the agency's growing fleet of spacecraft. Construction of the dish went very quickly; workers only broke ground a little more than a year ago. The dish has already received signals from the ESA's Rosetta and SMART-1 spacecraft as well as several radio-emitting stars. The Cebreros dish will also support the Venus Express spacecraft, due for launch in October 2005.

Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a massive planetary zone forming around the star system TW Hydrae. By probing this vast disk of material with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array in the radio spectrum, they have detected that rocks and pebbles extend outward for at least 1.6 billion km (1 billion miles). These chunks of rock will slowly clump together, eventually forming larger and larger planets over millions of years. This is the first time astronomers have seen this intermediate stage, after pure dust, but before planets.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this photograph of Saturn's moon Pan, embedded in the Encke Gap in Saturn's A ring. In the first picture, you can see the ripples in the ring due to Pan's gravity, and then another image without this wake. Pan is only 20 km (12 miles) across, but the effect of its gravity is quite impressive on the fragile rings.

The most common element in the Universe is hydrogen, and much of that is molecular hydrogen, where two atoms are bonded together. Scientists have long puzzled over the question of why all this molecular hydrogen is out there in space. Researchers from Ohio State University might have found the answer. They've developed a simulation that shows how molecular hydrogen is more likely to form on interstellar grains of dust which are bumpy, and not smooth.

A Zenit-3SL rocket blasted off from the Sea Launch platform today, carrying the Intelsat Americas-8 communications satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The rocket lifted off from the floating platform at 1403 UTC (10:03 am EDT), and the Block DM-SL upper stage separated without a hitch. The IA-8 satellite will provide broadcast and data services to the Americas, Caribbean, Hawaii and Alaska.

Few celestial events attract such widespread media attention as what is inappropriately named a planetary alignment. Because of their orbits and distances from the sun, the planets do not actually line up. Occasionally however, two or more planets do appear to gather close together in the sky as seen from here on Earth. An event such as this is known as a planetary conjunction. Late June offers observers, especially those in the northern hemisphere, a chance to witness just such a conjunction of Mercury, Venus and Saturn.

Vacation time's arrived. You're in the car driving to your little piece of heaven. Then, from the depths of the back seat you hear those dreaded words, "I'm bored". Then comes the exchange of verbal barbs that may or may not end with you turning the car around. There are alternatives. Keep your eyes on the road and your mind flying with space books. John Starke's Glow in the Dark Planets and Melanie Melton Knocke's From Blue Moons to Black Holes are just what you need to shrink travel time.

The New Horizons mission to Pluto has been called ?The First Mission to the Last Planet,? and it?s the first mission to venture to a ?new? planet since the Voyager missions nearly 30 years ago. While New Horizons includes proven technology and a superior launch vehicle, it could be considered to be a ?throw-back? mission. Some of the scientific instruments on board are named after characters from the 1950?s television show, ?The Honeymooners,? and the project?s Principal Investigator, Dr. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, says the mission makes him feel like he?s back in the heyday 1960?s or 1970?s of space exploration because this mission is all about exploring planets for the first time.

Physicists at MIT have successfully created a new form of matter in their laboratory; a gas that shows superfluidity at higher temperatures. Superfluid gasses, which can flow without resistance, have been created before, but only at very cold temperatures just above Absolute Zero. Matter like this could exist in the Universe's most extreme places, like at the heart of black holes, neutron stars, or in the early stages of the Big Bang.

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a detailed image of a narrow, dusty ring around nearby star Fomalhaut. Although they can't see it directly, astronomers think a planet has been tugging at the ring with its gravity. According to researchers, the shape and position of the ring couldn't exist without a planet. This is similar to the twists and knots that NASA's Cassini spacecraft has photographed in Saturn's rings, which are caused by its shepherd moons.

Astronomers have discovered a binary system of a blue giant and a pulsar that operate as a natural particle accelerator, raising the energy levels of simple photons to some of the highest possible energies. The discovery was made by while watching how the pulsar periodically passes through disk of material ejected by the rapidly spinning blue giant. Each time the pulsar sweeps through this material, its intense magnetic field interacts with the ejected material and boosts photons from regular visible light into the range of super-high gamma rays which blast out in all directions. Some of this radiation interacts with our atmosphere, which is why we can detect it here on Earth.