Greetings, fellow Skywatchers! The week begins with a New Moon and an opportunity to study the rich galactic region around the M84 and M86. The June Arietid meteor shower peaks and we'll check in on Comet 9/P Tempel 1. As the Moon returns, we'll keep watch on the planets as they move toward a splendid conjunction, begin our studies of the M13, practice radio astronomy with everyday equipment and round out the week with the Ophiuchid meteor shower. Hope for clear skies and get out your binoculars and telescopes, because...

Here's what's up!

Diaries hold the accounts of some of the dearest, most precious moments of our lives. The pleasure of a first kiss, the euphoria of wining a medal or the satisfaction from a commendation all get entered. Ed Buckbee, with Wally Schirra, in their book The Real Space Cowboys share emotional highlights of their own and others from the early U.S. space program. Given that they both have many years of first hand involvement, there are many exciting, warm and funny moments to share just like in reviewing an old diary.

When supernova 1987A blew up in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it was the closest supernova in over 300 years, and a great opportunity to study this rare occurrence close up. A neutron star or black hole should have formed at the centre of the expanding ring of debris, but so far, nobody can find it. A neutron star could be there, but it just isn't emitting any radiation, or sucking in any material from its surroundings, so it's invisible from here. If the neutron star had an accretion rate of even 1/5th the mass of the Moon every year, we'd be able to detect it.

When Opportunity got its wheels stuck in a sand dune more than a month ago, operators had no idea it would be so difficult to get it moving again. So they were relieved this weekend when Opportunity finally maneuvered its way out. It was very difficult for the rover to get any traction in the ripple-shaped dune, and its spinning wheels traveled the equivalent of 191 metres (629 feet). Scientists now want to analyze the sand dune to understand why this one bogged down the rover, unlike dozens of other dunes it's rolled across without a problem.

Even through large levels of ozone were destroyed in the Earth's atmosphere this winter, NASA's Aura spacecraft detected that the ozone layer is actually looking quite healthy above the arctic, and did its job stopping harmful ultraviolet radiation. This strange paradox is explained by a very unusual winter in the Arctic, where stratospheric winds brought in large quantities of ozone from the Earth's middle latitudes. This was the first winter monitored by Aura, which was launched in 2004.

Cassini took this beautiful photograph of Saturn, shrouded behind its own rings. This image was taken in visible light on April 26, 2005, when Cassini was approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Saturn. The photograph not only shows the A, B, and C rings, but they're also casting shadows onto the planet's atmosphere.

NASA announced today that it has begun preparing the Mars Phoenix lander spacecraft for its August 2007 launch to the Red Planet. This means the development of the spacecraft has passed a major milestone in its development. If all goes well, Phoenix will land in the far-northern plains on Mars, and search for possible indications of present or past life. The total cost, including launch will be $386 million USD.

On March 13, 1986, the ESA probe, Giotto, had a close encounter - a close encounter with a visitor from the Oort cloud spewing 18 metric tons of gas every second and pouring 30 metric tons of dust from its nucleus. It's name? Comet Halley... And following its trail was one of the world's foremost experts on cometary dust properties - Dr. Jochen Kissel. "Historically comets have always been unusual bodies, as they seemed to appear out of the nothing and also disappear like that. " But the real mystery is the dust.

When astronomers started analyzing the recent gamma ray burst GRB050509b, they knew right away that they were seeing something very important. This cosmic explosion lasted less than 1/30th of a second, but it provided astronomers with an X-ray afterglow for the first time ever, and pointed them towards a likely cause: the collision of two neutron stars, or a neutron star with a black hole.

NASA announced today that it's pressing forward with a new mission to Jupiter called Juno, which will launch no later than 2010. This will be the second of NASA's New Frontiers Programs (the New Horizons Pluto mission will be the first). The $700 million spacecraft will travel to Jupiter, and then orbit the giant planet searching for an ice-rock core, determine the amounts of water and ammonia present in its atmosphere and study its winds and magnetic field.

An international team of researchers have developed a computer program that simulates the growth and expansion of the Universe after the Big Bang, including the formation of galaxies, clusters and quasars. The "Millennium Simulation" used 10 billion virtual particles of matter, and traced their movements in a 2 billion light-year cube of space as the Universe evolved. This simulated area contained 20 million virtual galaxies, and accounted for dark energy expanding the Universe, cold dark matter, and regular matter.

Researchers using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope found something unusual about the jet of material streaming away from a powerful quasar that may leave theorists scratching their heads. Quasars are thought to be jets blasting away from supermassive black holes at the hearts of distant galaxies. The team was expecting magnetic forces to twist the jet and keep material aligned in the middle, but they found just the opposite; the jet is scattered in the centre and more aligned at its edges.

By studying data gathered by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, researchers have come to the conclusion that Amalthea, one of Jupiter's moons, is probably just a jumble of icy rubble, held together by gravity. Scientists originally believed it was made of rock, but Galileo helped to discover that its density is actually lower than water. It probably formed further out in the solar system, but was then captured into a stable orbit by Jupiter's immense gravity.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft took this image of an ancient outflow channel in the Ares Vallis region of Mars. This immense channel is 1400 km (870 miles) long, and eventually empties into Chryse Planitia; where the Mars Pathfinder mission landed in 1997. The bumpy "islands" are individual blocks of rocks and hills that were harder for the rushing water to weather down, so they remain in the channel.

The faster a star spins, the more it flattens out, changing from a sphere to something more egg-shaped. Since stars are points of light in the sky, it's difficult to determine their shape, but astronomers are now using gravitational lensing to get a sense of the shape of stars. This depends on the light from a distant star being deflected by the gravity of something closer. In a recent lensing event, where a closer star eclipsed a more distant star, astronomers were able to detect that the background star was slightly elongated. This is impressive considering the distant star was 16,000 light-years away.

An unmanned Foton-M spacecraft was launched today on board a Russian Soyuz-U from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This is a special research satellite for the European Space Agency, which has 39 experiments on board ranging from fluid physics to exobiology. The spacecraft will stay in orbit for 16 days before returning the contents back to Earth safely. The capsule and experiments will be recovered quickly after landing and the time sensitive experiments will be rushed back to researchers in Europe.

Greetings fellow Skywatchers! With early dark skies this week, now would be a great opportunity to work on some serious galactic studies in the well-placed constellations of Crater and Corvus. The Moon will make a splendid close pass at Mars, occulting it for some viewers and we'll have two meteor showers to enjoy. It's time to get out the telescopes, because...

Here's what's up!

Sharing a passion just makes it sweeter. Getting cosy together under the stars, exploring constellations, going, 'ohh' when a meteor streaks overhead warms people emotionally and physically. Making this more endearing is the opportunity to share with the younger generation who are so eager to learn. Satisfying this eagerness isn't always easy however. Bringing sense to a collection of bright dots can prove daunting. The following describes four excellent books to help share a passion of the stars and to awaken a curiosity that may go on for a lifetime.

A new image taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows how a few monstrous stars in a stellar nebula can create a community of smaller stars. The image is of the Carina Nebula, a well known nebula located 10,000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy. It contains the massive star Eta Carinae, which could explode as a supernova within our lifetime. It's surrounded by clouds of dust and gas which have been collapsed by radiation streaming off Eta Carinae to create new stars. As you get further from Eta Carinae, this process creates smaller and smaller stars.

Astronomers from the US and France have mapped out the motion of a stars in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), and found that they're actually part of the galaxy's main disk. This means that this spiral galaxy is actually three times larger - 220,000 light years across - than astronomers had previously estimated. It was previously believed that these stars were part of a halo that surrounded Andromeda, but weren't actually part of its disk. This discovery hadn't been made until now because detecting the motion of these stars requires very precise observations.