The European Space Agency's Huygens probe successfully detached from Cassini on December 25, and began its brief journey to Titan. The probe is currently dormant, though, and will remain this way for most of its 20-day journey to Saturn's largest moon. Four days before arrival, a triply-redundant alarm clock will wake the probe up, and it will prepare for arrival. On January 14, 2005, the probe will enter Titan's atmosphere, descending to the surface in about 2 hours.

New observations of Jupiter's moon, Amalthea, reveal that it probably didn't form with the giant planet. The observations were made with the powerful Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, which found that Amalthea has unusual amounts of water-carrying minerals. These typically form in low temperature environments. Astronomers theorize that Jupiter's moons formed from several small objects merging together, and Amalthea could be an example of one of these building blocks that never had a chance to merge.

An unmanned Progress cargo ship lifted off from Kazakhstan over night, carrying much needed supplies for the International Space Station. Food supplies were getting low on board the station, so the Progress is loaded up with a 112-day supply of food, as well as water, air, propellant, and additional spare parts for the station. It's expected to dock automatically on December 25th to the aft port of the Zvezda living quarters module.

After a 7 year journey, and traveling more than 3.2 billion km (1.9 billion miles) with Cassini, Huygens is about to head out on its own. In just a few hours, controllers will give the order to detach Huygens from Cassini using tension-loaded springs, and send its on its way for its encounter with Titan in 20 days. The exciting part of Huygens mission will take just over two hours as it plummets through the moon's atmosphere, sending back details to Cassini. And if Huygens is really lucky, it'll survive on the surface of Titan for another two hours.

A newly discovered 400-metre (1,300 ft) asteroid has been given a 2 on the Torino asteroid impact scale; the first time this has ever happened. According to current calculations, Asteroid 2004 MN4 will have a 1/300 chance of striking the Earth on April 13, 2029. Astronomers expect the threat rating will decrease as more observations are made. If it actually did strike the Earth, an asteroid this large would do a significant amount of damage.

Photographs taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft seem to indicate that there still could be active volcanism on the Red Planet. The spacecraft took detailed observations of five Martian volcanoes, and found that some had erupted as recently as 4 million years ago. Although this is ancient in human terms, it means that Mars is still probably geologically active. This is very important to biologists, because it means that there could be geothermic vents with heat and liquid water - havens for microbial life.

When Huygens makes its plunge into Titan's thick atmosphere on January 14, 2005, it'll be watched by a host of instruments, including the radio telescopes from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). By measuring the frequency of Huygens' radio signals, scientists will be able to calculate the east-west wind speeds, and build a better model of Titan's weather systems. Another team will track the probe's trajectory to within 1 km (3,300 feet).

NASA has selected six proposals for instruments that will fly with the upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). These instruments include: a laser altimeter, a high-resolution camera, a neutron detector to search for water ice, a thermometer to map the temperature of the lunar surface, an ultraviolet detector to look into shadowed regions, and a cosmic ray telescope to measure background radiation. The LRO will travel to the Moon in 2008, and help gather information needed for future human explorers as part of the new space vision.

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has discovered baby galaxies forming in our relative neighborhood, casting doubt on the theory that only small galaxies were forming this long after the Big Bang. These new galaxies are called ultraviolet luminous galaxies, and they're only 2-4 billion light-years away. They could be as young as 100 million to one billion years old. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer surveyed thousands of galaxies before finding these few dozen ultraviolet-bright ones, which are teeming in new star formation.

One of the highlights of Cassini's mission to Saturn is about to get underway, when the ESA's Huygens probe detaches from the spacecraft on December 24, and begins its solo journey to Titan. Once freed from Cassini, it'll remain in a dormant sleep until a timer wakes it up on January 14, shortly before it enters the moon's atmosphere. It will take 2.5 hours to pass through Titan's atmosphere, and it may even survive a landing on the moon's mysterious surface.

The first Delta 4 Heavy rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Tuesday evening, but it appears there was a glitch that put the rocket's satellite payload into an incorrect orbit. The rocket's first stage shut down 8 seconds earlier than expected, so the upper stage was fired longer than originally planned to compensate. Flight controllers still haven't made an official announcement about the demonstration payload it was carrying, but two additional nanosatellites haven't made contact yet. NASA is considering this vehicle as a potential replacement for some of the space shuttle's cargo carrying duties, so the launch was being watched carefully.

The European Space Agency has produced a detailed temperature map of the Mediterranean Ocean from space that would have required millions of thermometres. All 3 million square km (1.9 million miles) of the ocean are getting their temperature checked every single day as part of the ESA's Medspiration project. The data is being gathered by instruments on several spacecraft and then combined by researchers to help understand climate models. Once the bugs are ironed out, future experiments could keep track of almost the entire Earth's temperature in a similar manner.

Researchers from the University of Rochester are working on a new kind of laser communications system that could dramatically improve the bandwidth that future rovers would use to send data, video and images back to Earth. The team has overcome one of the problems of an efficient fibre laser system, which caused them to shut down at high levels of power. Fired from Mars, a traditional laser would spread out hundreds of kilometres during the long journey, but a fibre laser would still concentrate to within a couple of km, and allow the rovers to transmit high-bandwidth data.

An Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from the European Space Agency's launch centre in French Guiana on Saturday, carrying a French military surveillance satellite and 6 additional microsatellites. The Helios 2A satellite is part of Europe's spy satellite network that will be independent of the United States'. The microsats included 4 Essaim satellites designed to demonstrate technology for a future network; the Parasol atmospheric sciences satellite, and a Spanish-built Nanosat, which will also demonstrate technology.

Season's Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Take the time from your busy holiday schedule to relax with some astronomy. There will be three minor meteor showers this week: the Coma Berenicids, Delta Arietid and the Ursids. The waxing Moon will become our guide as we locate historic variable Mira. Mare Humorum and Crater Gassendi are great features to learn about on the lunar surface and we'll travel to the outer arm of our own galaxy to study a multiple star system - Sigma Orionis. Not enough? Then I have a special and very challenging surprise for you on Christmas Day! Although the Moon goes full during this seven-day period, those who are just beginning with new telescopes will appreciate its presence as an easy "pointer" to Saturn. So lift your eyes toward the heavens and enjoy the bright stars of Winter...

Because here's what's up!

One instrument on board NASA's Cassini spacecraft allows it to detect lightning. As part of initial tests, the spacecraft was able to detect lightning on Earth from a distance of 89,000 km (55,300 miles). As it approached Saturn last July, it began detecting lightning on the Ringed Planet at a distance of 161 million km (100 million miles). This means that lightning on Saturn is 1 million times stronger than on our own planet. One possible reason is because the gas giants could have magnetic fields similar to the Sun, which rotates at different speeds at different latitudes.

Ice particles are a key part of Saturn's changing environment according to a new paper published by Larry Esposito from the University of Colorado at Boulder. According to Esposito, much of Saturn's system is filled with ice, and its components: oxygen and hydrogen, which extend millions of kilometres outward from the planet. Researchers are seeing large fluctuations in the amount of oxygen, which could be caused by small, icy moons which are colliding with the planet's E ring, which produces small grains of ice that yield oxygen atoms.

An Atlas V rocket successfully lifted off this morning carrying an AMC-16 broadcast satellite into orbit. The rocket launched at 1207 UTC (7:07 am EST) from Cape Canaveral, and put the satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit nearly two hours later. Its final location will be at 85-degrees West, where it will provide broadcast services to the Americas.

On Cassini's recent flyby of Titan, scientists discovered that Saturn's largest moon has a surprising number of layers of haze in its atmosphere. These layers of haze extend several hundred kilometres above the moon's surface. This image was taken in ultraviolet, and then colourized on computer to look like natural colour.

Cassini took this image of Dione set against giant Saturn as it approached the icy moon for its December 14th flyby. This picture, taken from 603,000 kilometers (375,000 miles), shows how Dione has colour variations across its surface, but it's largely gray. Several oval shaped storms are visible raging across Saturn's banded atmosphere.

The Subaru telescope captured this image of a dusty planetary nebula surrounding a star similar to our own Sun at the end of its life. Located 5,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, the nebula is very similar to the more famous Ring Nebula. When they reach the end of their lives, stars like our own Sun shed layers of gas and dust which pile up around the star, and are pushed outward. In this nebula, the material has reached a distance of 100 times the size of our Solar System.

The shape of the Helix Nebula has always been a bit of a mystery to astronomers; some theorized that it's donut-shaped, or it could even resemble a snake-like coil. But new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope have helped to shed some light on this issue. Researchers tracked the speed of material being expended from the central dying star, and came to the conclusion that it's actually two gaseous disks which are perpendicular to each other. One disk was expelled 6,600 years ago, and the other was fired off 12,000 years ago.

Astronomers had seen storms around Titan's south pole before, but now they've been discovered at the moon's mid-latitudes as well. The discovery was made using the Gemini North and Keck 2 observatories, which have adaptive optics systems capable of resolving Saturn's largest moon with great detail. These storms could be created by surface activities, like cryovolcanoes which could spew an icy mix of chemicals into the atmosphere. It could also be caused by seasonal temperature changes, like the weather here on Earth.

Just days after completing its second flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, Cassini proceeded on to its next target: Dione, Saturn's 4th largest moon. The spacecraft came within just 81,000 kilometres (50,600 miles) of the moon and sent back a stream of close up images of its strange surface, which are now being analyzed by scientists.

Scientists were surprised to learn that the Earth's magnetic field can concentrate radiation from the Sun during powerful solar storms, even in places that were previously thought to be safe. One region is the gap between the two Van Allen radiation belts that surround our planet, which resemble two donuts, one inside the other. In between these belts is a relatively safe area that could be prime real estate for satellites because of the low radiation levels. During the extreme solar weather last year, that safe zone actually filled up with radiation and became quite hazardous for more than five weeks.

NASA has selected eight proposals for experiments that will be installed on the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, which will launch for the Red Planet in 2009. The instruments proposed for the minivan-sized rover include: a stereo video camera, a laser that can blast material off from 10 metres, a microscope, an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, an X-ray diffraction/X-ray fluorescence instrument, a radiation detector, a descent camera, and a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer which would be able to detect organic compounds and chemicals produced by bacteria.

Engineers are making the final preparations for the launch of NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, due to lift off from Cape Canaveral on January 12, 2005. The spacecraft will make a six-month journey to reach the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1, and then deploy a probe that will crash into it at 37,000 km/h (23,000 mph). The 1-metre square copper probe will completely vapourize, and should carve out a hole the size of the Roman Coliseum, which Deep Impact will be able to study as it passes the comet shortly afterwards. The impact will also be recorded by Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and dozens of Earth-based observatories.

NASA's Spirit Mars rover has found even more evidence that there was liquid water in the Red Planet's past. Scientists have identified a mineral called geothite, which is similar to the jarosite found by Opportunity, and forms only in the presence of water (gaseous, liquid or ice). The rovers previously found hematite, but this can sometimes form without water. Spirit will now climb further up the Columbia Hills to attempt to answer if the water was present on the surface, or just pooled underground.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft swept past Titan for the second time yesterday, this time on a more direct course, and passed by 1,200 kilometres above the surface. Once again the spacecraft's cameras took hundreds of images as Cassini drew closer to Titan, revealing the same surface features now associated with the landing site of the Huygens probe that is set to decend to Titan's surface in mid January.

Greetings fellow SkyWatchers! This week starts off on an exciting note as one of the most prolific and predictable meteor showers of the year happens tonight - the Geminids! Thanks to the one-day old Moon, this year dark skies could produce as many (or more!) as 100 meteors per hour during peak times. Think that's enough for one week? Then think again... Comet C/2004 Q2 Macholz is smoking up the southern skies and has become the premier object of December! As much as I hate to say it, the Moon is back again but that doesn't mean that we can't take the time to do some "shallow sky" work and explore lunar features. As always, there are things here for all observers, so join me on the dark side...

Because here's what's up!

When it's complete, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be the world's largest observatory, with a primary mirror 25.4 metres (83 feet) across - 4.5 times the collecting power of any telescope on Earth. The GMT is scheduled to be completed in 2016, in a remote location in Northern Chile, which has some of the best viewing conditions in the world. The observatory will be built using 7 primary mirrors arranged in a flower pattern, and reuse the manufacturing equipment that helped build the Large Binocular Telescope mirrors now being installed on Mt. Graham.

Cassini took this image of Saturn's rings on October 27 as it swung past the dark side of the planet during its first close pass after it arrived. The image also contains three of Saturn's moons: Mimas, Janus, and Prometheus. Although it's normally quite bright, the B ring looks dark from this side, when it's not being illuminated directly by the Sun.

Some people sit in the tub, yell "Eureka", and come up with a brand new view of matter. Others can be riding a trolley home and at the sight of a clock initiate a whole new concept of time. Yet another more pedantic method is to follow government procedures to resolve riddles. Steven Dick and James Strick in their book, The Living Universe - NASA and the development of Astrobiology, narrate how this occurred for the new academic field of astrobiology. Though perhaps not as film-worthy as instantaneous flashes, the four decades of meetings, workshops and programs described therein show that this distinct academic area had an eventful and exciting coming of age.

As the year winds down, observers in the Northern Hemisphere may notice the days growing steadily shorter; while observers in the Southern Hemisphere notice the days getting longer. In addition, in the north the days are getting colder and in the south the days are getting warmer. All this happens while Earth is moving toward a point in its orbit known as the Winter Solstice. But what is the Solstice anyway?

Both Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope have provided astronomers with a view of planetary systems forming around other stars similar to our own Sun. Hubble viewed a young star, only 50 to 250 million years old, which could have gas giants, but its rocky planets would still be forming. This could be a view into what our Solar System looked like when it was first forming. Spitzer found 6 much older stars with planetary disks; closer to 4 billion years old, which is the age of our Sun. These stars are known to have gas giants, and probably have rocky planets as well.

Astronomers working with the European Southern Observatory took a series of images of the Tarantula Nebula (aka 30 Doradus), which is one of the most impressive objects in the Southern sky. Located 170,000 light-years away in the constellation of Doradus, the Tarantula Nebula got its name because the various patches of gas and dust look like the legs of a spider emanating from the central "body" of young hot stars. The gas is mainly just protons and neutrons which are kept apart by energetic radiation coming off the stars in the area.

Cassini took this beautiful picture of Dione, one of Saturn's larger moons, which has strange wispy streaks across its surface. The spacecraft will be getting a much better view of the 1,118 km (695 mile) moon in mid-December when it makes a closer pass.

A study by the National Academy of Sciences is suggesting that astronauts should be the ones to upgrade the aging Hubble Space Telescope, and not the robotic mission currently favoured by NASA. The independent panel of scientists was commissioned by NASA to review options for the aging telescope, and they delivered their report on Wednesday. They suggested that the difference in risk between visiting Hubble and the International Space Station is very small, while a robotic mission would be of similar cost and would be much more likely to fail.

With Jupiter and now Saturn getting attention, NASA is setting its eyes further out in the Solar System - on Neptune. A mission to this "ice giant" could launch in a decade, and arrive at the 8th planet by 2035. It would be powered by a nuclear-electric propulsion system, similar to the one being considered for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission. Because it is so far from the Sun, Neptune has had less interaction with the solar wind, asteroids and comets, so studying it would give scientists a better understanding of the conditions that led to the formation of the Solar System.

Cassini took this image of Saturn's outer C ring on October 29, 2004 when it was 838,000 km (521,000 miles) away from the planet. It shows the tremendous difference in brightness in the rings, as well as the large scale wavy formations that were discovered by Voyager 24 years ago.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express took this image of Reull Vallis, a region in the southern hemisphere of Mars. It's an outflow channel 20 km (12.4 miles) wide that extends 1,500 km (932 miles) long, cutting deeply into the terrain. There are many impact craters in the area which have been filled with material from flowing glaciers which have long since disappeared.

NASA released Cassini's photos of Iapetus this week, taken when the spacecraft was within 1.1 million km (684,000 miles) of Saturn's moon. The 1,436 km (892 mile) moon is famous for its two faces: one hemisphere and the poles are snowy white, while the other side is very dark. You can see many impact craters in the bright areas, and in the transition between the two hemispheres. The string of dots are mountains that may rival some of the tallest mountains on Earth, Io, and maybe even Mars.

The main camera for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was delivered to NASA this week to be installed on the spacecraft. This camera will be capable of viewing 6 km (3.5 mile) swaths of Mars at a resolution of 25 cm (10 inches) per pixel (Mars Express' camera can resolve down to 2 metres per pixel). MRO is due to launch in August 2005 when the next Earth-Mars launch window opens up, and it's expected to arrive at the Red Planet in March 2006. The orbiter will also serve as a communications link for upcoming lander and rover missions.

It's been a 7-year journey, but now it's almost over; Huygens will detach from Cassini on December 25th. On January 14th, it'll reach Titan and plunge into the moon's thick clouds and parachute down to its surface. It'll be transferring data back to Cassini for the whole journey, and if it survives the landing, it'll be able to send back data for an additional 2 hours until Cassini moves out of range. If everything goes well, scientists will get new insights into Titan's unique environment, which could be similar to the Earth's early history.

Greetings fellow sky watchers. This will be an exciting week for both hemispheres! Our own solar system continues to put on a wonderful show before dawn and the Moon will occult Jupiter for a substantial portion of North America on December 7. The Southern Hemisphere is favoured for four meteor showers, as the Phoenicid, Puppid-Velid, Monocerotid and Sygma Hydrids all peak during this week. For evening observers, Comet Tucker reaches perihelion, as well as Comet Tsuchinshan for the early morning. Other high "lights" for the week include viewing two southern globular clusters (M30 and M2), a look into one of our galactic neighbors as we locate the M33, an introduction to stellar spectra and two unusually colorful planetary nebulae. As always, you will find things of interest here for all observers, be it with binoculars, telescopes, or just with your eyes. So look forward to this week's dark skies and let me take you higher...

Because here's what's up!

The 2-man crew onboard the International Space Station are going to be rationing their food carefully between now and the arrival of a Progress cargo ship on December 25 which will be carrying additional supplies. It appears that these astronauts, and the previous occupants, have been eating more food than engineers were predicting. This next Progress flight will contain extra food supplies, but if there's a problem with the mission and the cargo ship is destroyed, Commander Leroy Chiao and Russian flight engineer Salizhan Sharipov may have to evacuate the station, as additional supplies can't reach them in time.