The crew of the International Space Station are safely back inside after completing a 5+ hour spacewalk. During their time in space, Commander Leroy Chiao and Flight Engineer Salizhan Sharipov installed a $10 million German prototype robot arm which will demonstrate the feasibility of keeping a repair robot outside the station. Sharipov discovered residue on the outside of three vents that the station uses to expel waste products into space. This is unusual, and could be contributing to the recent problems with air on board the station. The crew of Expedition 10 will make another spacewalk in late March.

The ESA's SMART-1 has taken its first close-up pictures of the Moon's surface, snapping a series of photos from an altitude ranging between 1,000 and 5,000 km above the lunar surface. SMART-1 only entered lunar orbit on November 15, and has been spiraling down for two months. The spacecraft will make a medium-resolution survey of the Moon for the next two weeks before lowering its orbit to begin 5 months of detailed observations, getting as close as 300 km. This first image is centred at lunar latitude 75? North, and the largest crater in the picture is called Brianchon.

Astronomers with the European Space Agency believe that the supermassive black hole (Sgr A*) at the heart of the Milky Way was much more active only 350 years ago, when it was releasing a million times more energy than today. The study was made using the ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory, which was able to detect how a cloud of hydrogen gas near Sgr A* is being bathed in gamma radiation. Since this cloud 350 light years away from Sgr A*, astronomers know how long ago the radiation was released. It's dim right now, but Sgr A* is sure to flare up again in the future when it consumes another large quantity of matter.

It's amazing thing but many amateur astronomers (and possibly the occasional professional as well!) don't have the big picture on where the bulk of the visible light in the universe comes from. "Sure" you say, "from the stars!" Ah but that's the easy answer. In fact the more you learn about light, the less straightforward such an answer becomes. In this article, Jeff Barbour probes a little deeper and the implications could light the way to an extraordinarily new appreciation for the "star stuff" seen all around us.

The lunar module brought two men from an orbit about our moon onto the moon's surface and then back into the lunar orbit. Though fairly simple to describe, this craft encompassed many firsts and delved into realms never before experienced by humankind. Scott Sullivan, in his book 'Virtual LM', unravels the technology of this spaceship and its constituent parts using hundreds of different visual plates. Not as complex or detailed as engineering schematics but smoothed and coloured for clarity and understanding, these views provide a vivid, easily comprehensible, in-depth perspective of this first true spacecraft for humankind.

A team of Colorado University researchers has uncovered bacteria that primarily use hydrogen as their fuel source in the colourful hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. Bacteria, such as salmonella, have been uncovered which use hydrogen for fuel before, but nobody expected this was happening in the intense heat of the hot springs. By using very sensitive detectors, they discovered that there's a constant supply of hydrogen being delivered to the bacteria from hydrothermal vents. Hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe, and finding bacteria that consumes it in extreme conditions further expands the places life could potentially gain a foothold.

Greetings, fellow Skywatchers! As we start the week off with a "Snow Moon", we'll enjoy its bright features as we wait for its later rise and become more Sirius. There will be plenty of opportunities to explore as we look into the M79 and the M35. As Leo "the Lion", swallows bright Selene leaving us with earlier dark skies, it will be our pleasure to sail along on the fantastic Orion Nebula and journey to the very edge of our own galaxy as we hunt down the "Intergalactic Wanderer." For many of us who are tired of the winter weather, there will be no shortage of smiles as we capture the "Eskimo Nebula"! As always, there are plenty of things to see and learn about, so open your eyes to the skies...

Because here's what's up!

Something wiped out most of the life on Earth 250 million years ago. Evidence has been building that it was an asteroid or comet strike that made Earth unlivable nearly instantly. But other scientists think that it wasn't instantaneous; instead, they found fossil evidence that the extinction occurred over the course of 10 million years. A group of volcanoes in Siberia spewed out gas continuously that set off a runaway greenhouse effect. Lowered oxygen levels in the atmosphere combined with intense heat would have hit life a deadly double blow.

Scientists have known for many years that Regulus spins faster than our own Sun, but astronomers from Georgia State University have observed it more precisely and discovered that it's shaped like an egg. This massive star has 5 times the diameter of our own Sun, and yet it completes a rotation in only 15.9 hours (our own Sun takes a month to rotate once). This extreme speed gives Regulus a bulging waistline; in fact, it's spinning at 86% of its breakup speed. Any faster, and the star would actually tear itself apart.

NASA's Swift space observatory has seen its first Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB), probably the birth of a black hole. Swift detected the explosion on January 17, and turned to face it within 200 seconds - enough time to watch the explosion with its X-Ray telescope. This is the first time an X-Ray observatory has ever watched a GRB while it was bursting, and not just the afterglow. Swift is still in its checkout phase, so its Ultraviolet/Optical telescope wasn't ready to image the GRB yet, but it should be ready by February 1.

When Huygens descended through Titans clouds, snapping hundreds of pictures, it revealed a world with many similar physical features to our own planet: clouds, rivers, lakebeds, islands, rocks and dust. But Titan is cold, plunging below -170?C; a temperature where methane can exist as both a liquid and a gas. Huygens saw a series of drainage channels running from brighter highlands to flatter, darker regions. It landed in a material that has the consistency of loose sand. Instead of rocks, Huygens is surrounded by boulders of water ice, and instead of dirt, the probe found hydrocarbon particles that settled out of the atmosphere.

NASA's Opportunity Rover has discovered a meteorite on the surface of Mars, near the wreckage of its heat shield. The pitted object is about the size of a basketball, and contains mostly iron and nickel. Stoney meteorites are much more common than iron meteorites here on Earth, so it's possible that many of the "rocks" the rovers have seen could actually be meteorites. If it turns out that meteorites are common, it will tell scientists quite a bit about how quickly the region has eroded.

Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to watch a small, faint companion as it orbits around a larger star. By measuring its orbit, the astronomers have been able to estimate that its mass is 93 times that of Jupiter. This is much less than a normal star, but twice as heavy as predicted by theory. If these brown dwarfs and free floating extrasolar planets are heavier than expected, then astronomers have been overestimating the number of them in the Universe.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft took this image of Claritas Fossae, a series of linear fractures located in the Tharsis region of Mars. It's located on the Tharsis rise, which is south of the three large volcanoes known as the Tharsis Montes. It has linear fractures up to 150 km (93 miles) across, which were created when the whole Tharsis region bulged up several kilometres. The smooth surfaces are places where the area was covered by lava flows.

Rockets look pretty impressive. Huge plumes of smoke and flame billow out of their base, while much further up, their tops, so slowly then oh so quickly, ascend into the heavens. Over in a few moments, the awe inspiring launches are the cumulation of years of analysis and design. Alfred J. Zaehringer and Steve Whitfield in their book 'Rocket Science' give an insight into some of the more basic design elements. Their perspective, as it were, is literally 'from the trenches' as Zaehringer defended against the V2 rockets of World War II and then went on to assist with the up-rating of the Saturn C5 and the assessment of solid rocket systems. The result is a concise, yet broad overview of rocketry.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, the Director General of the European Space Agency and Anatoly Perminov, the Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency have signed an agreement that will promote cooperation and partnership in the development of new launch systems. The two agencies are already working together to build and launch Soyuz rockets from the ESA's spaceport in French Guiana. They now plan to begin developing a new launcher with reusable liquid engines and upper stages. They hope to have their new rockets flying by 2020.

B-15A is a giant iceberg off the coast of Antarctica, and it's now on a collision course with a floating pier of ice called the Drygalski ice tongue. Satellite photos showed B-15A rushing towards the tongue, but then it slowed down in the last couple of days. Scientists think that there's a shallow seabed underneath the Drygalski ice tongue that has protected it from these kinds of collisions for so long - it's been there for at least 4000 years. B-15A is 120 km (75 miles) long, and contains about 2000 square km (772 sq miles), so it just have the momentum to do the trick.

Any idea how deep the eye could go if there was no atmosphere to scatter starlight? Ever wonder what optical and physical principles limit the eye's ability to see small, faint things? Have you given thought to how the "why" of astronomy changed before and after the telescope? In this article Jeff Barbour explores the limits of human sight - with and without the telescope. Learn more about the equipment available to contemporary amateurs making backyard astronomy the "extra-terrestrial" hobby of choice.

Red dwarfs are smaller and cooler than our own Sun, but they account for 70% of the stars in our galaxy. Astronomers have wondered why there are so many red dwarfs, but they never seem to have protoplanetary discs of dust surrounding them, indicating the formation of new planets. These stars are too small to remove dust the way larger stars do it, but astronomers from UCLA think they could be using a process called "stellar wind drag". Even though they're smaller, red dwarfs can have very intense magnetic fields, producing a powerful solar wind. It's this solar wind that removes the dust, hiding evidence of planet formation.

Scientists at the European Space Agency now believe that Huygens landed with a splat when it reached the surface of Titan last Friday. They reached this conclusion because the probe's downward-facing High Resolution Thermal Imager camera lens has accumulated material since Huygens landed. This means that the probe has probably been settling down into the muck. Another possiblity, though, is that it steamed hydrocarbons off the surface which are collecting on the lens.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Is it back? Yes. But this time it's Antares and Mars! The Moon will be out in full force this week - but what a wonderful place to explore. There is no astronomical delight more loaded with detail than our own natural satellite, so join us as we walk in the Alpine Valley, climb Mons Pico, survey the terrain of Clavius and even scale the "Great Wall"! There be a grand lunar occultation this week and the "Magnificent Machholz" will perform a 'fly-by' on Mirfak. Not enough? Then lend me your ears as you'll discover Radio JOVE. We'll color the cloudy skies with atmospheric phenomena and learn which "Twin" has many secrets! So open your eyes to the skies...

Because here's what's up!

Here's a beautiful 1280x1024 desktop wallpaper of barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This image was unveiled last week at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Barred spirals are different from regular spiral galaxies because the arms don't spiral all the way to the centre of the galaxy, but instead are connected to straight bars that contain the nucleus of the galaxy. The galaxy lies 69 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus.

Most large galaxies have the familiar spiral shaped disc surrounding a central bulge. But when and how do these galaxies take on their characteristic shape? New observations from the European Space Agency surveying 195 galaxies have given astronomers some clues. They've theorized that large galaxies go through a process called "spiral galaxy rebuilding", where galaxies collide, merge, and then begin a period of furious star formation. Part of the gas that didn't fall in rebuilds a disc around the galactic core creating a new spiral galaxy. This process could be repeated many times, building up the galaxy over billions of years.

After a seven year journey, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe is now on the surface of Titan. The probe entered Titan's smoggy atmosphere right on time, and slowed itself down using a series of parachutes. It then gathered data using its camera and science instruments for just over 2 hours until it landed. The probe then relayed all its data through Cassini back to Earth, where scientists will be poring over it for years. Preliminary data indicate that the probe did land safely on some kind of solid surface, but the controllers aren't sure what it was yet. Photographs and more results will be announced later today. (Make sure you check the forum, where we're posting links to pictures as we get them.)

The powerful W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii took this image of a dying star nicknamed the "Water Fountain Nebula". This nebula is 6500 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scorpius, and was imaged at near-infrared wavelengths. The double corkscrew structure of the nebula indicates that there's probably a rapidly spinning remnant at the centre which is blasting out twin jets of material. By taking photos of the nebula again in a few years, astronomers will be able to understand how nebulas like this evolve over time.

A researcher from Indiana University Bloomington has discovered what could be primordial hydrogen, unchanged since the Big Bang. This hydrogen was found in galaxy UGC 5288, located 16 million light years away from Earth. When studied with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico, the galaxy seems to be surrounded by a huge disk of hydrogen gas. This could be a place to examine pristine hydrogen that hasn't been "polluted" by heavier elements created in stars.

A dense globular cluster near the heart of the Milky Way has been found to contain dozens of rapidly-spinning microsecond pulsars. The discovery was made using the 100-meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia. Many of the pulsars are interesting, too; there are 13 in binary systems, and two that rotate 600 times a second - as fast as a household blender. The discovery of this many pulsars in a star cluster should keep astronomers busy for years, gaining insight into both the nature of these objects, and the conditions they formed in.

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, beginning a six-month cruise to smash a hole in a comet. If everything goes well, the spacecraft will reach Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005 deploying an impactor that will carve out a large crater. The resulting explosion should be the equivalent of 4 tonnes of TNT, and could be bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye back on Earth. Deep Impact will be watching the explosion from a safe distance of 500 km, and should get a unique view of the comet's composition, and what lies under its surface.

This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud - a satellite galaxy located 210,000 light-years away. Hubble's powerful optics have helped astronomers discover a population of infant stars embedded in the nebula NGC 346. Although there are many regions of star formation in the Milky Way, our companion galaxy is much smaller and lacks many of heavier elements forged in stars. This means that star formation in the SMC is much more like the star formation of the early Universe, before many of the heavier elements that make our planets had formed (carbon, iron, oxygen etc).

The W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii took this photograph of two galaxies about to collide over 5 billion light-years away from us. The image was possible because of the new laser guide star system for adaptive optics which corrects the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere. This allows Keck to have nearly the same view as space-based observatories like Hubble. Both galaxies in this collision are mature, and seem to have used up all their gas. This won't create spectacular amounts of new star formation, which is what happens with less mature galaxies.

Astronomers using the giant Gemini South 8-metre telescope in Chile have spotted what seems to be a collision between two planet-sized objects orbiting the nearby star Beta Pictoris. A collision like this would create a lot of dust, but the star is like a powerful fan that should quickly blow it all away. Based on the amount of dust still there, astronomers think the collision happened only 100 years ago, or so. This is exactly like the scenario astronomers believe our own Solar System went through 5 billion years ago as the various planets formed through multiple collisions.

On Friday, January 14, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe will plunge through the atmosphere of Saturn's smog-enshrouded moon Titan. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will have two hours to record everything it can about the moon's atmosphere before it meets an unknown fate on the surface - it could land with a splash, splat, or a smash. Huygens will reach Titan at 1013 UTC (5:15 am EST), and then deploy its parachute a few minutes after that. It will reach the surface by 1234 UTC (7:34 am EST), and data about the journey will arrive at Earth shortly after.

The Hubble Space Telescope has helped to reveal a trio of massive, young star clusters which might have been formed by smaller clusters merging together. This tightly packed group of clusters were found in the active star forming region of NGC 5461 (located inside spiral galaxy M101), which is located 23 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. These super clusters can contain the mass of more than 1 million suns, and it's believed that they're the precursors to massive globular clusters. In NGC 5461, the various clusters are distinct, but interacting with each other, and will eventually merge into a single, super cluster.

New observations using NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite have given astronomers evidence that their assumptions and calculations about white dwarf stars are correct. FUSE made detailed observations of Sirius B, which is 10,000 times dimmer than its companion Sirius A (the brightest star in the sky). You can only measure the mass of a star in a binary system like this; you can observe the two stars' orbit, get the period, and then find the sum of the two star masses. These new observations helped astronomers determine Sirius B's size and mass within 1%.

One mystery has been puzzling astronomers for a few years now; strange distant clouds of intensely glowing material located billions of light-years away. They've even struggled to come up with a name, and have settled for "blobs". Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have caught a glimpse inside the blobs, and discovered evidence that they surround multiple galaxies which could be in the process of merging together. Under visible light, these galaxies are unremarkable, but Spitzer uncovered that they're some of the brightest galaxies in the Universe. If the blobs are created by galactic mergers, astronomers will need to figure out why they're putting out so much material.

Engineers at NASA and the European Space Agency have calculated Huygen's descent through Titan's atmosphere tomorrow, and they think they know where it'll land. The probe will fall by parachute for about 2 hours from an altitude of 160 km (99 miles) until it reaches the surface. During this descent, it will be taking pictures and measuring the atmosphere with five science instruments. All these data will be sent to Cassini, and then relayed back to Earth. Controllers are hoping that Cassini will get a chance to take a panoramic picture of Titan's surface as it descends, slowly spinning, to help explain the strange formations uncovered by Cassini on an earlier flyby.

Astronomers recently announced the discovery of Sedna, a nearly Pluto-sized object on a 12,500 year-long orbit around the Sun. New computer simulations from the Southwest Research Institute demonstrate that Sedna could formed out past the orbit of Pluto, instead of being created closer to the Sun, and then ejected by the gravity of the gas giants. If this happened, it would mean that the zone of planetary formation in our Solar System could extend much further than previously believed, and there could be other objects like Sedna lurking in outer reaches.

An international team of astronomers think they've found the missing link between modern galaxies like our own Milky Way to the Big Bang. The team spent 10 years mapping out the distribution of 220,000 galaxies measured as part of an extensive survey of galaxy position and motion. Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe contained slight irregularities, created by subatomic processes and sound waves moving through the superhot afterglow. These irregularities were amplified by gravity, eventually pulling material into the first stars and galaxies.

Last month's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami were powerful enough that they actually changed the Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, and moved the North Pole. Not much, of course, but enough that scientists can actually measure the effect. Scientists from NASA found that the length of the day shortened by 2.68 microseconds, and the North Pole shifted by 2.5 centimetres (1 inch). The Sumatran earthquake registered as a 9 on the Richter scale, making it the 4th largest earthquake measured in 100 years.

Astronomers have found three red supergiant stars which are huge; bigger than anything previously discovered. The three stars are called KW Sagitarii (9,800 light-years away), V354 Cephei (9,000 light-years away), and KY Cygni (5,200 light-years away). All three are 1,500 times bigger than our own Sun, and would reach out midway between Jupiter and Saturn if they were in our Solar System. These stars aren't extremely massive, though, they're only 25 times the mass of the Sun (stars have been discovered which have 150 times the mass of the Sun).

The Hubble Space Telescope is helping to confirm the potential discovery of an extrasolar planet; the companion of a dim brown dwarf located 225 light-years away. The object was first discovered in April 2004 by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Astronomers think it might be a 5 Jupiter-mass planet because it's glowing too dimly to be a star. The planet and its parent star are 130% of the distance between Pluto and the Sun, so it takes 2,500 years to make one orbit. If Hubble confirms the object, this could become the first extrasolar planet ever imaged directly.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! This week begins on the "dark side" as we welcome New Moon at perigee and do an in-depth study of a portion of the Eridanus/Fornax galaxy fields with targets viewable by a variety of scope sizes and skill levels. (Veteran galaxy hunters? You asked for it - you got it! I think you'll appreciate these challenges!) We will continue to track the progress of the Mercury/Venus pairing as they appear about one-third a degree apart by mid-week and head off together into the sunrise by week's end. We will greet the "Old Moon In The New Moon's Arms" and watch as Saturn reaches opposition. The Southern Hemisphere will enjoy Comet LINEAR K4 as it cruises past Lambda Pictor and those in the north will take on an incredibly old galactic cluster - M37. Not enough? Then hold on tight to your optics as the "Magnificent Machholz" not only sweeps by Algol, but does so during a time when the Demon Star "does its thing"! The Delta Cancrid meteor shower fills the exciting weekend agenda, so hope for clear skies and get thee outside...

Because here's what's up!

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a dusty ring of material orbiting nearby Vega which was probably the result of a series of protoplanets smashing into each other. Vega is the fifth brightest star in the sky, located only 25 light-years away in the constellation of Lyra. This dust is constantly being blown out by Vega's intense radiation, so it's unlikely that the star has had this much dust for its entire lifetime. Instead, this ring must have been formed recently, perhaps when a Pluto-sized object was pulverized within the last million years or so.

The very heart of the Milky Way is obscured by a thick wall of dust that optical telescopes can't peer through. But astronomers have used the dust-penetrating infrared capabilities of the 6.5 metre Magellan telescope in Chile to look past the wall, and map stars never seen before. Astronomers found thousands of stars jammed into an area only 6 light-years across. The purpose of these observations was to uncover stars which could be orbiting and feeding white dwarfs, neutron stars, or even black holes. These special binary objects are thought to be more common in the crowded centre of the Milky Way.

Scientists already considered Saturn's moon Iapetus unusual, because of its strange two-toned appearance; one hemisphere is dark, while the other is bright. But new images from Cassini show an even more unusual mystery: it has a seam. It's 20 km (12 miles) high and runs 1,300 km (808 miles) directly around Iapetus' equator. In some places, this ridge is so high it rivals Olympus Mons, which is unusual for an object which is 1/5th the mass of Mars. Researcher will have to wait until September 2007 for Cassini's next pass, when it will provide pictures 100x better resolution.

After four years of data crunching, NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have completed a comprehensive topographical map of 80% of the Earth's surface. Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific were the final areas released to the public this week. Many of the smaller islands have never been properly mapped because of their remoteness, often being obscured by persistent clouds. It's these smaller islands which are at great risk to weather and long-term sea level rise, so being able to predict where water levels will go will be very helpful to mitigating future disasters like the Asian Tsunami.