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.

This sweeping view of Saturn's rings shows the incredible detail and grandeur of the system, from the outer F ring to the inner C ring. The difference in brightness at each spot in the rings highlights the different concentrations of ring particles. Cassini took this image from below the ring plane, looking up; the top is closer to the spacecraft, and the bottom is farther away. Cassini took the picture when it was 836,000 km (519,000 miles) away.

Cassini took this amazing photograph of Prometheus, one of Saturn's small shepherd moons as it's tugging material away from the planet's F ring. The F ring resolves into 5 separate strands, and you can see how tiny Prometheus has a stream of material flowing towards it. Prometheus is only 102 km (63 miles) across, and scientists still aren't sure exactly why it creates the different knots and breaks in the F ring.

A series of research papers about past water on Mars have been published in the Journal Science by various scientists involved with the Mars Exploration Rovers. Although the team went public with their discoveries many months ago, these research papers provide the full evidence from the Opportunity rover, and have been exhaustively peer reviewed. They hypothesize that the Meridiani Planum region was once saturated with liquid water for a long enough time to support life.

Scientists have used satellite photographs to track the movements of a relatively fast moving glacier in Greenland, and found that it's picking up speed, doubling its velocity in the last few years. While the glacier is speeding up, it's also thinning, losing ice at a rate of 15 metres (16.4 yards) in thickness each year. The amount of ice melting into the ocean is more than double the output that traditional climate models were predicting, and demonstrates that the world's ice caps and glaciers are much more sensitive to rising temperatures than previously believed.

Here's an interesting black and white image of Saturn's rings that I think makes a nice 1024x768 desktop wallpaper. The photograph was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on October 29, 2004 when it was 819,000 km (509,000 miles) away, and it shows the different rings and gaps in tremendous detail.

Alpha Centauri is the nearest star to our Earth and Sun. Often, science fiction novels extol its ability to nurture new life or expound it as a destination for humankind. Paul Gilster in Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration brings science and science fiction together in providing us with an up to date view on who's doing what to get people there, possibly starting as soon as this generation. He has only two exciting things to say about planning for the trip; it's here and it's now!

The early Universe was much dustier than astronomers were expecting, according to new data gathered by the Spitzer Space Telescope. This leads to the question, how did it get so dusty so early? Regular stars take billions of years before they star giving off large amounts of dust. But massive stars can form quickly and then explode as supernovae within 10 million years. The problem is that these explosions produce enormous amounts of hot dust, but very little cold dust, which is the kind found in the early Universe. So, the mystery continues.

Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believe it's possible that our own Sun could have stolen some material from other stars billions of years ago. They came to this conclusion while trying to understand the orbit of Sedna, which takes 10,000 years to go around the Sun, in a highly elliptical orbit far beyond the Kuiper Belt. When our Sun was younger than 200 million years old, it could have swept past another star, disrupting the Kuiper Belt, and trading large objects (like Sedna) with each other.

Cassini took this image of the Encke Gap in Saturn's Rings. It's a small division 300 km (190 miles) wide near the outer edge of the rings. A tiny moon called Pan orbits within this region, maintains the gap, and ties the particles into this knotted shape with its gravity. The image was taken while Cassini was 807,000 km (501,000 miles) away from Saturn.

IRAS ? The Infrared Astronomical Satellite ? was launched in 1983 and was the first spacecraft to map the entire sky recording over 350,000 sources, and there were some early surprises in the data too. The bright star Vega in the constellation of Lyra was seen to have a cool accretion disk of a primordial Vega [solar] system in the process of formation. A decade later, astronomers discovered another larger accretion disk of dusty material, this time around the star Formalhaut in the constellation of the Southern Fish, and many more have followed since. Thereafter a new astronomical study was created with to examine primordial accretion disks around other stars. Here Richard Pearson talks to astronomer Michiel Min about stellar planetary systems.

The Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers discover the youngest known galaxy in the Universe. This baby galaxy, located 45 million light-years away seems to be only 500 million years old (our own Milky Way galaxy, like many galaxies in the Universe is 12 billion years old). Its interstellar gas is "nearly pristine", comprised mainly of hydrogen and helium, with only a sprinkling of the heavier elements associated with older galaxies. This discovery gives astronomers an opportunity to understand how galaxies first formed.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory took this image of galaxy NGC 6118, located 80 million light-years away. A supernova was discovered exploding just north of the galaxy's centre on August 1, 2004. Astronomers now believe that it is a Type 1b or 1c, which means that it probably arose in a binary star system; a massive star whose hydrogen envelope was siphoned off by its stellar partner before it exploded.

Welcome back, SkyWatchers! With the Moon out of the way during the early evening hours this week, we will take this opportunity to further study with binoculars and telescopes the circumpolar constellation of Cassiopeia. Challenging double stars, splendid galactic clusters, nebula regions and two of the Andromeda Group galaxies await you! As the weekend approaches, you're invited to play comet hunter as several of our solar system "travelers" are within range of amateur equipment. For morning viewers, the planets and Moon continue to provide a fantastic display of the ecliptic plane and by Sunday both Venus and Mars will be approximately one degree apart. As always, you will find things here for all skill and interest levels. So go outside, tilt your head back, and open your eyes....

Because here's what's up!

When the NEAR spacecraft approached the Asteroid Eros in 2000/2001, scientists found much less small impact craters than they were expecting. Either there are less small asteroids in the Solar System than scientists were expecting, or something's happening on the surface of Eros to obscure the impact craters. Researchers from the University of Arizona think they have an answer: seismic shaking. Whenever Eros is struck by a small asteroid, it sets off shaking across the entire asteroid. Loose material creeps across the surface, down slopes, and can fill up older craters, obscuring them completely.

The crew of Expedition 10 completed maneuvers today to move their Soyuz spacecraft from one docking port of the International Space Station to another. They undocked the Russian-built spacecraft from the Pirs module at 0929 UTC (4:29 am EST), backed away about 100 feet (30 metres), and then moved it over to the Zarya docking point. The whole operation took about 20 minutes, and clears the way for the crew to use the Pirs compartment for two upcoming spacewalks, scheduled for early 2005.

Cassini took this amazing full colour picture of Saturn's moon Mimas set against the giant planet's rings. The bright swath next to Mimas is created by sunlight passing through the Cassini division; a gap in the rings. The dark band that stretches across the bottom of the picture is actually the shadow of Saturn's B ring, which is the densest. Cassini took this image when it was 3.7 million km (2.3 million miles) from Saturn.

NASA's Spirit Rover has just completed a long hard slog across difficult Martian terrain to reach the Columbia hills. The short journey of just a couple of kilometres has taken Spirit months. Imagine if it could thoroughly analyze an area and then just pick up and fly somewhere new? NASA has awarded a contract to a proprosal from Pioneer Astronautics, which envisions a vehicle that could land on Mars, refuel with local materials, and then fly hundreds of kilometres to explore; repeating this process over and over again - the Martian Gashopper Aircraft.

Protoplanetary discs surrounding new stars seem to have the building blocks for rocky planets right from the start, according to new research from an international team of researchers. The astronomers used the European Southern Observatory's VLT Interferometer to examine the discs around three young stars, which were similar to what our own Sun looked like more than 4.5 billion years ago. They found that the inner part of these discs is very rich in sand, ready to be clumped by gravity into larger and larger rocks until full planets form.

Cassini took this amazing photograph of Dione, one of Saturn's larger moons, on October 27 when it was 1.2 million km (746,000 miles) away. Voyager first saw the craters and bright, wispy streaks on its surface 24 years ago. Cassini is expected to do much much better, though, when it makes a close pass to the moon in mid-December, 2004.