As the Earth rushes to the point in its orbit known as the Winter Solstice, those in the Northern hemisphere see the days getting shorter and the nights are getting longer. This is good news for sky watchers, especially those willing to rise before dawn. This November offers a chance to witness a beautiful and somewhat rare sight, a close conjunction between the planets Venus and Jupiter.

Researchers from the University of Michigan have recently published their findings about methane in the Martian atmosphere. The methane was discovered using the planetary Fourier spectrometer, which is one of seven instruments on board the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, which was launched to Mars in 2003. The spectrometer has detected methane at an average of 10 parts per billion by volume; a very small amount compared to 1700 ppbv found here on Earth. Earth-based methane is created almost entirely by life, so the researchers hope that the same process is happening on Mars.

Researchers from the European Space Agency are considering ways that astronauts could hibernate on the 6-9 month trip to Mars, consuming significantly less food, air and water. The researchers have been studying mammals which hibernate, and it turns out, they do their tricks in different ways. A dormouse goes into a deep sleep; its temperature drops nearly to zero, and its metabolism is dramatically suppressed. A brown bear hibernates at almost its regular temperature, and slows its heart rate slightly, but it still doesn't need to eat or drink for 3-7 months. A chemical called DADLE has been able to induce a hibernation-like slowdown in rats.

This image of Titan was taken when Cassini reached the closest point of its flyby on October 26. At this point, it was only 1,600 km (994 miles) above the surface of Titan. The brighter areas are thought to be rougher terrain on the surface, while the darker areas are probably smoother; the interconnected dark spots could be lakes.

Today is only a short moment from the future. To get there from here, you can follow a preset path that leaves little margin or opportunity for error. Another route is to strike out on your own toward a destination that has few signposts showing the way. John Spencer and Karen Rugg are heading in a very new direction and in their book Space Tourism - Do You Want to Go?, they present a comprehensive, near term space industry focused entirely on space tourism. After all, the future is what you make of it.

The Sun is more active today than it has been in 8,000 years, according to new research from the Max Planck Institute. Researchers discovered that a certain isotope of carbon, C-14, depends on the amount of cosmic rays that reach the Earth's surface. When solar activity is high, the Sun's magnetic field provides a shield against these cosmic rays, and when it's low, the Sun lets more cosmic rays reach the Earth. By measuring C-14 levels in dead trees which were buried in the ground, the scientists were able to build up a historic record of solar activity. Scientists have found that solar activity levels only slightly influence the Earth's climate and global temperature.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have located what they think is the burned out star at the heart of Tycho's Supernova Remnant, which exploded in 1572. This discovery provides the first direct evidence that these kind of supernovae, called Type 1a, occur when a white dwarf consumes material from a binary companion until it reaches a certain point and explodes. They discovered the star, which is similar to our own Sun, because it's moving away from the explosion three times faster than other objects in the region - it was sling shotted away when its dancing partner vapourized.

This image of Titan was taken yesterday during Cassini's 1,200 km (750 mile) flyby past its surface. It's actually a false colour image of the moon, built by merging together four images taken in different wavelengths of light. The red and green colours show areas revealed in infrared light, and the blue is ultraviolet wavelengths. Full colour visible light images are still in processing, and should be released later this week.

Astrophysicists using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio observatory have revealed new details about a puzzling object called SS 433; a microquasar with bizarre corkscrew-shaped jets blasting out. SS 433 is probably a black hole or neutron star that's feeding on material from a normal companion star. Some of this material is consumed, but much of it is blasted back out at a quarter the speed of light. SS 433 wobbles like a child's top every 162 days, which causes the unusual corkscrew shape of the jets.

NASA unveiled its new supercomputer on Tuesday, which took the lead as the fasted computer in the world. Named "Columbia", to commemorate the space shuttle, the supercomputer is built up from 10,240 Itanium 2 processors, and is capable of 42.7 teraflops (trillion calculations per second). Columbia is so powerful that scientists used it to accurately predict the path of hurricanes five days in advance. Complex aircraft analysis that used to take years can now be performed in a single day. Amazingly, the computer was built and installed in only 120 days at NASA's Ames Research Center.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft swept past Titan on Tuesday, and returned the most detailed images ever taken of its surface - from an altitude of only 1,200 km (miles) above its surface. Previous attempts to see the moon's surface have been frustrating because of its thick atmosphere. Scientists still aren't sure what the various light and dark areas are; they could be solid landmasses surrounded by oceans of liquid ethane and methane. The spacecraft took more than 500 images, so they're going to take a while to completely transfer to Earth - better pictures should be revealed in the next few days.

Astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have discovered a huge halo of dark matter around an isolated elliptical galaxy; an object that shouldn't have such a halo, according to optical observations. The galaxy, NGC 4555, is unusual that it's a large elliptical galaxy which isn't part of a larger cluster of galaxies. It's surrounded by a cloud of gas, twice the size of the galaxy itself, that's been heated to 10-million-degrees Celsius. This gas could only get that hot if it was being constrained by a halo of dark matter ten times the mass of the stars in the galaxy.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will pass only 1,200 km (745 miles) above the surface of Titan today, delivering the most detailed pictures ever taken of the mysterious, methane covered moon. This image was taken on October 24, when the spacecraft was still more than 1.2 million km (745,000 miles) away, so the view is going to get much better. The photo was taken using a special filter that allows Cassini to mostly peer through the enshrouding methane atmosphere and see some of the moon's surface features, such as the bright, continent-sized Xanadu region.

Greetings, fellow sky watchers! As October ends, we have another exciting week in astronomy for you. This week's highlight is a total eclipse of the Moon! On October 27/28 our "nearest astronomical neighbor" will slide quietly into the Earth's dark cone of shadow called the umbra, providing most of us from Europe through North America with an inspiring view - but that's not all. There will also be many other great things to explore this week such as lunar features Tycho, Grimaldi, Langrenus, Mare Crisium and Hercules. We'll locate the 12th brightest star in the sky and do a "double take" as we learn about Albireo. Rich star cluster, M45 is waiting on you to explore with binoculars, telescopes -- or just your eyes and imagination. There's a little history here and a lot of fun. Now it's time to mark your calendars...

Because here's what's up!

Last week, Mark Mortimer reviewed Dennis Wingo's new book, Moonrush - Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources, about the prospects of getting our future materials from space. Well, we had a few more questions for Wingo, about property rights, related projects here on Earth, and the possibility that we could wreck our environment so badly that getting into space is totally out of reach. Read on for this bonus interview with Dennis Wingo.

The ninth crew to man the International Space Station safely returned to Earth on Saturday. Commander Gennady Padalka and NASA Science Officer Mike Fincke landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan after being in space for 188 days - Russian test pilot Yuri Shargin was also along for the return trip to Earth (he was only in space for a little more than a week). After a few weeks of medical tests and debriefings, the team will travel to Houston for further post-flight activites.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will make its first close approach tomorrow to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The spacecraft will skim within only 1,200 km (745 miles) of the moon's atmosphere, which should allow its radar to penetrate through its thick methane atmosphere and reveal details about its surface. Scientists have theories, but they really have no idea exactly what Cassini is going to discover; whether it's covered in ancient craters, or there are ongoing geologic processes that are reshaping its surface continuously. Cassini will also gather data about Huygens' potential landing site when it arrives at the moon in a couple of months.

Firefly has just published a package, Moonwatch - A Complete Starter Pack for the Lunar Observer that shows they're already into the Christmas season. Three great aids for viewing Earth's moon are within this sharp looking, light cardboard enclosure. These are; a book, a moon map and a sheet of photographs. As written on the package's front, together these make a comprehensive, complete starter pack for lunar observing.

NASA engineers thought that a steering problem on Spirit had cleared up, since they hadn't seen it in almost two weeks. Well, it's back. The glitch first appeared on Oct. 1, and forced the rover to stay put for 5 days while engineers searched for the cause. It went away after that, and returned again on Oct. 13. Engineers are now considering workarounds that would get the rover driving again, such as disabling the brakes on the steering actuator that keeps the misbehaving wheel pointed properly. This means the freely turning wheel might give the rover some difficulty as it negotiates rough terrain.

When developing his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein predicted that the Earth should drag space and time around with it as it rotates on its axis. NASA's Gravity Probe B spacecraft was launched earlier this year to help confirm this prediction, but an international team of researchers has beaten the spacecraft to a conclusion. By carefully tracking the position of the LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2 satellites - beachball-sized spheres covered in mirrors - they discovered that their orbit is being shifted by about two metres a year by this dragging effect by the Earth's gravity, almost exactly what was predicted by Einstein.

At a distance of only 50 million light-years away, the Virgo Cluster is the nearest galaxy cluster to us. It's a giant structure consisting of hundreds of galaxies, both large and small, spiral and elliptical; 16 objects in this cluster are members of the famous Messier list of space objects. Astronomers have located a large number of planetary nebula floating in the "intercluster" space between galaxies, and theorize that they must be a fraction of the free floating stars and other objects which swarm around the cluster. By measuring the path of these objects, astronomers have been able to track how the Virgo Cluster is still in the process of formation.

The end of the world will occur. This is certain. Some think that it'll happen within a fairly short time for the human race. Dennis Wingo has his own view of this upcoming doomsday event. But he also provides in Moonrush - Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources a well supported plan to save the human race. Superman, eat your heart out, there are others who are working to prevent the end of the world.

One of the six scientific instruments on board the European Space Agency's Huygens probe is a tiny microphone designed to help scientists listen for lightning strikes as the spacecraft descends through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan. Huygens is scheduled to arrive at Titan on January 14, 2005, after it's released by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. If Huygens actually passes through a storm, the microphone should actually be able to pick up the sound of liquid methane rain splashing against the spacecraft's casing. If the probe does find thunderstorms, this could indicate that they're part of the process that helps create the organic molecules detected in the moon's atmosphere.

The Milky Way is a messy eater. When it collides with other galaxies and consumes them, it leaves shredded collections of stars around called dwarf galaxies. Astronomers poring through the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have found what they think could be a new dwarf galaxy. This new object, called Willman 1, is dim: 200 times less luminous than any other nearby dwarf galaxy. Further observations could validate the theory that the Milky Way is surrounded by clumps of dark matter, each of which has a dwarf galaxy in their centre.

You might want to set your alarm clock a little earlier on Thursday morning, so you can enjoy the Orionid meteor shower. If you look towards the constellation of Orion, with its easy to find belt, and be patient, you should see at least a few meteors streak past in the sky. This annual event happens because the Earth is passing through the dust trail of Halley's Comet, which returns to the Sun every 76 years. Orionids move fast, striking the atmosphere at 66 km/s (148,000 mph), which means they can be more spectacular that other, slower moving meteor showers. In dark conditions, you can expect to see 15-30 meteors an hour; less in the city.

Our Solar System takes a very consistent journey as it completes an orbit around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, similar to the way our Earth goes around the Sun. But astronomers from the European Space Agency have used the Hipparcos space-based observatory to find stars which don't stay put in the galaxy. Instead, these rogue stars will travel on a more erratic path, perhaps given a kick by the denser leading edge of the Milky Way's spiral arms. These kinds of stars account for 20% of stars within 1000 light-years of the Sun, so it's a very common situation.

Brand new planetary systems take much longer to form than previously thought, according to new data gathered by the Spitzer Space Telescope - and it's a nasty, chaotic period. Researchers pointed Spitzer at 71 dusty disks which are new planets in the making, and found that many seem choked with dust, hundreds of millions of years after the host star formed. The only way this could be possible is if mountain range-sized planetesimals were continuously crashing into each other on the long hard road to full sized planethood.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express took this image of the rim of impact crater Huygens, which is 450 km (280 miles) across. By counting craters in the area, researchers have determined that Huygens was blasted out approximately 4 billion years ago, early on in Mars' history when the planet was being heavily bombarded like the rest of the planets in the Solar System. The rim seems to show a tributary system that could have been water runoff in the ancient Martian past.

What a wonderful week to be out under the stars! The nights are cool and clear, and there will be many enjoyable astronomy things to do. As we lead up to next week's total lunar eclipse, the Moon is a highlight in the night sky. But be on watch all week as Orionid meteor activity will be up. Here's what's up day by day from October 18 to 24!

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and will now be prepared for its launch. If everything goes as planned, Deep Impact will lift off on December 30 atop a Delta rocket and then journey towards Comet Tempel 1. Its "impactor" spacecraft will smash into the comet on July 4, 2005, at a speed of 37,000 kph (23,000 mph), blasting out a crater hundreds of metres across. At the same time, its "flyby" spacecraft will record the event so scientists back on Earth can analyze the excavated material and get a better sense of what's inside a comet.

The European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft fired its ion thruster nearly continuously last week to set itself up to be captured by the Moon's gravity on November 13. The spacecraft launched just over a year ago, and it's been using its ion engine to make larger and larger orbits around the Earth. Once it gets captured, it'll use the thruster to decrease its orbit until January 15, 2005 when it will get as close as 300 km to the Moon. The probe will then spend another six months making a comprehensive survey of chemical elements on the lunar surface.

NASA investigators think they might have a potential reason why the Genesis sample return capsule failed to deploy its parachute as it entered the Earth's atmosphere a few weeks ago. It could be that there was a design error with a switch that was supposed to detect when the capsule was decelerating into the atmosphere. It should have deployed the drogue parachute and parafoil, but it failed to do so. The investigation board hasn't ruled out other causes, though, and will probably release its final report in late November.

This image of the western part of the island of New Guinea was taken by the European Space Agency's Envisat Earth observation satellite from an altitude of 800 km. The photograph was captured on March 20, using its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS). New Guinea is the second largest island in the world (after Greenland), and contains many unique species of animals. One fifth of the world's distinct languages - 1,100 different tongues - are spoken here by people in different tribes.

A Russian Proton rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome yesterday evening, carrying the AMC-15 broadcast satellite into orbit. The rocket lifted off at 2123 UTC (5:23 pm EDT), and the satellite separated from the Breeze M upper stage about 7 hours later. AMC-15 is a Lockheed Martin A2100 satellite that will transmit from 105-degrees West, and deliver broadcast services to all 50 states.

Researchers from the University of Washington have been funded by NASA to develop a magnetized-beam plasma propulsion system (or mag-beam). Selected as part of NASA's recent Advanced Concepts study, the system would involve a space-based satellite that would fire a stream of magnetized ions at a spacecraft equipped with a magnetic sail. The researchers think they could get a spacecraft going fast enough that it could make a round trip to Mars in 90 days, as long as there was another station at Mars that could slow the spacecraft down again.

When NASA's Cassini spacecraft took off towards Saturn, it brought along a passenger: the ESA's Huygens probe, which is designed study Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The two spacecraft have been orbiting together for a few months now, but on January 14, 2005, Huygens will make the plunge into Titan's thick methane and hydrocarbon atmosphere. And if it's really lucky, the probe will survive the journey down to the moon's surface, and give scientists a unique opportunity to study an environment that might have been similar to our own Earth's early history.

Scientists from the Los Alamos Laboratory are beginning to study the data returned by from the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS); an instrument on board the spacecraft designed to measure the space environment around the Ringed Planet. During its first pass over the rings, the instrument turned up low energy plasma which seems to be trapped on the magnetic field lines between Saturn's Cassini Division, the gap between the planet's A and B rings. Cassini will have another 70 orbits around Saturn so the team will have many more opportunities to make discoveries.

David Hardy illustrates and Patrick Moore writes to make their book Futures - 50 Years in Space, The Challenge of the Stars a portable art gallery of near and far space phenomena. With imagination to spare and drawing upon a universe of subject matter, they conjure up views and perspectives of planets and skies that are all, literally and figuratively, out of this world. But their incantations and apparitions aren't complete speculation. Each author brings over fifty years of relevant work experience which results in apparitions that are likely more prescient than most.

The European-built Cupola module has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and is now being prepared for an upcoming shuttle launch. When it's finally installed on the International Space Station, it will give astronauts a panoramic view of the station and the Earth below. They won't just be gazing dreamily at our planet, though, the Cupola will let crewmembers monitor spacewalks, docking operations and exterior equipment surveys. If all goes well, the Cupola will launch on STS-133, which is now due to lift off in 2009.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has turned up a relatively close globular star cluster that was obscured by dust and invisible to most instruments. Andrew Monson from the University of Wyoming first discovered the cluster while scanning for objects in the dusty mid-plane of the Milky Way. Follow up observations determined that the cluster is only 9,000 light-years away from the Earth in the constellation of Aquila, making it one of the closest clusters to our planet.

Dr. Maxime Faget, one of the most prolific of NASA's spacecraft designers, passed away on Saturday at the age of 83. Faget contributed to designs to every single NASA spacecraft, from the Mercury capsule to the space shuttle. He started working with for the US space effort in 1946, when he joined the staff of the Langley Research Center as a research scientist. He was later selected as one of the original 35 designers for the Mercury project. Faget retired from NASA in 1981, and went on to work for a private space firm called Space Industries Inc.

This image of a Martian landscape was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft in May 2004. It shows an area in the Promethei Terra region, which is relatively smooth, but covered with a layer of dust or volcanic ash several tens of metres thick. This layer has covered everything, and obscures fine details; that's why the picture looks a little fuzzy. The crisscrossing lines across the picture are the tracks left by dust devils.

European and US astronomers have linked up their radio telescopes for the first time in real-time, through the Internet. The researchers have created the world's biggest virtual radio telescope by merging observations from instruments in the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, and Puerto Rico. The virtual instrument has a resolution which is 5 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope. The team imaged an object called IRC+10420, a star nearing the end of its life; at some point in the near future it'll explode as a supernova.

Now operating three times longer than originally expected, NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are still turning up fresh evidence that liquid water once flowed on Mars. Opportunity has found a rock, dubbed "Escher", which has a network of cracks similar to cracked mud when the water has dried up. On the other side of Mars, Spirit is still climbing up the "Columbia Hills", and it seems that every rock it looks at shows evidence that it was altered by water. "We haven't seen a single unaltered volcanic rock, since we crossed the boundary from the plains into the hills, and I'm beginning to suspect we never will," said principal investigator Dr. Steve Squyres.

Researchers from Caltech have looked deep into space to a time when early material in the Universe was swirling towards the creation of galaxy clusters and superclusters. They did their measurements using an instrument in the Chilean Andes called the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI), which looks at the Universe when it was only 400,000 years old - a time before galaxies, stars, and planets had formed. By watching the motion of this material as it began forming larger structures, the researchers were able to confirm that dark matter and dark energy were having an effect even then.

With all this talk of global warming, it may come as a surprise that Antarctica has actually been mostly getting colder over the last 30 years. But new research from NASA indicates that this trend is about to reverse, and the continent will warm over the next 50 years. Researchers found, ironically, that low ozone levels actually made the continent colder, but with restrictions on ozone-destroying chemicals around the planet, this cooling effect is going to go away as the ozone layer returns. If temperatures rise too high, the continent's ice sheets will melt and slide into the ocean, raising water levels around the world.