Hollywood has a long love affair with battles involving huge ships at close quarters both on the sea and in deep outer space. Always a crowd pleaser, these action packed scenes pit the destiny of each crew against the other as their vessels approach and often collide in a burst of smoke and pyrotechnics. Somewhat similar situations occur throughout the cosmos when two island universes approach and are drawn together, not by testosterone induced aggression but by the attractive force of gravity with explosive effects that occur on a galactic scale!

Take a look through any book on our Solar System, and you'll see beautiful photographs of every planet - except one. Eight of our nine planets have been visited up close by a spacecraft, and we've got the breathtaking photos to prove it. Pluto's the last holdout, revealing just a few fuzzy pixels in even the most powerful ground and space-based telescopes. But with the launch of New Horizons in January, bound to arrive at Pluto in 9 years, we're one step closer to completing our planetary collection - and answering some big scientific questions about the nature of objects in the Kuiper Belt. Alan Stern is the Executive Director of the Space Science and Engineering Division, at the Southwest Research Institute. He's New Horizon's Principal Investigator.

If the Winter Olympics were held on the Moon, the best spot would be on the Lunar Alps. This is a region of the Moon similar in size and shape to Europe's Alps. Of course, with 1/6th the gravity, skiers could do some amazing tricks. Unlike Europe's Alps, which formed over millions of years, the lunar Alps were formed in a relative instant 4 billion years ago when a gigantic asteroid struck the Moon, and carved out Plato crater.

This photograph shows the amazing pits and ?grabens? in the Phlegethon Catena region of Mars. These are regions of terrain that have sunk down relative to their surroundings, but planetary geologists aren't exactly sure why. One possibility is that the subsurface eroded away and the surface fell into the pits that were created, or it might be from tension cracks in the region causing it to collapse. The photograph was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft.

This false-colour view taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the surface features and color variation on the moon Telesto. Similar to Pandora, the smooth surface of this Trojan moon suggests that it's covered with a mantle of fine, dust-sized icy material. The small moon Telesto is about 24 kilometers (15 miles) wide. Cassini captured this image at a distance of approximately 20,000 kilometers (12,000 miles) with its narrow-angle camera on December 25, 2005.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered potential solar systems surrounding two massive stars, 30 and 70 times the mass of our Sun. These stars generate intense solar winds, so it's surprising that disks of material could last near them long enough to form planets. Astronomers believe these disk contain massive quantities of icy material, similar to the Kuiper belt in our own Solar System, but extending out 60 times more distant than Pluto's orbit.

Being a messiah can't be easy. For one thing, you have to have many disadvantaged people to lead. As well, you'd need some extraordinary skills to convince them to follow and to make your leadership a success. Just becoming a messiah isn't any easier as David Lynch shows in Dune ? Extended Edition, his cinematic version of Frank Herbert's book. For here, not only do messianic images need to appear but they must do so for a society living thousands of years in the future, on another planet. And this is the story of Dune, of a distant messiah who arrives on a distant planet where people are waiting for a saviour.

This photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the pinwheel-shaped galaxy NGC 1309. Some of the interesting features are the bright blue areas of star formation in its spiral arms, the ruddy dust lanes in its structure, and yellowish central population of older stars. NGC 1309 is also home to Type Ia supernovae SN 2002fk, which astronomers are measuring to help determine the rate of expansion of the Universe.

At some point in the distant past, our own Milky Way robbed the low-mass stars from globular cluster M12. This cluster is about 23,000 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus, and it's known to contain about 200,000 stars. What's unusual is that they're nearly all 20 to 80% the mass of our Sun; a surprisingly high ratio compared to the rest of the Milky Way. Astronomers estimate that M12 has ejected more than a million stars into the galactic halo, never to see them again.

It's easy to see the "wrinkly" features on the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. This actually means that portions of its surface are relatively young, and largely clear of impact craters. Its geologically active southern polar region is seen at the bottom of the image. This photo was taken on December 24, when Cassini was 108,000 kilometers (67,000 miles) from Enceladus.

As rockets go, the Saturn V will remain as the champion of its century. A concerted engineering effort brought theory into the hard cold realm of facts, figures and data sheets. Alan Lawrie and Robert Godwin in their book Saturn V go back to the testing phase of these leviathans and recall the glories when modules passed tests or the tragedies of failures. For behind the roar and the flame of the rocket's exhaust, were countless validations and verifications that ensured this man-rated rocket performed 'nominally'.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The Moon is back in style and this week we'll be studying lunar features as well a bright stars and open clusters. For viewers in western North America, hope for clear skies as the Moon occults the Plieades! Time to get out your scopes and binoculars and turn an eye towards the sky, because....

Here's what's up!

New Chandra observations of spiral galaxy NGC 5746 have revealed a large halo of hot gas surrounding the optical disk of the galaxy. This halo extends for more than 60,000 light years, but the galaxy itself doesn't seem to show any sign of active star formation. Computer simulations show that the hot gas is probably from the gradual inflow of intergalactic material left over after the galaxy first formed. Halos like this had been predicted on computer, but not seen around a galaxy until now.

Cassini captured this image of Saturn's moon Hyperion during a distant encounter in December, 2005. Hyperion is only 280 km (174 miles) across, and is covered with closely packed pits, giving it a spongy appearance. This photo was taken when Cassini was 228,000 kilometers (142,000 miles) from Hyperion.

This is an image of the Claritas Fossae region on the surface of Mars. The photograph was taken by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, and shows a region approximately 200 km x 1150 km (125 miles by 715 miles). The area is located roughly south-east of the Tharsis volcano group, and shows evidence of ancient tectonic and volcanic activity, as well as many meteor strikes.

In the Northern hemisphere, winter solstice marks the shortest period of daylight during the year. The long nights host an annual parade of familiar constellations and stars, like Orion the hunter, Taurus the bull, brilliant Sirius and ruddy Aldebaran. But to star gazers and astrophotographers alike, the Northern winter also signals the opening of galaxy season; when some of the brightest and most interesting island universes are poised above the horizon for much of the evening.

Paleobiologists have produced 3-D images of ancient fossils - 650 to 850 million years old - embedded within rocks. This astounding accomplishment uses a technique called Raman spectroscopy, which allows scientists to see the structure of these ancient fossils in three-dimensions. This could be useful for future rock samples returned from Mars since would allow scientists to detect and analyze microfossils without actually damaging them.

Astronomers have confirmed that the newly discovered 10th planet is larger than Pluto. Nicknamed 2003 UB313 for now, the new planet has a diameter of 3,000 km (1,850 miles) which is 700 km (435 miles) larger than Pluto. These new observations were made using a sensitive sensor on the IRAM 30-m telescope that measured the heat emitted by the new object, and found it had a similar reflectivity to Pluto. This allowed them to calculate its size.

UC Berkeley researchers have performed a detailed analysis on a binary pair of asteroids circling near Jupiter's orbit, and believe they're mostly water ice covered with a layer of dirt. These objects probably started out as small Kuiper belt objects, and then were captured at one of Jupiter's Trojan points - a gravitational eddy in space where solar system material can collect.