This image, taken by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, shows an unusually shaped impact crater Hesperia Planum region of Mars. The crater is approximately 11 x 24 km (7 x 15 miles) across and has ejecta surrounding it where molten rock splashed around when a meteor carved it out. While most impact craters are circular, this elongated shape means that the space rock hit Mars at an extremely low angle (less than 10 degrees). Similar craters have been seen on the Moon.

The powerful Gemini telescope produced this amazing photograph of the N44 superbubble complex (also known to astronomers as NGC 1929). A cluster of hot, young stars have pushed out a cavernous bubble in this nebula 325 by 250 light-years across. Additional smaller bubbles can be seen inside the nebula, which could have been formed by collapsing gas and dust.

A team of European astronomers has calculated the rate that supernovas are exploding in the Milky Way: approximately one goes off every 50 years. They came to this calculation by measuring the amount of gamma rays coming from radioactive aluminum at the centre of the Milky Way. They were able to estimate that there's a total of approximately three solar masses of radioactive aluminum in the galaxy - produced by supernova exploding every 50 years or so.

I'm sure some of you noticed we missed this week's What's Up, and I apologize, my whole family was a little sick this week, so I wasn't able to put much work into the website. However, I have a big surprise for all of you. Tammy has been hard at work for the last 4 months writing a book... for you.

What's Up 2006 - 365 Days of Skywatching

This is a FREE 407-page downloadable book containing What's Up material for every day in 2006. You can download the book to your local computer, go to the day you like and print off the page to take outside with you nicely formatted. It's also got tons of other material including general skywatching advice, equipment selection, and hundreds of beautiful photographs. We've been working pretty hard on this. :-)

And yes, this book is absolutely free. Download it, send it to your friends, print it off. Oh, and if you could tell everyone you know, we'd really appreciate it. :-) We'll still be having the same old web content as well, and some additional material to support the book. I'm still getting that all together, but I didn't want to delay the release any longer.

Also, this is an experiment, so give me any feedback you have, suggestions for improvements, etc.

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

The centerpiece of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration is the new spacecraft that will carry astronauts to the moon, Mars and beyond. Jeff Hanley, appointed as Constellation Program manager in October, discusses the development of the new Crew Exploration Vehicle, the role of the International Space Station, and the path of the 'Vision.'

When the Apollo astronauts stepped out onto the lunar surface, they were the first human eyes to see this alien landscape. And one of the strangest things that they saw were the shadows. On Earth, our shadows aren't black, but blue, thanks to the scatter light passing through our atmosphere. But on the Moon, which has no atmosphere, the shadows are utterly black. The darkness of the shadows was one of the first things that Neil Armstrong noticed as he stepped off the lunar module and onto the surface of the Moon.

This natural colour photograph shows Saturn's moon Tethys going past the planet's huge globe with the thin line of rings curving at the horizon. The craters Odysseus (top) and Melanthius (bottom) are also visible on Tethys surface. This image was captured at a distance of approximately 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 3, 2005.

Pluto is far away from the Sun, so you'd think it should be cold - but it's actually colder than astronomers were expecting. Its temperature was taken using the Submillimeter Array (SMA) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which was able to distinguish between Pluto and its moon Charon. Pluto is about 43 K (-382 degrees F), while Charon is 10 degrees warmer. Scientists think that heat from the Sun is converting nitrogen ice on Pluto to gas, which cools it down, similar to evaporation effect when something wet feels colder.

Gregory Cranwell took this picture of Great Orion Nebula on November 24, 2005 from Tucson, Arizona. Gregory used a LXD 75 Schmidt Newtonian 8" with a Canon Rebel XT 8.0 megapixel digital SLR.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

Jamie Johnstone took this picture of the Moon. Jamie used a Canon EOS 300D fitted with an old Elicar 200mm lens with a 5X converter on.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

Forget about nuclear weapons, if you need to move a dangerous asteroid, you should use a tractor beam. Think that's just Star Trek science? Think again. A team of NASA astronauts have recently published a paper in the Journal Nature. They're proposing an interesting strategy that would use the gravity of an ion-powered spacecraft parked beside an asteroid to slowly shift it out of a hazardous orbit. Dr. Stanley G. Love is member of the team and speaks to me from his office in Houston.

ESA's first Galileo satellite blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday, atop a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket. The global positioning spacecraft is called Giove A, and it will demonstrate key technologies that the future Galileo satellites will use as well. It's also carrying radiation detectors on board, to give mission planners an idea of the radiation environment where the constellation will fly.

A team of scientists turned the Chandra X-Ray Observatory back at the Earth, and closely observed the north polar region ten times during 2004. They have discovered low-energy (0.1 - 10 kilo electron volts) X-ray emissions from the Earth's auroral activity. The colour of the X-ray arcs represent the intensity of the X-ray generation, with red indicating the maximum brightness.

Television, with its 20 second sound bites, has done much to alter our attention spans and our expectations for news delivery. Robert Godwin takes on this challenge and has prepared the pocket space guide Apollo 11 for our reading pleasure. Though needing a little bit longer than the typical TV newsclip, it is perfect for those wanting a colourful, informative guide about this space flight without getting into the nitty gritty details.

In this image of Saturn's moon Tethys, it's possible to see the giant Ithaca Chasma cutting a swath across its surface. The chasm is 100 km (60 miles) long and 4 km (2 miles) deep in places. Cassini took this photograph on November 28, 2005 when the spacecraft was approximately 1.1 million km (700,000 miles) away from Tethys.

Hulett Keaton took this picture of the Northern Horizon on a clear North Georgia night. Keaton used a Cannon AE-1 riding atop Celestron GT scope.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

Hulett Keaton took this picture of Kembles Cascade on crisp, cold North Georgia night. Keaton used a Cannon AE-1 riding atop Celestron GT scope.

Do you have photos you'd like to share? Post them to the Universe Today astrophotography forum or email them to me directly, and I might feature one in Universe Today.

A planet forming disk located about 375 light-years from Earth has been found to contain some of the building blocks of life: acetylene and hydrogen cyanide. The chemicals were discovered around "IRS 46" using NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. When mixed with water in a laboratory, these chemicals create a soup of organic compounds, including amino acids and a DNA base called adenine.

A team of Italian astronomers have discovered that a pulsar racing through the Milky Way has a comet-like trail blazing behind it. The object is called Geminga, and it was previously found to have twin jets of material blasting from its poles. This new, longer tail, was uncovered by studying data archived by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Geminga is only 500 light-years away from Earth, and moving quickly across our field of view giving astronomers a unique opportunity to study such an exotic object.