Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers... I hope everyone around the world is enjoying the peace and joy the holidays bring. Why not stay up late and view one of the bluest objects in the cosmos - the "Hubble Variable Nebula!" Let's not forget Venus, the "Witch Head" or the "Rosette." For viewers in northern Australia, you're in for a year end treat as the Moon occults Antares. The year ends on a dark note as we reach New Moon and the "Hunter" becomes the hunted. Be sure to keep your eyes on the skies because...

Here's what's up!

Have you ever wondered if meteors are raining down on the Moon? On November 7, NASA scientists used a special video camera to record a small explosion on the Moon. Travelling at a speed of 27 km/s (17 miles/s), the small meteoroid slammed into the lunar surface close to Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains). NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke suggests that the meteoroid was part of the Taurid meteor shower that hit Earth between late October and early November 2005.

Two ESO telescopes captured stars at different points of the stellar lifecycle in this photograph of star cluster NGC 2467. This cluster, located in the southern constellation Puppis, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right). And at the heart of Haffner 18 the stars at various ages. Mature stars are in the middle; a newborn star that has just started blazing is in the bottom left; and a dust cloud containing embryonic stars is in the right-hand corner.

The Meridiani Planum region on Mars is currently the home of NASA's Opportunity Rover. But scientists believe that the entire region was covered with water millions of years ago, and could have been home to life. A new study is proposing that the area might have been much less wet than previously believed. A key element discovered by Opportunity could have been created by sulphur-bearing volcanic steam, and not water sediment layered down.

The Christmas Tree Cluster, also known as NGC 2264, is a well known star cluster in the Monoceros (the Unicorn) constellation. It got its nickname because it looks like a tree in visible light. But this view, taken with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, shows what it looks like in infrared light. Normally obscured by thick dust, individual newborn stars packed together in the cluster can be seen shrouded in the nebula.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has helped discover new rings and two small moons orbiting Uranus. The largest ring is twice the size of the planet's previously known rings, and went undiscovered until now because they're so far away from the planet. Scientists think that particles in these rings are slowly spiraling away from Uranus, so there must be some source constantly replenishing them with new material.

Cassini took this beautiful image of Titan with its orange surface shining against the purple halo of its atmosphere. The photograph was made by using separate blue, green and red spectral filters and then combining this with an ultraviolet image. This image was taken by Cassini's narrow-angle camera on the May 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Titan.

ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft is using a new technique to reveal details on the surface of the Moon. The spacecraft has been taking a series of images, only seconds apart, with its Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) instrument. The same location is imaged at different infrared wavelengths. Scientists back at ESA can then stack up the images to see the same spot on the Moon, imaged in all these different wavelengths, and notice any unusual features on the lunar surface.

An Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from the Guiana Space Centre on December 21, carrying two satellites into orbit: ESA's MSG-2 satellite and India's INSAT-4A telecommunications satellite. Ground tracking stations received good telemetry information from both satellites, indicating they were put into their proper orbits. ESA's MSG-2 will provide high-resolution images of the Earth's weather activity, while INSAT-4A will provide broadcast television and high-speed data services above the Indian subcontinent.

Want to know where new galaxies are going to be born? Just look for clumps of dark matter. Although dark matter is completely invisible to any kind of detector we have today, this mysterious substance can warp radiation by its gravity. Astronomers have used Hubble and the Subaru Telescope to map out the distribution of dark matter in an area of sky 5 times larger than the full Moon. Wherever dark matter is at its thickest, galaxies are likely to form.

If you're going to fly in space, you need some kind of propulsion system. Chemical rockets can accelerate quickly, but they need a lot of heavy fuel. Ion engines are extremely fuel efficient but don't generate a lot of power, so they accelerate over months and even years. A new thrusting technology called the Helicon Double Layer Thruster could be even more efficient with its fuel. Dr. Christine Charles from the Australian National University in Canberra is the inventor.

After years in space, and having successfully collected samples from a comet, NASA's Stardust spacecraft is almost home. If all goes well, the spacecraft will release its sample capsule on January 15, 2006. Four hours after it's released, the sample container will enter the Earth's atmosphere at a velocity of 46,440 kilometers per hour (28,860 miles per hour). The container will land at the US Air Force Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City.

High energy electrons are a menace to space travel. They can disrupt satellite electronics and pose a serious threat to the health of astronauts. Over the past 5 years, ESA's Cluster spacecraft have revealed how these electrons are given so much energy by the Earth's magnetosphere. Scientists now know that intense solar storms can cause the magnetosphere to wobble, releasing a flood of high-energy electrons.

Scientists think they might have finally found the wreckage of the ill fated Beagle 2 Mars mission. Grainy photographs from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show what could be the spacecraft and protective airbag system. Instead of landing flat on the surface of Mars, it looks like it bounced into a crater and rolled around inside. Even though the lander was designed for a rough landing, this was probably more than it could have handled.

Italian and French researchers are about to spend a full year in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth: Antarctica. But it's paradise compared to what astronauts would face if they stepped out on the surface of Mars. As part of its Aurora Exploration Programme, ESA is considering a human mission to Mars by 2030. One stage of this exploration program is the Concordia station in Antarctica, which simulates many of the conditions and constraints that astronauts would face living on Mars.

Cassini has captured this amazing image of two Saturian moons: Mimas and Helene, hiding behind the planet's ringplane. The large, bright moon is Mimas, illuminated on its right side by the Sun. The tiny dot to its left is the tiny Trojan moon Helene. This moonlet is only 32 kilometers (20 miles) across, and shares the same orbit as Dione. This image was taken on November 2, 2005.

Even though they explode in an instant, the after effects of supernovae can be seen for hundreds of years. Astronomers have observed the remains of three supernovae that flashed in our skies hundreds of years ago. Careful image analysis found concentric arcs of light moving outwards from where the supernovae exploded. Light from these explosions has bounced off of clouds of interstellar gas, and is now visible to astronomers like an echo can be heard when sound bounces off a distant object.

One of the big problems with Earth-based observatories is our own atmosphere. It distorts the light from distant objects, always making them a little blurry. The giant W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii uses a laser to create a bright virtual star in the sky so astronomers can calculate and remove these distortions to create amazingly clear views of the night sky. Its latest target is the centre of our own Milky Way which is thought to hide a supermassive black hole.