When ESA's Huygens probe passed through Titan's atmosphere on its way to a successful landing, it was buffeted by turbulence unexpected by scientists. Very little was known about Titan's atmosphere before Huygen's landing because the moon is shrouded by a thick hydrocarbon haze. Huygens found that the upper atmosphere was much thicker than expected, and broken up into several distinct layers. The probe also discovered possible evidence of lightning strikes around it.

ESA's Mars Express has confirmed findings by the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers that liquid water must have been present on the surface of Mars for long periods. Mars Express gathered evidence with its OMEGA instrument; a visible and infrared spectrometer, which discovered large quantities of hydrated minerals across the surface of the Red Planet. These minerals, such as phyllosilicates and hydrated sulphates are created by the chemical alteration of rocks by liquid water.

Now that its MARSIS radar instrument is working perfectly, ESA's Mars Express has turned up evidence of buried impact craters, layered deposits at the Martian north pole, and deep underground water-ice. One unusual discovery is a 250-km diameter (155-mile) circular structure buried under the ground; probably an impact crater which seems to be a rich source of water ice.

NASA researchers working with the Mars Exploration Rovers have released a new set of papers that describe conditions on Mars billions of years ago, when there were large areas of liquid water. Approximately 3.5 billion years ago, the terrain around Endurance Crater probably looked like the White Sands region of New Mexico: salt flats occasionally covered by water and surrounded by dunes.

Astronomers from Penn State University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found a miniature solar system in the making. A failed star with a hundredth the mass of our own Sun seems to have a planet forming disc of dust and gas surrounding it. With only 8 times the mass of Jupiter, this brown dwarf star is more like a large planet, and yet it's capable of forming a planetary system of its own.

Cassini has returned amazing photographs of ice volcanoes erupting from the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. On a previous pass of the moon, Cassini detected particles of water vapour stretching hundreds of kilometres above its surface, and this photograph shows the ice volcanoes in action. It's believed they're spewing out material that refreshes the ice in Saturn's E-ring.

Japan's asteroid explorer, Hayabusa, successfully touched down onto the surface of asteroid Itokawa Saturday for the second time in a week, and the Japanese Agency announced that it's clutching a sample of material. The spacecraft will now begin the long journey back to Earth, and it all goes well, its sample capsule should land in the Australian outback in June 2007. This will be the first time material from an asteroid will ever be sampled back here on the Earth.

Have you ever heard that Venus can be so bright it can cast shadows? Well, very few people have ever actually seen their shadow cast by Venus, though. If you're up for the challenge, find a completely dark location before December 3rd; completely away from the lights of the city, and during a time when the Moon is absent from the night sky. As the sky darkens, the brightest object will be Venus. Hold your hand in front of a white piece of paper, and you should be able to see a very faint shadow.

This image taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows the ongoing expansion of supernova SN 1970G, which exploded more than 35 years ago. Astronomers estimate that the shockwaves from the supernova will crash into shells of material shed by the star about 25,000 years ago, completing its transition into a supernova remnant.

Everyday, small children ask the darnedest things. Why is the sky blue? Where does the sun go at night? What's a belly button for? These and endless others keep parents on their toes. But, when it comes to discussing emotions, even the smartest parent may be in a quandary. Just look at the challenges of Cyrano de Bergerac to describe love. Susan Lendroth writes and Enrique Moreiro illustrates the book Why Explore? to bring visual and rythmic nuances to this equally challenging question on why some many people try their darnedest to exceed the boundaries of today.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It's New Moon week and time for a galaxy quest ranging from binocular to large scope studies. We'll start out "Messier" with M74 and M77, but it will get more challenging as we locate Caldwell 23 and Abell Galaxy Cluster 347. Don't worry about being a "Dumbbell." because M76 and Mars are here, too. We'll have a look at the planets and head on back to our own galaxy group with M33 by the end of the week and the Moon's return. So, dress warm and head out because...

Here's what's up!

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is celebrating its 10th anniversary of operations on December 2nd, 2005. Over the course of these 10 years, SOHO has revealed the nature of the Sun's atmosphere, the links between its magnetic fields and coronal mass ejections, and even discovered more than 1,000 comets. Scientists even figured out how to use SOHO to probe the far side of the Sun.

Telescopes from around the world are constantly scanning the skies searching for potential Earth-crossing asteroids. The majority if these objects pose little to no threat to us, but the potentially devastating space rocks are out there. The European Space Agency is working on a mission called Don Quixote which would attempt to shift the orbit of an asteroid to understand the mechanics of this kind of operation.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss from Case Western University and author of Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, from Plato to String Theory and Beyond has agreed to answer questions from the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today forum. If you've got puzzling questions about physics, multiple dimensions, or any of his books, follow this link to the forum and post a question. We'll gather up the best questions and pass them along to Dr. Krauss to answer. I'll post his answers back in Universe Today when I get them.

If you're not a member of the forum, you'll need to register before posting your questions. Drop me an email if you're having any problems registering.

Now on its way to our nearest planetary neighbour, Venus Express tested its VIRTIS optics system by taking pictures of the Earth and the Moon. ESA controllers ran the spacecraft through a commissioning phase to test all of its scientific instruments. It took pictures of the Earth and the Moon when it was 3.5 million kilometres away. The VIRTIS instrument is also on board the Rosetta spacecraft, which also took images of our planet. ESA scientists will be able to compare the images to ensure the instrument is working perfectly.

The newly installed AMBER instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer combines the light from two or three 8.2 metre telescopes creating a virtual telescope 40 - 90 metres across (131 - 295 feet). It was used to observe a young, newly forming star called MWC 297, and discovered that it's surrounded by a proto-planetary disc which is strangely truncated near the star.

In this Cassini image of Mimas perched in front of Saturn's moons, you can clearly see its giant crater Herschel. The 130-kilometer (80-mile) crater makes the moon look like the Death Star from Star Wars. Cassini took this image on October 13, 2005 when it was approximately 711,000 kilometers (442,000 miles) from Mimas.

This photograph of a fractured and crater-scarred Dione was taken by Cassini on October 11, 2005, when the spacecraft was only 19,600 kilometers (12,200 miles) away from the moon. Most of the craters in this image have bright walls and dark deposits of material on their floors. Rock slides on the surface of Dione can reveal cleaner ice, while the darker materials accumulate in lower areas.

Bob Christmas took this picture of Mars and the Pleiades on October 3, 2005 from Ontario, Canada. Bob used a Canon 135mm telephoto lens set at f/4.

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.