Thomas Davis took this picture of the M78 Orion on the 12th of December, 2004 from Inkom, ID. Thomas used Astro-Physics 155 EDF f/7 refractor.

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.

Amateur astrophotographer R Jay GaBany took this picture of the Dumbbell Nebula Nova that was discovered on the 17th - 18th, August 2005. GaBany worked with Wolfgang Renz, of the BAV (German Workgroup for Variable Stars), to provide imagery that confirmed the discovery.

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.

Officials from the Japanese space agency (JAXA) announced yesterday that Hayabusa successfully touched down on asteroid Itokawa last weekend, bounced at least once, and spent 39 minutes "resting" on the surface. It then launched back up into space again. Unfortunately, it failed to drop equipment that would allow it to collect samples from the asteroid's surface. Hayabusa will head back to the potato-shaped asteroid on Friday and attempt another landing.

Since the Moon only has a slight tilt, some of its mountains are bathed in eternal sunlight, and would make ideal places to put solar panels to power a future moon base. The European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft is currently mapping the Moon, and one its missions is to identify some of these peaks of eternal light. These peaks could also provide a very stable environment, always approximately 20-degrees below zero Celsius. There are probably also craters in the region which are in eternal shadow, and could contain water ice.

Cassini took this amazing image of Saturn's moon Dione on approach to its recent October 11, 2005 rendezvous; Saturn itself sits in the background. Dione is much darker on its western side in this image, and you can see the bright wispy fresh canyons right at the edge. Cassini took this image when it was approximately 24,500 kilometers (15,200 miles) from Dione.

NASA's Spirit rover recently celebrated its one year anniversary on the surface of Mars... that's one Martian year. Spirit has now been exploring the Red Planet for more than 669 days. Not bad considering the rovers were only expected to perform for 60-90 days until their solar panels became so clogged with dust they wouldn't function. And even after surviving more than 7-times their expected lifetimes, Spirit and its twin Opportunity are still going strong, and should be returning much more science.

Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder think they've found evidence that the very early Earth had continents soon after the planet formed, overturning theories that the planet was Moon-like, or covered with oceans. The team analyzed a rare element called hafnium in ancient minerals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. It showed that continental crusts had formed 4.4 - 4.5 billion years ago, and were then recycled into the Earth's mantle.

Researchers are finding that the mysterious dark energy found to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe is remarkably well predicted by Einstein's cosmological constant. Einstein originally added this constant to balance out the gravitation of the Universe, but threw it out after seeing evidence of the Big Bang. An international team of researchers has performed the Supernova Legacy Survey, and found that it calculates dark energy to be within 10% of Einstein's prediction.

If you're going to be traveling by airplane, take a look out the window; you might be amazed. On the side opposite to the Sun, you could see the shadow of the airplane in the clouds, and shimmering rings of colour surrounding it. Look out the sunward side, and you might see ice halos - arcs of light caused by ice crystals in the high clouds. And don't forget to look up. You're above much of the Earth's atmosphere, and should be able to see a clearer view of the night sky than from the ground.

In this Cassini image of Saturn's moon Dione, you can see the wispy features that run across its surface. It's also possible to see the craters Dido and Antenor near the moon's terminator at lower left. Cassini took this image on October 9, 2005 from a distance of 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles).

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its main engine for 20 seconds on Friday, fine-tuning its course towards the Red Planet. The spacecraft is schedule to reach Mars on March 10, 2006. Since its August 12 launch, the spacecraft has traveled about 60% of the distance between Earth and Mars, and it will make 4 more adjustments before arriving at Mars. Once it does arrive, MRO will spend about half a year adjusting its orbit before beginning its science phase.

The branch of science called physics comes with a long history of preliminary conjectures later proven or disproved via experimentation. Brave champions pillared their beliefs before friend and foe alike with the simple desire to contribute. Those correct in their postulations live for eternity in textbooks, while those who fail ignobly disappear. Arthur Miller in his book Empire of the Stars dusts off the fairly recent instantiation of ideas and postulations surrounding black holes. In it he shows that even being correct may not necessarily add your name to the wall of physics fame.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Let's start the week off with one of the finest globular clusters for both hemispheres - M2. There's plenty in store as we explore history, take a look at planetary nebulae, seek out galaxies and hunt down open clusters. A pair of occultations will round out the week as we keep our eyes on the skies...

And find out what's up!

One of the main challenges of returning humans to the Moon will be how to deal with all that gritty, clingy moondust. Scientists believe that ultraviolet radiation charges individual grains of dust, giving them a static charge. NASA is studying individual grains of moondust returned by Apollo astronauts to how much charge they can build up, and the results have been surprising. Ultraviolet radiation can give a grain of moondust 10 times more charge than the theories had calculated.

Modern spaceflight is dependent on reliable computers to handle navigation, life support, and other functions. The problem is that radiation in space, such as cosmic rays can cause computer chips to calculate incorrectly. NASA is working a solution that would run multiple redundant computers to do the same calculation several times over and then vote on which is the correct result. If a cosmic ray caused one processor to make a mistake, the other processors would still be correct, and the error would be prevented.

Most geologists believe that the early history of our planet was an extreme, "hellish" environment, under constant bombardment from asteroids, and completely devoid of modern formations, like continents. Researchers from ANU disagree, and think they've found evidence that continents had already formed within the first 500 million years, and there was liquid water interacting with rocks. The Earth at that time might have looked remarkably similar to our current planet, complete with continents and oceans.

Astronomers have turned up 19 new gravitationally lensed quasars using photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). 8 of these are what are known as "Einstein's Rings", where a nearby galaxy and a more distant quasar are perfectly lined up from our vantage point. The nearby galaxy acts as a lens to gravitationally focus the light from the quasar to magnify our view of it.

After 4 months of operation, Mars Express' MARSIS radar instrument has gathered a tremendous amount of data about the Red Planet. So far, the instrument has been focused on Mars' upper atmosphere, or ionosphere, which is the highly electrically conducting layer maintained by sunlight. ESA scientists are working develop the first conclusions about the nature and behaviour of how this region of Mars' atmosphere interacts with the planet and the surrounding environment.

More than half the stars in our galaxy are small, dim M-class stars. Until now, researchers looking for extraterrestrial civilizations have passed over them, since they probably don't give off enough light to support life. But SETI researchers now think that they might be good candidates after all. A planet in orbit around an M-class star would have billions and billions of years orbiting its slow-burning star for life to evolve.