By looking at the most distant Universe, astronomers are hoping to learn what kinds of galaxies formed first, leading through mergers to the mature galaxies we see today. The more galaxies you look at, the better the predictions. A team of French and Italian astronomers have used the VIsible Multi-Object Spectrograph (VIMOS) instrument on one of the ESO's 8.2 m telescopes to image and measure thousands of galaxies. They found 2 to 6 times as many early galaxies with vigorous star formation than astronomers had previously expected.

In 1572, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe observed and studied an exploding star that would later be named after him. NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows that the Tycho's Supernova remnant is an expanding bubble of debris which is inside a larger bubble of high-energy electrons. Astronomers think that remnants like this could be a source of cosmic rays; high-energy nuclei found throughout the galaxy which constantly bombard the Earth.

To have the current elements in the Universe, cosmologists believe there had to be several generations of stars, building up heavier and heavier elements. But what did that first generation of stars look like? They were probably huge, weighing 50-500 times the mass of the Sun. They lived quickly and then died as massive supernovae that seeded the surrounding space with heavier elements forged during this explosion. They could even be the source of gamma ray bursts, which are the most powerful known explosions in the Universe.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft will have its mission extended by one Martian year - approximately 23 months - beginning December 2005. Since it began science operations in early 2004, Mars Express has made several findings: volcanic and glacial processes happened quite recently; there are small quantities of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere, which could indicate life; and large bodies of liquid water might have lasted under the surface of Mars for a long period of time.

Cassini recently took this beautiful photograph of Saturn's rings, sweeping across the sky. Its tiny moon Pan (26 kilometers, or 16 miles across) is barely visible inside the Encke gap, in the middle of the photograph. The Cassini Division is the darker area at the upper left-hand portion of the picture.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For a desolation to be beautiful, there must be something special. Just after Dr. Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon, Neil Armstrong asked him what were his thoughts. He replied, "it's a magnificent desolation". Nearly forty years later, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Cowen combine the wizardry of IMAX with the magic of top flight professional entertainers to the film Magnificent Desolation. The result puts the viewer on the surface of the moon and lets them experience its strange but magnificent beauty all for themselves.

NASA has announced its fifth Centennial Challenges prize competition: the Regolith Excavation Challenge. Teams will compete head to head in 2006 or 2007 to see whose digging machine can excavate the most lunar soil, or regolith, in 30 minutes and deliver it to a collector. Any future moon base will require large quantities of regolith to be moved around by robotic diggers, so NASA is hoping to see innovative ideas now to base future technologies around.

Mars is a more dramatically changing place than scientists had ever imagined. Thanks to its long lifetime, the Mars Global Surveyor has spotted a gully coming down the side of a sand dune that didn't exist just three years ago. The gully could have formed when frozen carbon dioxide was suddenly warmed up enough that it evaporated, releasing gas that flowed downhill like a liquid. Mars Global Surveyor is still very healthy, and could be making observations 5-10 years from now.

Newborn stars hide in a shroud of dust and gas, so they're difficult to photograph. Astronomers have used the infrared UKIRT telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii to peer through one of these envelopes to see a pair of newborn stars - probably only 100,000 years old. The stars are quite large; however, they weigh 10 times the mass of the Sun together. The surrounding disk of material probably has enough left over to create 100 Jupiter-mass planets.

Astronomers have known about a strange blue light coming from the heart of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) for many years, but they were never sure exactly what it was. Thanks to new observations from Hubble, they now know it's a ring of young hot stars which are whipping around the supermassive black hole in the middle of M31. The 400 stars are packed into a disk only 1 light-year across, which is nestled inside a larger ring of older, redder stars. Our own Milky Way might have a similar phenomenon, which means this could be the situation in most galaxies.

Of all the meteorites found around the world, on 45 formed before our Solar System. They provide a unique insight into the composition of the stellar nebula that went on to form our Sun and planets. These early rocks have very few volatile materials in them, like zinc, lead and sodium. So this "volatile depletion" must have been one of the first things to happen in the stellar nebula, and not during planetary formation as previously believed.

Astronomers from Case Western Reserve University have created the deepest, wide-view image of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, which shows the faint web of starlight that connects the different galaxies together. The image was built up over the course of 14 moonless nights using the newly refurbished 24-inch Burrell Schmidt telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. This web of stars is evidence of the violent collisions that galaxies go through as they merge together to form larger galaxies.

Researchers from Open University have uncovered that the Earth suffered a sudden, severe period of global warming approximately 180 million years ago. During this period, vast quantities of methane gas were released in three huge pulses when underwater stores of gas hydrate melted. This greenhouse gas warmed the Earth by 10 degrees C and resulted in the extinction of many species on land and in the oceans.

Scientists celebrated this week after finally seeing ghostly spokes in Saturn's rings. These spokes were first discovered by NASA's Voyager spacecraft 25 years ago, but so far, Cassini had failed to image them. These spokes are about 2,500 km long and 100 km wide (2,200 miles by 60 miles), and are believed to be created by Saturn's magnetic field interacting with the rings. Scientists thought that the visibility of the spokes depended on the angle of Saturn's rings to the Sun; the less sunlight, the easier it should be to spot the spokes.

Cassini has taken images of what seems to be an ancient shoreline cutting across Titan's southern hemisphere. The shoreline runs about 1,700 km long by 170 km wide (1,060 miles by 106 miles) and might still have liquid present. There is evidence for networks of channels that feed liquid - most likely liquid hydrocarbons - into this "ocean"; some might come from springs, while others will have to have been fed by rainfall. Cassini's next flyby is set for October 26, 2005.

Some people dream in black and white while others dream in techni-colour. Daydreamers wander the realm of possibilities just as well as the sleepers. Subjects of dreams differ as greatly as the dreamer. Engineers, particularly astro-engineers, probably have recurrent dreams of launching into a project destined for the stars. Well, if dreams don't come true, there's always the pen and paper. That's how the book The Rocket Company by Patrick Stiennon and David Hoerr seems to have risen. Using the literary licence of a fictional company, the authors bring a wealth of non-fictional detail to a pleasant little dream.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Let's begin the week early in the morning by watching Saturn dancing near the "Beehive", move into the night with the ISS and a great a variable star - Eta Aquilae. As the skies darken this week, we'll return to the Andromeda galaxy and hunt down the M30. Have you ever seen the "Saturn" or "Helix" nebulae? Don't think them too difficult to find, because a few simple tricks will turn you into a pro and you'll find Neptune as well! Hang on, it just gets better as the Aurigid meteor shower peaks and a new comet joins some old favourites. So turn your eyes to the skies, because...

Here's what's up!

NASA has unveiled more details about its upcoming series of missions to return humans to the Moon as early as 2018. The new crew vehicle will look very similar to the old Apollo module but it will be three times larger, allowing four astronauts to travel to the Moon at a time. Each ship can be reused 10 times, and NASA hopes to get as many as 2 launches a year, with astronauts spending 4-7 days on the surface. Eventually, once a lunar outpost is built at the southern pole, astronauts will be able to live on the Moon for 6 months at a time.

Planets in the inner Solar System suffered two devastating periods of asteroid bombardment. Scientists are fairly certain that the early period came from asteroids identical to the space rocks in the current main belt between Mars and Jupiter. The second period is a bit of a mystery, though. Scientists now think that there was a period at the end of planetary formation when the giant planets swept up leftover material and hurled much outwards, but also some towards the inner Solar System.

Researchers have had a few months to crunch through the data collected during Deep Impact's collision with Comet Tempel 1. The latest research published in the Journal Science used findings from three giant telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The observations determined that as much as 25 fully-loaded tractor trailer-trucks worth of material was excavated out by the impact. The comet seems to have a complex mix of silicates, water and organic compounds beneath its surface.