Bob Sigall took this picture of Venus and Moon setting behind the ridge in Kalihi valley on the 7th August from Honolulu, Hawaii. Bob used an Olympus C740 10x camera.

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.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this image of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on July 7, 2005. In it, it's possible to see the bright Xanadu region on the moon's right side - where the Huygens probe. Scientists think this area consists of upland terrain that isn't contaminated by the darker material visible in the low lying regions. Near the moon's south pole, Cassini has previously found what looks like a large lake of hydrocarbons.

With Friday's launch, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is now on its way to the Red Planet. One of the instruments on board is CRISM, or the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. This instrument will search for evidence of past water on the surface of the planet, by locating the residues left by minerals that formed in water. It'll have 20 times the resolution of any previous instrument sent to Mars to do this task. With data gathered by CRISM, researchers should have a wealth of potential targets for future rovers and landers.

Hi folks, I just wanted to give you a warning that Universe Today might be spotty for the next week. I'm attending a convention in Indianapolis called Gencon from Thursday to Sunday, so my regular schedule will be all mixed up. I will be taking my laptop and should be able to update the site, and answer emails, but I can't promise it'll come out on regular days, etc. If you're attending Gencon too, or live in the Indianapolis area and want to have a meetup, drop me an email. I'll try and set something up. Can anyone recommend a venue?

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

P.S. Here's a shameless picture of me and the kids having a picnic here in Courtenay. I'm actually happier than I look. :-)

Greetings fellow SkyWatchers! Let's start the week off colorfully as we view the mighty Albireo. We'll explore lunar features and learn about the Blue Moon. Keep an eye on the dance of the planets and on Cygnus as the Kappa Cygnid meteor shower peaks. We'll learn about M39 and more. So, get your binoculars and telescopes aimed at the sky, because...

Here's what's up!

In this photograph of Saturn, it's possible to see the faint filaments that circle around major storms on the planet. Scientists still don't know what these filaments are; they might be material connecting two storms together after they've split up. The could also represent wind flow in Saturn's atmosphere. Cassini took this image on July 6, 2005 when it was 2.4 million km (1.5 million miles) away from the planet.

Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is about to break the record for human spaceflight on Tuesday. Currently on board the International Space Station, he will tie the current record holder, Sergei Avdeyev, when reaches 748 days in orbit. Krikalev has been on two long-duration stays on the Mir space station, two flights on the Space Shuttle, and two trips on the Space Station. He was aboard Mir when the Soviet Union collapsed, the first Russian to fly on the Shuttle, and a member of the first crew for the International Space Station.

New research from the University of California, San Diego suggests that the cloud of gas and dust that would eventually turn into the Sun was already hot and glowing. The ultraviolet radiation blazing off this protosun played a big part in chemically shaping the early Solar System, including many of the organic compounds that make up life on Earth. The scientists detected it by finding evidence of high-energy solar wind in ancient meteorites.

After a few days of delays, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has begun its journey towards the Red Planet. The orbiter lifted off atop a massive Atlas V launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral at 1143 UTC (7:43 am EDT). The spacecraft established radio contact with controllers on the ground 61 minutes after launch and confirmed that everything's working well. MRO will reach Mars on March 10, 2006, and begin several months of aerobraking maneuvers to lower its orbit.

This image of Saturn taken by Cassini looks it was drawn by an impressionist painter. The giant planets' atmospheres are dominated by counter-flowing jets of wind, and this image shows the process up close. You can see the turbulence as these jets shear against each other. Cassini took this image on July 6, 2005 when it was 2.5 million km (1.5 million miles) away from Saturn.

The European Space Agency's Cluster fleet of spacecraft have identified micro-vortices in the Earth's magnetosphere. These small vortices were predicted in mathematical models, but they hadn't been seen before now. They're created when plasma from the Sun's solar winds slip through holes in the magnetosphere. As it moves through these holes, the flow of turbulence creates the vortices, like pouring one liquid into another.

This image of Saturn shows how the planet has gigantic hurricanes which spin backwards through its atmosphere. On Earth, hurricanes in the Southern Hemisphere spin clockwise, but Saturn's anti-hurricanes are spinning counter-clockwise. These kinds of storms are very common in the giant planets. This image was taken by Cassini on July 4/5, 2005 when the spacecraft was 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from the planet.

An Ariane 5G rocket blasted off from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana today carrying the largest telecommunications satellite ever to be placed into geostationary transfer orbit. The massive Thaicom 4 (previously named iPSTAR) satellite weighed almost 6500 kg at launch. Thaicom 4 will provide Internet access to customers in Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Arianespace's next scheduled launch will be two satellites on September 29, 2005.

When human explorers reach the Moon or Mars, they're going to have to watch out for something we've all experienced here on Earth: static electricity. Zap! It's annoying when you grab a door handle after rubbing your socks across the carpet. But the dry environments on the Moon and Mars could cause astronauts to build up a significant charge that could fry electronic equipment when they try to handle it. Astronauts may have to walk across a sheet of aluminum mesh to ground themselves before returning to base.

Galaxies are actually much larger than they appear in most telescopes. Astronomers working with the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii have found stars associated with galaxy NGC 300 at twice the previously estimated radius. These old, dim stars would have blazed brilliantly billions of years ago, but now it takes a powerful telescope to be able to see them. And if NGC 300 is probably twice as large as previously estimate, our own Milky Way galaxy could extend as much as 200,000 light-years across.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and NASA are preparing to head back to Chile's Atacama desert to search for evidence of life with Zo?, an autonomous solar-powered rover. During this third trial, Zo? will travel 180 km (112 miles) across the desert, seeking micro-organisms. Researchers have chosen Atacama because it's one of the driest places on Earth, and one of the best analogs for finding life on Mars. This time around, it'll build a 3D map of soil to show how populations of bacteria cluster together.

Astronomers from the US and France have discovered an asteroid with two small moons. The asteroid, 87 Sylvia, has been known since 1866, and known to have a single moon since 2001; the second moon was a complete surprise. The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory's 8.2m Very Large Telescope in Chile while astronomers were trying to pin down motions of the first moon. These moons allowed astronomers to estimate the mass of 87 Sylvia, and they found it was only 20% higher than water. It's probably a loose pile of rubble held together by gravity, with mostly empty space.

Fergal Murphy took this picture of a straight Moon wall on 28th April 2004 from his backyard in Sandyford, Dublin, Ireland. Fergal used Toucam Pro II webcam attached to a Nexstar 8.

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.

With Discovery's return to flight complete, NASA is counting up the accomplishments for this shuttle mission: 14 days in space, three spacewalks, all four space station gyros returned to service, high resolution images of launch and in-orbit, and the first spacewalk to the underside of the shuttle. Discovery will now be ferried back to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a modified Boeing 747 aircraft.

Since we're inside the Milky Way, it's impossible for us to see what our whole galaxy looks like. But we can look at similar galaxies and get a pretty good idea. Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory have photographed two galaxies - NGC 4565 and M83 - which are very similar to the Milky Way. NGC 4565 is perfectly edge on, so we can see the central bulge. M83 is face on, so we can see its magnificent spiral arms and central structure.