Ahhh, summer time and the livin' is light and easy. Per chance there's an opportunity to escape the textbooks, computer screens and chores to engage in a more leisurely pursuit. Alex Brett offers a busy little mystery in her book, Cold Dark Matter. In it, a private investigator takes on the puzzle of an apparent murder at the FrancoCanadian telescope in Hawaii. A quick pace and twisting plot make this a fine read for those astronomy buffs who care to branch out a bit.

The Hubble Space Telescope spent 40 hours gazing at the same spot in the sky to produce a photograph filled with galaxies. The field shown in this image is a fraction of the size of the full moon in the sky, but it shows a rich diversity of galaxies. Some are big; some small; a few close; and most far away. The photograph was actually a bonus, taken in September 2003 while Hubble was using its other instruments for research in the same area.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft made a relatively close flyby of Saturn's moon Mimas on August 2nd, 2005. The 130 km (80 mile) crater Herschel makes the moon look amazingly similar to the Death Star from the Star Wars series of movies. Cassini passed only 62,700 km (38,800 miles) above Mimas; the closest it's ever been to the moon.

Astronaut Steve Robinson successfully pulled out the protruding gap fillers from between the shuttle's thermal protection tiles during his 7 hour spacewalk yesterday. The gap fillers came out with a simple tug; Robinson didn't need the makeshift hacksaw he'd brought with him. NASA officials were worried that the Nextel fabric could lead to overheating in the area during Discovery's re-entry. The filler material keeps the shuttle's heat tiles from bumping into each other during launch, but aren't necessary during landing.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has peered through walls of galactic dust to spot supermassive black holes called quasars. Some quasars are visible to telescopes, but others are behind so much gas and dust they can only be seen in the infrared spectrum, which is good for viewing through dust. Based on background X-ray radiation, astronomers had an estimate for how many quasars are out there, but they could never see them with telescopes. Now Spitzer has shown that those quasars are there, just hidden.

With new instruments, astronomers are filling in all the pieces that help to explain how planets form out of extended disks of gas and dust around newborn stars. This process seems to happen quickly, often just a few million years is all it takes to go from dust to planets. But astronomers have found one proto-planetary disk that refuses to grow up. It's 25 million years old, and still hasn't made the transition to form planets. Lee Hartmann is with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the lead author on the paper announcing the find.

Astronauts Steve Robinson and Soichi Noguchi made their preparations to head outside the space shuttle Discovery today. This spacewalk had been planned for the mission, but shuttle managers gave the two men the additional task of fixing two protruding gap fillers in between the heat tiles on the underside of the shuttle. Robinson will attempt to pull the excess material out by hand, or use a hacksaw if that doesn't work.

Shuttle managers decided on Wednesday that Discovery's leading wing edge is safe for it to make re-entry. This is the area that was damaged by falling foam during Columbia's launch, and caused the catastrophe during re-entry. High resolution photographs have analyzed every part of Discovery, and the only concerning area were some protruding tile gap fillers, which will be fixed during a spacewalk on Wednesday.

NASA's Messenger spacecraft made a successful Earth flyby this week, getting a gravity boost that will propel it into the inner solar system. This maneuver put it on course towards Venus, where it'll get another gravity assist to put it on track towards its final destination: Mercury. It won't get into a final, stable orbit around the closest planet to the Sun until 2011. Messenger took several photographs of the Earth as it came by, using this opportunity to calibrate its scientific equipment.

This Cassini image of Saturn's moon Rhea shows a bright, white spot in its leading hemisphere. This bright feature could have come from a large impact, and has been examined by Cassini several times from different angles. Cassini took the photo on June 25, 2005 when it was approximately 1.1 million km (700,000 miles) away from the moon.

Stars, stars, everywhere are stars. What's that one? Oh, it's an aeroplane flying by, oops. Moments such as this would be really bad starts to an evening out viewing the skies. However, as in the word's of the illustrious Zaphod, "Don't panic". Robin Kerrod in his book The Star Guide: Learn How to Read the Night Sky Star by Star separates the lowly flashing lights of fireflies from the twinkles overhead using a wonderful combination of maps and pictures, together with some judicious text. With this book, the stars and night sky need no longer be a mystery.

In this image of Saturn, taken by Cassini, it's possible to see how Saturn's atmosphere distorts the rings right next to the planet. This happens because Saturn's atmosphere refracts the light coming from the rings, similar to how object in the water look distorted and out of position.

Cepheid variables are one of the most accurate tools astronomers can use to measure the distance to objects in space because the period of their pulsation is directly tied to their brightness. An international team of astronomers have used this method to calculate the distance to galaxy NGC 300 which is in the Sculptor Group. The team found more than 100 Cepheid variables, and then used them to calculate the distance to be 6.13 million light-years away; give or take 3%.

Instead of being a dead, icy moon, Cassini has found that Enceladus is actually quite active. This moon of Saturn has a huge cloud of water vapour over its southern pole, and warmer fractures. The moon is relatively close to Saturn, so the intense tidal pressures are keeping it warmer than it should be. This is the same interaction between Jupiter and Io that keeps the moon covered in volcanoes.

Greetings fellow SkyWatchers! Dark skies this week means a chance to further our in-depth look at globular clusters as we explore classifications, structure, population and distance. What better way to start than with the M22? Even if you only have binoculars or a small telescope, there will be many studies here to intrigue both you and the seasoned observer as well. So open your eyes to the skies, because...

Here's what's up!

Mike Salway took this picture of Crux and Centaurus on the 9th July, 2005 from Kulnura, on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia. This image was taken with a Sony Cybershot 5.1mp digicamthe and is a result of 5 images @30s each (ISO400).

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.

Physicists have used the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to create quark-gluon plasma; a mysterious form of matter that was probably present in the first moments after the Big Bang. The team created it by smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together at relativistic speeds. The resulting explosion of particles lasted just 10^-20 seconds. Astronomers think that large neutron stars might go into a quark-gluon phase before they collapse into black holes.

Is the discovery of methane in Mars' atmosphere the first direct evidence of extraterrestrial life? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so scientists are working to figure out what it will take to know for sure. The best way to know for sure will be to analyze the ration of carbon-12 to carbon-13. Living creatures prefer to pick up carbon-12 as they assemble methane, so a larger amount of this isotope will be a telltale sign. Unfortunately, detecting this isotope is best done by spectrometers on the surface of Mars, so future landers/rovers with more sensitive instruments will be required.

Astronomers have discovered a new planet orbiting our Sun, which is larger than Pluto. It's located 97 times further than the Earth from the Sun. This new, 10th planet was actually first photographed in 2003 by the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory, but it took this long to study and confirm its size and orbit. A name has been proposed to the International Astronomical Union, which is making its decision.