Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! The week might begin with a full Moon, but we'll have plenty to explore as we learn about the anti-twilight arch and the "Belt of Venus". We'll watch as the Moon occults Antares, locate globular clusters, visit the planets and pinpoint asteroids. The weekend brings early dark skies along with challenges for all observers, so get ready to grab a comet by the tail, because...

Here's what's up!

Astronomers have analyzed the dusty discs of newly forming planets around other stars, and have discovered that rocky planets (like our own Earth) form much further from their parent stars than previous theories suggested. Protoplanetary dust that gets to close to its parent star completely evaporates, and never gets the chance to clump together into larger objects. The team made these new, more precise measurements using powerful instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope and the giant Keck Observatory.

Two amateur astronomers from New Zealand, working with a team of astronomers from around the world have helped to discover an extrasolar planet 15,000 light years from Earth. They used a technique known as gravitational microlensing, which occurs when a massive object (like a star or even a black hole) passes in front of a more distant star; its gravity bends and focuses light like a lens. The team noticed that the closer star had a strange pattern of distortion to its light that indicated a planet. This method could be used to find much smaller, even Earth-sized, planets.

A Russian Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sunday, carrying the DIRECTV 8 broadcast satellite into orbit. The rocket launched at 1759 UTC (1:59 p.m. EDT), and the Breeze M upper stage continued to place it into a geosynchronous transfer orbit 9 hours and 15 minutes later. DIRECTV 8 will augment the existing broadcast satellites stationed above 101 degrees west longitude.

At the end of a hard day's work, taking time to enjoy the accomplishments somehow makes the blood, sweat and tears less than what they were. When the trials and labours of building a space faring infrastructure are complete, then the opportunity to relax and enjoy this capability will surely lighten the memories of its development as well. Michel Van Pelt in his book, Space Tourism gives us a glimpse of how this leisure activity may take shape and he also highlights some of the hard work needed to get there.

Researchers have discovered that the structure of the Sun's lower atmosphere, or chromosphere, can be used to predict the speed and intensity of solar winds - the stream of electrified gas constantly blowing off the Sun. This was unexpected, because the solar wind comes from the corona, or outer layer, while the chromosphere is much deeper into the Sun. By learning how to predict the strength and speed of the solar wind, scientists will be able to protect electrical equipment, satellites and space explorers.

Cassini recently took this image of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus above the planet's sweeping rings. Although the rings are made largely of ice, they've become dirty because of contamination from meteoritic dust gathered over hundreds of millions of years. Enceladus, on the other hand, looks comparatively pristine. There must be some process that continues to resurface Enceladus, to keep it from turning the same dusty colour.

A weather satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was launched atop a Boeing Delta II rocket on Thursday, after several days of delays. The Delta II and its NOAA-18 cargo blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1022 UTC (6:22 am EDT). The satellite separated from its booster approximately 65 minutes later. Flight controllers confirmed that the satellite has entered its proper polar orbit, and deployed its solar array boom and antennas.

NASA has announced that its next Centennial Challenge will invite teams to try and extract air from lunar soil: the MoonROx (Moon Regolith Oxygen) challenge. Specifically, the teams will need to build a piece of hardware within mass and power requirements that can extract 5 kg (11 lbs) of oxygen out of simulated lunar soil within an 8 hour period. The first team to succeed will win $250,000 USD. The competition expires June 1, 2008, if nobody is able to take the prize.

When high-energy cosmic ray particles crash into the Earth's atmosphere, they produce some of the brightest radio flashes ever seen in the sky. And they had largely gone unnoticed until now. A new detector called LOPES uses prototype antennas which will eventually be built into the largest radio telescope in the world to watch the sky for these radio flashes. By studying these flashes, astronomers may gain some insights into the nature and origin of these cosmic rays.

NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft turned its gaze on its satellite neighbours recently, and took pictures of both Mars Odyssey and the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. Mars Express was photographed from about 250 km (155 miles) away, while Mars Odyssey was only 90 km (56 miles) away. In both cases, the spacecraft were moving quickly relative to each other, so the timing had to be perfect to actually capture anything with Surveyor's camera.

Cosmologists from Princeton are working on new tests that could help to explain the nature of "dark energy", a mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the Universe. It could be an unknown form of energy, or it could be that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity breaks down at very large scales. The researchers will track the rate at which galaxy clusters have grown in time. If this growth is consistent, it'll mean that dark energy is at work; otherwise, it could mean problems with Einstein's predictions.

Canadian astronomers using the MOST (Microvariability & Oscillations of STars) Space Telescope have detected that a giant extrasolar planet has forced its parent star into a lock-step orbit. This interaction is between the star tau Bootis and its "hot Jupiter" planet discovered in 1997. MOST was able to detect subtle variations in the star's brightness that correspond with the planet's orbit. It's likely that the planet has forced the outer layer of tau Bootis' atmosphere so that it rotates to keep the same side facing.

Astronauts almost unanimously speak about the wonders of their trip into space. Immediately thereafter they qualify their descriptions by bemoaning their inability to adequately convey their feelings. However, Story Musgrave, in the compact disc Cosmic Fireflies attempts to redress this deficiency.

Near the end of 2004, astronomers found a 320 metre (1000 feet) wide space rock that seemed to have the highest chance ever reported of actually striking the Earth - on April 13, 2029. Further observations have demonstrated that the asteroid will miss... phew. But when it streaks by in about 24 years, it will come so close - 30,000 km (18,600 miles) - that observers on the ground will easily see it with the unaided eye. It will get as bright as a 3rd magnitude star, and be visible from Africa, Europe and Asia.

A team of amateur Canadian astronomers took the helm at the powerful Gemini 8-metre telescope atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea for an hour. The time was awarded as part of a nationwide contest in Canada. The winning team from Quebec proposed that Gemini analyze a star called RY Tau, which is in a class of T Tauri stars. These are young, low mass stars which have only just recently emerged from their stellar cocoon of gas and dust. Professional astronomers working with Gemini were impressed at the calibre of proposals they received from amateurs.

Just a few weeks after smashing a chunk off Drygalski ice tongue, iceberg B-15A is still wreaking havoc off the coast of Antarctica. Now it's about to crash into the Aviator Glacier - a 25 km (16 mile) long spear of ice stretching into the ocean. The European Space Agency's Envisat Earth observation satellite captured this image of B-15A just a few kilometres away from the crash. B-15A is the world's largest free floating object, which has been afloat for more than 5 years now, since it calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! "Lunacy" has returned again - and with it familiar features and new ways of looking at them. On Thursday, the Moon will occult Jupiter for a portion of the Earth and make a dazzling close pass for the rest. There will be bright stars, double stars and even an asteroid to explore - so keep those binoculars and telescopes handy, because...

Here's what's up!