It appears that galaxies in the early Universe didn't evolve at similar speeds or in the same ways. Almost right from the beginning, the Universe was filled with galaxies large and small, dusty and clear, active with star formation and relatively sedate. Researchers from the US used Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to study galaxies 10-12 billion light-years away. Instead of finding a similar set of galaxies, they turned up tremendous varieties, as much as we see in the night sky today.

Cassini has made a few passes of Titan now, and the European Space Agency's Huygens probe has landed on its surface, so Saturn's largest moon is starting to reveal its secrets. Scientists involved with the mission have recently published some of their findings in the Journal Nature. Some of their insights include the discovery of a long river, 1,500 km (930 miles) long and evidence that winds on Titan blow faster than the moon rotates. The climate seems to revolve around liquid methane, which can flow in rivers, fall as rain, and collect in vast lakes.

NASA scientists have finally worked out why there's a safe zone in the Earth's radiation belts, thousands of km above the surface. It turns out that lightning in the lower atmosphere generates radio waves which interact with radiation around the Earth, removing some of its energy and changing the direction of charged particles. This safe zone could be used as a haven by satellites to reduce the damage they take while operating in these regions.

Biologists - and all parents - have a pretty good idea that "life begets life". Beginning with the most primitive anaerobic bacteria and leading up to the most sophisticated and accomplished astronomer, it's pretty clear that offspring don't necessarily resemble their parent(s) in all particulars. Meanwhile exobiologists are unlikely to ever disprove the fact that life exists beyond the Blue Planet because disproving something is much harder than proving it. After all if intelligent life could happen here - it could happen elsewhere...

Astronomers have used the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope to watch X-rays coming from Jupiter. These X-rays are mostly reflected solar radiation, which is bounced back through Jupiter's atmosphere. Since Jupiter seems to brighten and dim during solar flares, solar astronomers can detect flares occurring on the far side of the Sun. Jupiter is a poor mirror for X-rays, though, typically only reflecting back less than 0.1% of the radiation that hits it.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this photograph of Saturn's F ring that shows distinct twists and kinks. The perturbations are caused by the gravitation interaction of Saturn's F ring shepherd moon Prometheus as it orbits the Ringed Planet once every 14.7 hours - Prometheus just passed through the region in this photograph, so the eddies are fresh. This photograph was taken by Cassini on Jan. 19, 2005 at a distance of 1.9 million km (1.2 million miles).

The quaint view that black holes gobble up matter quickly and efficiently is being replaced with observations and simulations that show a tremendous amount of violence and turbulence. Like too much water trying to get down a drain, matter backs up and creates an environment unique in the Universe. A new simulation from Johns Hopkins University shows how matter around a black hole can take on relativistic speeds, extreme densities, intense magnetic fields, all the while blasting out torrents of energy.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers. During the vernal equinox it is possible for most observers to see all 110 Messier Objects in a single night. Thanks to New Moon on March 10, the best night to do this will be on Thursday. For many of us, ?marathoning? during the week isn't so easy. Why not try your own style of marathoning as we take a week long look at the observing list and enjoy these splendid objects "one night at a time?" So get out your scopes and binoculars...

Because here's what's up.

Scientists have begun firing a beam of neutrinos through the Earth to a target 735 km (456 miles) away. This experiment will help the team understand how neutrinos can pass through tremendous amounts of matter, but barely interact. And if they're lucky, they'll catch the particles as they morph into different varieties: electron, muon and tau. One detector, at Fermilab, near Chicago, will sample the beam as it leaves the Main Injector. Another detector is stationed deep underground at the Soudan Mine in Northern Minnesota. Only muon neutrinos will be generated, so if the other varieties show up, scientists will know it happened in between the detectors.

It's called Dawn, and in a little more than a year, this spacecraft will blast off from Florida, bound for two separate asteroids: Vesta and Ceres. Visiting the two most massive asteroids in our Solar System will be an ambitious undertaking; maybe one of the most difficult and dangerous orbital missions attempted. Dawn will bring a suite of scientific instruments to these two asteroids and serve as a time machine to help scientists understand what our Solar System looked like 4.6 billion years ago.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft swept past the Earth and Moon on Friday, gaining a gravity speed boost on its 10-year journey to reach Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. At its closest point, Rosetta passed just 1954 km (1214 miles) above the Pacific Ocean before speeding back off into space. This flyby allowed controllers to rehearse their procedures on a "fake asteroid" (the Moon), as Rosetta will visit two asteroids as part of its mission. Rosetta will make two more visits to Earth and one to Mars before its trip is complete.

Radio astronomers have detected a series of powerful radio wave blasts from near the centre of the Milky Way that defies an easy explanation, and could lead to the discovery of a new class of object. The team was watching the galactic centre with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array when they saw 5 bursts occur every 77 minutes, each lasting 10 minutes long. The team will attempt to match up X-rays to the radio busts, as it will help pin down the source of these unusual emissions.

Scientists are fairly certain that the Earth went through a snowball glaciation 600-800 million years ago, when the entire planet was locked in snow and ice. One new theory to explain this extreme cooling is the possibility that the Solar System passed through an interstellar cloud of dust and gas, which obscured the light from the Sun. Even if the cloud wasn't thick enough to obscure light from the Sun, it could have enabled charged particles to pass into the Earth's atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer. These clouds are huge, and it would take the Solar System 500,000 years to pass through one.

Imagine you had a telescope powerful enough to watch a snail crawling across the surface of Mars. Divide that speed by 100, and that's how quickly galaxy M33 is moving sideways in the sky. Radio astronomers achieved this astounding measurement with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which was even more difficult because they had to cancel out the Earth's motion around the Sun. Astronomers have watched galaxies speed away or move towards us for years, but this is the first time the sideways (or proper) motion of a galaxy this distant has been recorded.

The 17th Progress cargo ship docked with the International Space Station on Tuesday, delivering a pile of supplies. The ship is carrying air, water, food, equipment, and science experiments. But one of its most important cargoes is a new high resolution digital camera that the astronauts will use to inspect space shuttles when they dock with the station. The docking was completed autonomously; however, cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov was ready at the manual controls to take over if there had been a problem.

Even though they're well past their warranties, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity are acting remarkably spry. Opportunity has just wrapped up three days of hard driving, covering more distance than Spirit made in its first 70 days on Mars. It set a one-day record, reaching 177.5 metres (582 feet) on a single day. The rovers have been using their autonomous driving mode to set their own routes around obstacles without micromanagement from controllers on Earth.

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a photograph of irregular galaxy NGC 1427A on a death plunge into the Fornax cluster of galaxies. NGC 1427A has the beautiful blue colour of intense star formation, because gravitation interaction with the cluster has already collapsed much of its gas. Astronomers think that the galaxy will be completely ripped apart within a billion years, and its stars assimilated into other galaxies in the cluster.

Astronomers have found a core burning star, like our own Sun, that's only 16% larger than Jupiter; although, it has 96 times as much mass. The observations were made using the European Southern Observatory's 8.2m VLT Kueyen telescope in Chile. Astronomers watched tracked 60 stars which were known to have a regular dip in brightness, when a dimmer object was passing in front. This survey found 7 of these low mass stars which eclipsed their brighter companion.

Scientists have long been puzzled how chondrules could have formed. These are tiny, millimetre-sized spheres that make up primitive meteorites, and were somehow baked 4.6 billion years ago. New calculations show that the as giant planets, like Jupiter, formed in the early Solar System, they created regions of higher pressure and radiation called "shocks". As tiny particles entered these shocks at more than 30,000 kph, they were melted together to form these tiny chondrule droplets.