A dense globular cluster near the heart of the Milky Way has been found to contain dozens of rapidly-spinning microsecond pulsars. The discovery was made using the 100-meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia. Many of the pulsars are interesting, too; there are 13 in binary systems, and two that rotate 600 times a second - as fast as a household blender. The discovery of this many pulsars in a star cluster should keep astronomers busy for years, gaining insight into both the nature of these objects, and the conditions they formed in.

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, beginning a six-month cruise to smash a hole in a comet. If everything goes well, the spacecraft will reach Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005 deploying an impactor that will carve out a large crater. The resulting explosion should be the equivalent of 4 tonnes of TNT, and could be bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye back on Earth. Deep Impact will be watching the explosion from a safe distance of 500 km, and should get a unique view of the comet's composition, and what lies under its surface.

This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud - a satellite galaxy located 210,000 light-years away. Hubble's powerful optics have helped astronomers discover a population of infant stars embedded in the nebula NGC 346. Although there are many regions of star formation in the Milky Way, our companion galaxy is much smaller and lacks many of heavier elements forged in stars. This means that star formation in the SMC is much more like the star formation of the early Universe, before many of the heavier elements that make our planets had formed (carbon, iron, oxygen etc).

The W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii took this photograph of two galaxies about to collide over 5 billion light-years away from us. The image was possible because of the new laser guide star system for adaptive optics which corrects the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere. This allows Keck to have nearly the same view as space-based observatories like Hubble. Both galaxies in this collision are mature, and seem to have used up all their gas. This won't create spectacular amounts of new star formation, which is what happens with less mature galaxies.

Astronomers using the giant Gemini South 8-metre telescope in Chile have spotted what seems to be a collision between two planet-sized objects orbiting the nearby star Beta Pictoris. A collision like this would create a lot of dust, but the star is like a powerful fan that should quickly blow it all away. Based on the amount of dust still there, astronomers think the collision happened only 100 years ago, or so. This is exactly like the scenario astronomers believe our own Solar System went through 5 billion years ago as the various planets formed through multiple collisions.

On Friday, January 14, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe will plunge through the atmosphere of Saturn's smog-enshrouded moon Titan. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will have two hours to record everything it can about the moon's atmosphere before it meets an unknown fate on the surface - it could land with a splash, splat, or a smash. Huygens will reach Titan at 1013 UTC (5:15 am EST), and then deploy its parachute a few minutes after that. It will reach the surface by 1234 UTC (7:34 am EST), and data about the journey will arrive at Earth shortly after.

The Hubble Space Telescope has helped to reveal a trio of massive, young star clusters which might have been formed by smaller clusters merging together. This tightly packed group of clusters were found in the active star forming region of NGC 5461 (located inside spiral galaxy M101), which is located 23 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. These super clusters can contain the mass of more than 1 million suns, and it's believed that they're the precursors to massive globular clusters. In NGC 5461, the various clusters are distinct, but interacting with each other, and will eventually merge into a single, super cluster.

New observations using NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite have given astronomers evidence that their assumptions and calculations about white dwarf stars are correct. FUSE made detailed observations of Sirius B, which is 10,000 times dimmer than its companion Sirius A (the brightest star in the sky). You can only measure the mass of a star in a binary system like this; you can observe the two stars' orbit, get the period, and then find the sum of the two star masses. These new observations helped astronomers determine Sirius B's size and mass within 1%.

One mystery has been puzzling astronomers for a few years now; strange distant clouds of intensely glowing material located billions of light-years away. They've even struggled to come up with a name, and have settled for "blobs". Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have caught a glimpse inside the blobs, and discovered evidence that they surround multiple galaxies which could be in the process of merging together. Under visible light, these galaxies are unremarkable, but Spitzer uncovered that they're some of the brightest galaxies in the Universe. If the blobs are created by galactic mergers, astronomers will need to figure out why they're putting out so much material.

Engineers at NASA and the European Space Agency have calculated Huygen's descent through Titan's atmosphere tomorrow, and they think they know where it'll land. The probe will fall by parachute for about 2 hours from an altitude of 160 km (99 miles) until it reaches the surface. During this descent, it will be taking pictures and measuring the atmosphere with five science instruments. All these data will be sent to Cassini, and then relayed back to Earth. Controllers are hoping that Cassini will get a chance to take a panoramic picture of Titan's surface as it descends, slowly spinning, to help explain the strange formations uncovered by Cassini on an earlier flyby.

Astronomers recently announced the discovery of Sedna, a nearly Pluto-sized object on a 12,500 year-long orbit around the Sun. New computer simulations from the Southwest Research Institute demonstrate that Sedna could formed out past the orbit of Pluto, instead of being created closer to the Sun, and then ejected by the gravity of the gas giants. If this happened, it would mean that the zone of planetary formation in our Solar System could extend much further than previously believed, and there could be other objects like Sedna lurking in outer reaches.

An international team of astronomers think they've found the missing link between modern galaxies like our own Milky Way to the Big Bang. The team spent 10 years mapping out the distribution of 220,000 galaxies measured as part of an extensive survey of galaxy position and motion. Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe contained slight irregularities, created by subatomic processes and sound waves moving through the superhot afterglow. These irregularities were amplified by gravity, eventually pulling material into the first stars and galaxies.

Last month's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami were powerful enough that they actually changed the Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, and moved the North Pole. Not much, of course, but enough that scientists can actually measure the effect. Scientists from NASA found that the length of the day shortened by 2.68 microseconds, and the North Pole shifted by 2.5 centimetres (1 inch). The Sumatran earthquake registered as a 9 on the Richter scale, making it the 4th largest earthquake measured in 100 years.

Astronomers have found three red supergiant stars which are huge; bigger than anything previously discovered. The three stars are called KW Sagitarii (9,800 light-years away), V354 Cephei (9,000 light-years away), and KY Cygni (5,200 light-years away). All three are 1,500 times bigger than our own Sun, and would reach out midway between Jupiter and Saturn if they were in our Solar System. These stars aren't extremely massive, though, they're only 25 times the mass of the Sun (stars have been discovered which have 150 times the mass of the Sun).

The Hubble Space Telescope is helping to confirm the potential discovery of an extrasolar planet; the companion of a dim brown dwarf located 225 light-years away. The object was first discovered in April 2004 by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Astronomers think it might be a 5 Jupiter-mass planet because it's glowing too dimly to be a star. The planet and its parent star are 130% of the distance between Pluto and the Sun, so it takes 2,500 years to make one orbit. If Hubble confirms the object, this could become the first extrasolar planet ever imaged directly.

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! This week begins on the "dark side" as we welcome New Moon at perigee and do an in-depth study of a portion of the Eridanus/Fornax galaxy fields with targets viewable by a variety of scope sizes and skill levels. (Veteran galaxy hunters? You asked for it - you got it! I think you'll appreciate these challenges!) We will continue to track the progress of the Mercury/Venus pairing as they appear about one-third a degree apart by mid-week and head off together into the sunrise by week's end. We will greet the "Old Moon In The New Moon's Arms" and watch as Saturn reaches opposition. The Southern Hemisphere will enjoy Comet LINEAR K4 as it cruises past Lambda Pictor and those in the north will take on an incredibly old galactic cluster - M37. Not enough? Then hold on tight to your optics as the "Magnificent Machholz" not only sweeps by Algol, but does so during a time when the Demon Star "does its thing"! The Delta Cancrid meteor shower fills the exciting weekend agenda, so hope for clear skies and get thee outside...

Because here's what's up!

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a dusty ring of material orbiting nearby Vega which was probably the result of a series of protoplanets smashing into each other. Vega is the fifth brightest star in the sky, located only 25 light-years away in the constellation of Lyra. This dust is constantly being blown out by Vega's intense radiation, so it's unlikely that the star has had this much dust for its entire lifetime. Instead, this ring must have been formed recently, perhaps when a Pluto-sized object was pulverized within the last million years or so.

The very heart of the Milky Way is obscured by a thick wall of dust that optical telescopes can't peer through. But astronomers have used the dust-penetrating infrared capabilities of the 6.5 metre Magellan telescope in Chile to look past the wall, and map stars never seen before. Astronomers found thousands of stars jammed into an area only 6 light-years across. The purpose of these observations was to uncover stars which could be orbiting and feeding white dwarfs, neutron stars, or even black holes. These special binary objects are thought to be more common in the crowded centre of the Milky Way.

Scientists already considered Saturn's moon Iapetus unusual, because of its strange two-toned appearance; one hemisphere is dark, while the other is bright. But new images from Cassini show an even more unusual mystery: it has a seam. It's 20 km (12 miles) high and runs 1,300 km (808 miles) directly around Iapetus' equator. In some places, this ridge is so high it rivals Olympus Mons, which is unusual for an object which is 1/5th the mass of Mars. Researcher will have to wait until September 2007 for Cassini's next pass, when it will provide pictures 100x better resolution.

After four years of data crunching, NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency have completed a comprehensive topographical map of 80% of the Earth's surface. Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific were the final areas released to the public this week. Many of the smaller islands have never been properly mapped because of their remoteness, often being obscured by persistent clouds. It's these smaller islands which are at great risk to weather and long-term sea level rise, so being able to predict where water levels will go will be very helpful to mitigating future disasters like the Asian Tsunami.