The European Space Agency's Huygens probe successfully detached from Cassini on December 25, and began its brief journey to Titan. The probe is currently dormant, though, and will remain this way for most of its 20-day journey to Saturn's largest moon. Four days before arrival, a triply-redundant alarm clock will wake the probe up, and it will prepare for arrival. On January 14, 2005, the probe will enter Titan's atmosphere, descending to the surface in about 2 hours.

New observations of Jupiter's moon, Amalthea, reveal that it probably didn't form with the giant planet. The observations were made with the powerful Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, which found that Amalthea has unusual amounts of water-carrying minerals. These typically form in low temperature environments. Astronomers theorize that Jupiter's moons formed from several small objects merging together, and Amalthea could be an example of one of these building blocks that never had a chance to merge.

An unmanned Progress cargo ship lifted off from Kazakhstan over night, carrying much needed supplies for the International Space Station. Food supplies were getting low on board the station, so the Progress is loaded up with a 112-day supply of food, as well as water, air, propellant, and additional spare parts for the station. It's expected to dock automatically on December 25th to the aft port of the Zvezda living quarters module.

After a 7 year journey, and traveling more than 3.2 billion km (1.9 billion miles) with Cassini, Huygens is about to head out on its own. In just a few hours, controllers will give the order to detach Huygens from Cassini using tension-loaded springs, and send its on its way for its encounter with Titan in 20 days. The exciting part of Huygens mission will take just over two hours as it plummets through the moon's atmosphere, sending back details to Cassini. And if Huygens is really lucky, it'll survive on the surface of Titan for another two hours.

A newly discovered 400-metre (1,300 ft) asteroid has been given a 2 on the Torino asteroid impact scale; the first time this has ever happened. According to current calculations, Asteroid 2004 MN4 will have a 1/300 chance of striking the Earth on April 13, 2029. Astronomers expect the threat rating will decrease as more observations are made. If it actually did strike the Earth, an asteroid this large would do a significant amount of damage.

Photographs taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft seem to indicate that there still could be active volcanism on the Red Planet. The spacecraft took detailed observations of five Martian volcanoes, and found that some had erupted as recently as 4 million years ago. Although this is ancient in human terms, it means that Mars is still probably geologically active. This is very important to biologists, because it means that there could be geothermic vents with heat and liquid water - havens for microbial life.

When Huygens makes its plunge into Titan's thick atmosphere on January 14, 2005, it'll be watched by a host of instruments, including the radio telescopes from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). By measuring the frequency of Huygens' radio signals, scientists will be able to calculate the east-west wind speeds, and build a better model of Titan's weather systems. Another team will track the probe's trajectory to within 1 km (3,300 feet).

NASA has selected six proposals for instruments that will fly with the upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). These instruments include: a laser altimeter, a high-resolution camera, a neutron detector to search for water ice, a thermometer to map the temperature of the lunar surface, an ultraviolet detector to look into shadowed regions, and a cosmic ray telescope to measure background radiation. The LRO will travel to the Moon in 2008, and help gather information needed for future human explorers as part of the new space vision.

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has discovered baby galaxies forming in our relative neighborhood, casting doubt on the theory that only small galaxies were forming this long after the Big Bang. These new galaxies are called ultraviolet luminous galaxies, and they're only 2-4 billion light-years away. They could be as young as 100 million to one billion years old. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer surveyed thousands of galaxies before finding these few dozen ultraviolet-bright ones, which are teeming in new star formation.

One of the highlights of Cassini's mission to Saturn is about to get underway, when the ESA's Huygens probe detaches from the spacecraft on December 24, and begins its solo journey to Titan. Once freed from Cassini, it'll remain in a dormant sleep until a timer wakes it up on January 14, shortly before it enters the moon's atmosphere. It will take 2.5 hours to pass through Titan's atmosphere, and it may even survive a landing on the moon's mysterious surface.

The first Delta 4 Heavy rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Tuesday evening, but it appears there was a glitch that put the rocket's satellite payload into an incorrect orbit. The rocket's first stage shut down 8 seconds earlier than expected, so the upper stage was fired longer than originally planned to compensate. Flight controllers still haven't made an official announcement about the demonstration payload it was carrying, but two additional nanosatellites haven't made contact yet. NASA is considering this vehicle as a potential replacement for some of the space shuttle's cargo carrying duties, so the launch was being watched carefully.

The European Space Agency has produced a detailed temperature map of the Mediterranean Ocean from space that would have required millions of thermometres. All 3 million square km (1.9 million miles) of the ocean are getting their temperature checked every single day as part of the ESA's Medspiration project. The data is being gathered by instruments on several spacecraft and then combined by researchers to help understand climate models. Once the bugs are ironed out, future experiments could keep track of almost the entire Earth's temperature in a similar manner.

Researchers from the University of Rochester are working on a new kind of laser communications system that could dramatically improve the bandwidth that future rovers would use to send data, video and images back to Earth. The team has overcome one of the problems of an efficient fibre laser system, which caused them to shut down at high levels of power. Fired from Mars, a traditional laser would spread out hundreds of kilometres during the long journey, but a fibre laser would still concentrate to within a couple of km, and allow the rovers to transmit high-bandwidth data.

An Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from the European Space Agency's launch centre in French Guiana on Saturday, carrying a French military surveillance satellite and 6 additional microsatellites. The Helios 2A satellite is part of Europe's spy satellite network that will be independent of the United States'. The microsats included 4 Essaim satellites designed to demonstrate technology for a future network; the Parasol atmospheric sciences satellite, and a Spanish-built Nanosat, which will also demonstrate technology.

Season's Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Take the time from your busy holiday schedule to relax with some astronomy. There will be three minor meteor showers this week: the Coma Berenicids, Delta Arietid and the Ursids. The waxing Moon will become our guide as we locate historic variable Mira. Mare Humorum and Crater Gassendi are great features to learn about on the lunar surface and we'll travel to the outer arm of our own galaxy to study a multiple star system - Sigma Orionis. Not enough? Then I have a special and very challenging surprise for you on Christmas Day! Although the Moon goes full during this seven-day period, those who are just beginning with new telescopes will appreciate its presence as an easy "pointer" to Saturn. So lift your eyes toward the heavens and enjoy the bright stars of Winter...

Because here's what's up!

One instrument on board NASA's Cassini spacecraft allows it to detect lightning. As part of initial tests, the spacecraft was able to detect lightning on Earth from a distance of 89,000 km (55,300 miles). As it approached Saturn last July, it began detecting lightning on the Ringed Planet at a distance of 161 million km (100 million miles). This means that lightning on Saturn is 1 million times stronger than on our own planet. One possible reason is because the gas giants could have magnetic fields similar to the Sun, which rotates at different speeds at different latitudes.

Ice particles are a key part of Saturn's changing environment according to a new paper published by Larry Esposito from the University of Colorado at Boulder. According to Esposito, much of Saturn's system is filled with ice, and its components: oxygen and hydrogen, which extend millions of kilometres outward from the planet. Researchers are seeing large fluctuations in the amount of oxygen, which could be caused by small, icy moons which are colliding with the planet's E ring, which produces small grains of ice that yield oxygen atoms.

An Atlas V rocket successfully lifted off this morning carrying an AMC-16 broadcast satellite into orbit. The rocket launched at 1207 UTC (7:07 am EST) from Cape Canaveral, and put the satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit nearly two hours later. Its final location will be at 85-degrees West, where it will provide broadcast services to the Americas.

On Cassini's recent flyby of Titan, scientists discovered that Saturn's largest moon has a surprising number of layers of haze in its atmosphere. These layers of haze extend several hundred kilometres above the moon's surface. This image was taken in ultraviolet, and then colourized on computer to look like natural colour.