Astronomers now believe that all large galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their centre, but it was believed that these black holes formed after the galaxy. The evidence is starting to point the other way, that these black holes formed soon after the Big Bang, and then the galaxies built up around them. New observations from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory show a distant quasar that formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, and was already producing the same amount of energy as twenty trillion Suns.

Cassini took this image of Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, on October 24, 2004 when it was about 1.7 million km (1 million miles) away. The photo clearly shows a bright bright impact crater near its eastern limb. Cassini will get another view of Rhea in January 2005 - but with 10 times better resolution - just after it releases the Huygens probe which will land on Titan.

This is a satellite photograph of one of the driest places on Earth: Chile's Atacama Desert, which only sees rain two to four times a century. The picture was taken by the European Space Agency's Envisat Earth observation satellite, using its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS). There are even some spots in the desert where rainfall has never been recorded. Plants and animals and even people are forced to harvest water from the air itself, which sometimes forms a light fog. The European Southern Observatory is located in this desert, because of its high altitude and clear, dry air.

This image of Saturn and its tiny moon Mimas was taken on Sept. 25, 2004 by NASA's Cassini spacecraft when it was 7.8 million kilometers (4.8 million miles) from the planet. The photo shows a huge white storm which has formed in a band of clouds.

Japanese researchers using the Subaru Telescope have found a large galaxy caught in the act of consuming a smaller companion galaxy. It's a messy eater; there's a wispy trail of stars over 500,000 light-years long, which is the longest astronomers have ever seen. Examples of this kind of galactic destruction are hard to find because the consumed are usually dim dwarf galaxies. We have only indirect evidence of digested galaxies in our own Milky Way, like groups of stars traveling in an unusual trajectory.

Scientists believed they'd finally reached the limits of microbial life with the heart of the Atacama desert in Chile. This desert is so dry, parts of it only receive one rainfall every decade or so, and NASA uses it as a model for the search for life on Mars. But researchers from the University of Arizona have discovered that life's here too. They dug up soil samples from 20 to 30 cm (8 to 12 inches) below ground, and then added completely sterile water and let the samples sit for 10 days. They were then able to grow unusual bacteria from the samples and analyze their DNA.

Early star formation is a bit of a puzzle for astronomers, since all the stars that we can see formed out of molecular gas and dust, which are produced in stars. How did the first ones form without any gas and dust? One class of galaxies, called Blue Dwarf Galaxies may offer some clues. They contain interstellar clouds which are similar to the material that would have been present in the early Universe. And these galaxies can have active regions of furious star formation. New research from the European Southern Observatory has targeted one of these Blue Dwarfs to try and understand the process better.

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously predicted that we'd see space elevators 50 years after people stopped laughing at the idea. Jerome Pearson has been thinking about space elevators since the early 1970s, and he's been watching the growing enthusiasm (and fading chuckles) with great interest. But he knows there are significant challenges in engineering and materials that still need to be overcome, so he's suggesting NASA build an elevator on the Moon first. And the agency is taking the idea seriously.

It?s the year 2027 and NASA?s Vision for Space Exploration is progressing right on schedule. The first interplanetary spacecraft with humans aboard is on course for Mars. However, halfway into the trip, a gigantic solar flare erupts, spewing lethal radioactive protons directly at the spacecraft. But, not to worry. Research by former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman and a group of MIT colleagues back in the year 2004 ensured that this vehicle has a state-of-the-art superconducting magnetic shielding system that protects the human occupants from any deadly solar emissions.

The X-43A scramjet broke its own world record for air breathing engines on Tuesday, when it traveled at nearly 10 times the speed of sound. The prototype scramjet aircraft was dropped from a B-52 aircraft, and then boosted to Mach 4 by a Pegasus rocket. The aircraft detached from the rocket and then accelerated up to Mach 9.8 (11,265 kph or 7,000 mph). This flight was the last in a series of three test flights by NASA in the development of its Hyper-X program, which explores alternatives to rocket power for access to space.

NASA's Swift spacecraft is sitting on top of a Boeing Delta II rocket at Florida's Cape Canaveral, waiting for technical difficulties to be resolved with a piece of electronic equipment on the rocket. If everything goes well, Swift will lift off on Thursday, and head into space to search for the most powerful explosions in the Universe: Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), which could be the birth cries of new black holes. The observatory's gamma ray detector scans the sky looking for these explosions. When it finds them, the whole spacecraft will turn to focus on the source within 70 to 100 seconds, and analyze it with a suite of other instruments.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft took this photograph of a series of canyon systems on the surface of the Red Planet. The canyons are part of the Coprates Catena, which are at the southern end of the enormous Valles Marineris rift. Sections of the structures appear to have collapsed in on themselves at various points; a few landslides are visible. Scientists theorize that underlying ice or water was removed, which then caused the rock and soil to collapse.

NASA has pushed back the launch of its X-43A because of instrument trouble used up most of their launch window on Monday. Although they were go for launch at the end of the window, launch controllers decided to push the launch back until Tuesday. If all goes well, the innovative "scramjet" prototype will detach from a flying B-52 aircraft, and then accelerate to Mach 10 - 10 times the speed of sound, or 11,300 kph (7,000 mph).

The European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft is no longer orbiting the Earth... it's orbiting the Moon! The spacecraft has been slowly raising its orbit using its efficient ion engine, and yesterday it passed within 5,000 km (3,100 miles) of the Moon, using its gravity to shift the spacecraft's trajectory. Its engine will now fire for 4 days straight to complete the orbital maneuver. It will continue lowering its orbit around the Moon until mid-January, when it'll get as close as 300 km (186 miles) and begin a scientific study.

TV host Sir Patrick Moore has popularized astronomy for almost half a century in the United Kingdom and around the world by presenting his monthly Sky at Night program without a break - a slight episode of food-poisoning earlier this year that meant Patrick missed a program, but he made a full recovery. Patrick has also written over a hundred books and thousands of papers on the subject, and was working on a new project when Richard Pearson caught up with him at his East Grinstead home.

Welcome back, fellow skywatchers! The "hot" news for this week is, of course, the Leonid Meteor Shower. Where will it happen, when will it happen and how many can we expect to see? The answers to that are all matters of calculation and a whole lot of luck! The predictions for 2004 look best for the early hours of November 19, but why wait? The random rate (thanks to a little help from the Andromedids) has been outstanding! We will also locate and explore globular cluster M30 and a beautiful asterism known as the "Coathanger". Want some color in your stars? Then come along as we locate and view Omicron 1 Cygni! We head south for the "Lonely Star" - Formalhaut, and salute Southern Hemisphere viewers with the finest "double" in the sky, Rigel Kentauris. We will examine lunar features and use the Moon to guide you to the outer planets. You'll find a bit of space history here as well as a lot of fun for the naked-eye, binocular and telescope observer. For now? Hope for clear skies and mark your calendars...

Because here's what's up!

In June, researchers from the University of Rochester discovered a planet around a star so young that it shouldn't exist according to existing theories of planetary formation. Further observations have backed up the discovery; there's definitely a planet there which is only 100,000 to 500,000 years old. This is much too young for either of the established theories of planetary formation. In the "core accretion" model, larger and larger chunks of rock smash together for 10 million years until a large planet is formed. In the "gravitational instability" model, a cloud of material pulls together into a planet by its own gravity; this is faster, but still not fast enough to explain how the planet got there.

Engineers at NASA knew they were taking a risk when they piloted the Opportunity rover into the stadium-sized Endurance crater because it has fairly steep walls. It looks like the planned eastward exit out of the crater isn't going to work; one part of the slope is too steep, and the other is covered in sand that the rover might not be able to cross. Opportunity will have to backtrack, and search out a new exit to the south, and maybe even go back out by retracing its entry path.

Although they were using the Hubble Space Telescope to analyze the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, an international team of astronomers were also able to discover a new asteroid that happened to drift through Hubble's field of view. The asteroid is 270 million km (169 million miles) from Earth, which probably puts it into the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter - it's only 2.4 km (1.5 miles) across. The asteroid's path is wavy because Hubble was orbiting the Earth as it took a series of long exposures, and the gaps come from times that Hubble's shutter was closed.

This photograph of Phobos, one of Mars' two tiny moons, was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft when it was less than 200 km (125 miles) away during a recent flyby. The picture shows the strange parallel grooves that run around moon, and researchers might be able to tell whether they formed before or after the larger impact craters. Phobos is locked in a "death spiral" around Mars, and it'll eventually crash into the planet, or be torn apart and turned into a short-lived ring.