NASA unveiled its new supercomputer on Tuesday, which took the lead as the fasted computer in the world. Named "Columbia", to commemorate the space shuttle, the supercomputer is built up from 10,240 Itanium 2 processors, and is capable of 42.7 teraflops (trillion calculations per second). Columbia is so powerful that scientists used it to accurately predict the path of hurricanes five days in advance. Complex aircraft analysis that used to take years can now be performed in a single day. Amazingly, the computer was built and installed in only 120 days at NASA's Ames Research Center.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft swept past Titan on Tuesday, and returned the most detailed images ever taken of its surface - from an altitude of only 1,200 km (miles) above its surface. Previous attempts to see the moon's surface have been frustrating because of its thick atmosphere. Scientists still aren't sure what the various light and dark areas are; they could be solid landmasses surrounded by oceans of liquid ethane and methane. The spacecraft took more than 500 images, so they're going to take a while to completely transfer to Earth - better pictures should be revealed in the next few days.

Astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have discovered a huge halo of dark matter around an isolated elliptical galaxy; an object that shouldn't have such a halo, according to optical observations. The galaxy, NGC 4555, is unusual that it's a large elliptical galaxy which isn't part of a larger cluster of galaxies. It's surrounded by a cloud of gas, twice the size of the galaxy itself, that's been heated to 10-million-degrees Celsius. This gas could only get that hot if it was being constrained by a halo of dark matter ten times the mass of the stars in the galaxy.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will pass only 1,200 km (745 miles) above the surface of Titan today, delivering the most detailed pictures ever taken of the mysterious, methane covered moon. This image was taken on October 24, when the spacecraft was still more than 1.2 million km (745,000 miles) away, so the view is going to get much better. The photo was taken using a special filter that allows Cassini to mostly peer through the enshrouding methane atmosphere and see some of the moon's surface features, such as the bright, continent-sized Xanadu region.

Greetings, fellow sky watchers! As October ends, we have another exciting week in astronomy for you. This week's highlight is a total eclipse of the Moon! On October 27/28 our "nearest astronomical neighbor" will slide quietly into the Earth's dark cone of shadow called the umbra, providing most of us from Europe through North America with an inspiring view - but that's not all. There will also be many other great things to explore this week such as lunar features Tycho, Grimaldi, Langrenus, Mare Crisium and Hercules. We'll locate the 12th brightest star in the sky and do a "double take" as we learn about Albireo. Rich star cluster, M45 is waiting on you to explore with binoculars, telescopes -- or just your eyes and imagination. There's a little history here and a lot of fun. Now it's time to mark your calendars...

Because here's what's up!

Last week, Mark Mortimer reviewed Dennis Wingo's new book, Moonrush - Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources, about the prospects of getting our future materials from space. Well, we had a few more questions for Wingo, about property rights, related projects here on Earth, and the possibility that we could wreck our environment so badly that getting into space is totally out of reach. Read on for this bonus interview with Dennis Wingo.

The ninth crew to man the International Space Station safely returned to Earth on Saturday. Commander Gennady Padalka and NASA Science Officer Mike Fincke landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan after being in space for 188 days - Russian test pilot Yuri Shargin was also along for the return trip to Earth (he was only in space for a little more than a week). After a few weeks of medical tests and debriefings, the team will travel to Houston for further post-flight activites.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will make its first close approach tomorrow to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The spacecraft will skim within only 1,200 km (745 miles) of the moon's atmosphere, which should allow its radar to penetrate through its thick methane atmosphere and reveal details about its surface. Scientists have theories, but they really have no idea exactly what Cassini is going to discover; whether it's covered in ancient craters, or there are ongoing geologic processes that are reshaping its surface continuously. Cassini will also gather data about Huygens' potential landing site when it arrives at the moon in a couple of months.

Firefly has just published a package, Moonwatch - A Complete Starter Pack for the Lunar Observer that shows they're already into the Christmas season. Three great aids for viewing Earth's moon are within this sharp looking, light cardboard enclosure. These are; a book, a moon map and a sheet of photographs. As written on the package's front, together these make a comprehensive, complete starter pack for lunar observing.

NASA engineers thought that a steering problem on Spirit had cleared up, since they hadn't seen it in almost two weeks. Well, it's back. The glitch first appeared on Oct. 1, and forced the rover to stay put for 5 days while engineers searched for the cause. It went away after that, and returned again on Oct. 13. Engineers are now considering workarounds that would get the rover driving again, such as disabling the brakes on the steering actuator that keeps the misbehaving wheel pointed properly. This means the freely turning wheel might give the rover some difficulty as it negotiates rough terrain.

When developing his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein predicted that the Earth should drag space and time around with it as it rotates on its axis. NASA's Gravity Probe B spacecraft was launched earlier this year to help confirm this prediction, but an international team of researchers has beaten the spacecraft to a conclusion. By carefully tracking the position of the LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2 satellites - beachball-sized spheres covered in mirrors - they discovered that their orbit is being shifted by about two metres a year by this dragging effect by the Earth's gravity, almost exactly what was predicted by Einstein.

At a distance of only 50 million light-years away, the Virgo Cluster is the nearest galaxy cluster to us. It's a giant structure consisting of hundreds of galaxies, both large and small, spiral and elliptical; 16 objects in this cluster are members of the famous Messier list of space objects. Astronomers have located a large number of planetary nebula floating in the "intercluster" space between galaxies, and theorize that they must be a fraction of the free floating stars and other objects which swarm around the cluster. By measuring the path of these objects, astronomers have been able to track how the Virgo Cluster is still in the process of formation.

The end of the world will occur. This is certain. Some think that it'll happen within a fairly short time for the human race. Dennis Wingo has his own view of this upcoming doomsday event. But he also provides in Moonrush - Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources a well supported plan to save the human race. Superman, eat your heart out, there are others who are working to prevent the end of the world.

One of the six scientific instruments on board the European Space Agency's Huygens probe is a tiny microphone designed to help scientists listen for lightning strikes as the spacecraft descends through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan. Huygens is scheduled to arrive at Titan on January 14, 2005, after it's released by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. If Huygens actually passes through a storm, the microphone should actually be able to pick up the sound of liquid methane rain splashing against the spacecraft's casing. If the probe does find thunderstorms, this could indicate that they're part of the process that helps create the organic molecules detected in the moon's atmosphere.

The Milky Way is a messy eater. When it collides with other galaxies and consumes them, it leaves shredded collections of stars around called dwarf galaxies. Astronomers poring through the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have found what they think could be a new dwarf galaxy. This new object, called Willman 1, is dim: 200 times less luminous than any other nearby dwarf galaxy. Further observations could validate the theory that the Milky Way is surrounded by clumps of dark matter, each of which has a dwarf galaxy in their centre.

You might want to set your alarm clock a little earlier on Thursday morning, so you can enjoy the Orionid meteor shower. If you look towards the constellation of Orion, with its easy to find belt, and be patient, you should see at least a few meteors streak past in the sky. This annual event happens because the Earth is passing through the dust trail of Halley's Comet, which returns to the Sun every 76 years. Orionids move fast, striking the atmosphere at 66 km/s (148,000 mph), which means they can be more spectacular that other, slower moving meteor showers. In dark conditions, you can expect to see 15-30 meteors an hour; less in the city.

Our Solar System takes a very consistent journey as it completes an orbit around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, similar to the way our Earth goes around the Sun. But astronomers from the European Space Agency have used the Hipparcos space-based observatory to find stars which don't stay put in the galaxy. Instead, these rogue stars will travel on a more erratic path, perhaps given a kick by the denser leading edge of the Milky Way's spiral arms. These kinds of stars account for 20% of stars within 1000 light-years of the Sun, so it's a very common situation.

Brand new planetary systems take much longer to form than previously thought, according to new data gathered by the Spitzer Space Telescope - and it's a nasty, chaotic period. Researchers pointed Spitzer at 71 dusty disks which are new planets in the making, and found that many seem choked with dust, hundreds of millions of years after the host star formed. The only way this could be possible is if mountain range-sized planetesimals were continuously crashing into each other on the long hard road to full sized planethood.