Astronomers can measure the reflectivity of the Earth's atmosphere by watching "Earthshine" on the Moon. They found that a gradual dimming of this light from Earth reflected against the Moon matches the warming of the planet's lower atmosphere over the last two decades. The possibility that decreased cloud cover could cause climate change is still controversial, and many scientists are skeptical about this new research. Interestingly, the astronomers who produced this recent study have found that the trend is reversing, with Earthshine increasing again.

It seems that our Milky Way is producing stars much more rapidly than previously predicted by many astronomers. This is according to new research supported by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which was focused on Nebula RCW49. In visible light, there isn't much to see because its heart is shrouded in dust, but in the infrared spectrum, which largely ignores the blocking effect of the dust, astronomers have spotted more than 300 proto-stars in this stellar nursery. And there are many regions like this throughout our galaxy; and probably all galaxies.

As Saturn grows larger in Cassini's camera, scientists have turned many instruments on the ringed planet, including the Hubble Space Telescope. This latest release from Hubble matches up a photo of Saturn taken by the great observatory on May 22 with one taken by Cassini on May 16. It's only Hubble's incredible optics that give it a similar view to Saturn, but that's about to end as Cassini is now only a month away from its destination. The colour differences between the images are due to the different filters used on Hubble and Cassini.

Today's image released by NASA, and taken by its Cassini spacecraft is a close up view of Saturn's rings, and several of its moons: Mimas, Epimetheus, and Enceladus. The image was taken on May 10 with Cassini's narrow angle camera when the spacecraft was 27.1 million kilometres away (16.8 million miles).

In case you haven't seen it with your own eyes yet, here's a 1024x768 desktop wallpaper of Comet NEAT, which is currently fading from the evening sky. The image was taken using the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's 0.9 metre WIYN at Kitt Peak, with the Mosaic I camera. The small star cluster at the lower right of the image is Melotte 72. Comet NEAT was discovered in August 24, 2001 by the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking system managed by NASA's JPL.

An unmanned Soyuz rocket launched a Progress cargo spacecraft towards the International Space Station on Tuesday. It lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 1234 UTC (8:34 am EDT), and placed the spacecraft into the proper orbit a few minutes later. Progress 14P is carrying propellant, oxygen, air, and water, as well as 1.2 tonnes of dry cargo, like food and equipment. The spacecraft will reach the station on Thursday.

Quasars are some of the brightest and most distant objects ever observed, and astronomers used to believe they only existed inside giant or disrupted galaxies, with supermassive black holes relentlessly consuming matter at their cores. But new research using the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii shows that they live in some of the more boring galaxies in the Universe. Under the current theories, the powerful twin 8-metre telescopes should have found enormous galaxies in chaos, but they didn't. Only one galaxy could actually be detected, and it wasn't much different from our own Milky Way galaxy.

NASA has released more detailed requirements for its upcoming mission to Jupiter's icy moons. The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter would travel to the Jovian system, and then spend time orbiting Callisto, Ganymede and Europa; each of which might have liquid oceans under their icy surfaces. The mission would be powered by a nuclear reactor, and use ion propulsion to get into and out of various orbits. The Request for Proposal has been delivered to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, and they have until July 16, 2004 to deliver their conceptual designs.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is scheduled to meet up with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 10 years. It'll get to do some science before then, however, starting with Comet LINEAR, which is 95 million kilometres away (59 million miles). On April 30, Rosetta took a photograph of the comet using its OSIRIS camera system, which was already scheduled for commissioning on that date. Rosetta studied the comet in different wavelengths, from ultraviolet to microwave, and took a high resolution image in blue light.

To celebrate Cassini's arrival at Saturn, the imaging team is going to be releasing a new photograph every day detailing some different aspect of the planet and its moons until the spacecraft enters the system in July. The latest photograph was taken on May 10, and is of swirling bands of turbulent clouds in Saturn's atmosphere. It was taken when Cassini was only 27.2 million km (16.9 million miles) away from the planet.

Astronomers with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found the heaviest star ever seen - 80 times the mass of our Sun - and it's got a twin. Located 20,000 light-years from Earth, the two massive stars in WR 20a go around each other every 3.7 days. These two stars are very young, probably only 2-3 million years old, and highly unstable. It'll only be a few more million years before they explode, one after the other as supernovas.

It seems that when an asteroid struck the Earth 65 million years ago, the resulting heat pulse incinerated every dinosaur on the planet in just a few hours; only those that were in burrows or underwater likely survived. When the 10 km (6 mile) asteroid hit Chicxulub in the Yucatan, it struck with the force of 100 million megatons of TNT. A new paper published by several US university researchers calculates how ejected material would have heated the atmosphere to the equivalent of a global oven set on broil.

Researchers from Penn State University have developed a computer model that describes the interaction of a binary black hole system; where two black holes orbit one another. Previous models have fallen apart because the gravity of the black holes distorts the surrounding space so dramatically, it's almost impossible to calculate. This unusual situation could generate gravity waves detectable from Earth, which so far have only been theorized by mathematicians.

It's been a month since NASA launched the Gravity Probe B; an experiment designed to test Einstein's predictions about gravity and relativity, and so far, the spacecraft is working well. It's in the correct orbit and will begin the science phase of its mission next month. It will continue taking precise measurements of the Earth's gravity over the next 13 months to test two predictions: how space and time are warped by our planet, and how the Earth drags space-time around with it as it rotates.

The European Space Agency released its official inquiry into the loss of the Beagle 2 lander, and made 19 recommendations for future missions to the surface of the Red Planet. No one has been able to get to the root cause for the loss of Beagle 2's, but it could have been because of a thinner than expected Martian atmosphere, a problem with its airbag system, or a failure to deploy its solar panels, which cover up the lander's main antenna.

The newest photo released by NASA's Cassini spacecraft was taken on May 10, 2004 at a distance of only 27.2 million kilometres (16.9 million miles) using the spacecraft's narrow angle camera. The image shows the translucent C ring and the thin, outermost F ring, which cast a shadow across the clouded atmosphere. Cassini will arrive at Saturn in July, 2004 and begin a long term study of the ringed planet and its moons.

A new theory from researchers at Arizona State University challenges the traditional view of the formation of our Solar System. Instead of forming within an out-of-the-way cloud of interstellar gas and dust, they believe we formed in the intense environment that typically creates more massive stars. The core of their argument is the recent discovery of iron-60 in meteorites; this isotope can only be found in the heart of massive stars. This could mean that the Sun formed while a more massive star was nearby, blasting our environment with intense ultraviolet radiation.

NASA has released fragments from the space shuttle Columbia to a non-government group for the first time since the accident for study. The Aerospace Corporation, in El Segundo, California requested and will receive graphite/epoxy honeycomb skins from several sections of the destroyed spacecraft. The Aerospace Corporation will hold onto the debris for a year, and perform a series of tests to understand the maximum temperatures that it faced during re-entry. Several other "Request for Information" applications are still being considered by NASA.

M82, or the Starburst Galaxy, is one of the most studied galaxies in the night sky. New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has shed light on a cosmic hurricane that lives inside the galaxy, and sends out a stream of particles at more than 1.6 million km/h (1 million mph). These violent winds which go for thousands of light-years above and below the galaxy were caused because of M82's near miss with the neighboring spiral galaxy M81; this set off an explosive burst of star formation.

While searching for near Earth-asteroids, astronomers at Lowell Observatory found an object which orbits closer to the Sun than any other asteroid. Designated 2004 JG6, the asteroid is probably between 500 - 1,000 metres in diameter (1,600 - 3,200 feet) and takes about six months to go around the Sun. Objects like this, which travel within Earth's orbit are called Apoheles, and they're very difficult to discover because they spend so much time near the Sun, invisible to telescopes in the daytime sky. Fortunately, 2004 JG6 poses no threat to Earth.