When you look at the sky, it's like looking through a time machine. The further you look, the longer the light took to reach our eyes. The most powerful telescopes on Earth can see out to a distance of 13 billion light-years away; but any more distant, and the first stars hadn't ignited yet to illuminate the sky - a time called the "Dark Era". The afterglow of the Big Bang, the cosmic background radiation, is present across the entire night sky, and astronomers have figured out how to spot the shadows cast by intervening particles to begin understanding the distribution of matter in the Dark Era.

Scientists have gathered the first data from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, which is located 750 metres underground in an old iron mine in Soudan, Minnesota. They're looking for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS); particles that can pass right through the Earth almost unaffected, but which interact through gravity. The experiment isn't conclusive, but the scientists were able to put some boundaries on the mass and number of interactions the particles should make as they pass through the instrument's detectors. Over the next few years, they will increase the sensitivity of their equipment to resolve interactions by a factor of 20.

Sea Launch successfully lofted the DIRECTV 7S broadcast satellite into orbit today. A Zenit-3SL rocket lifted off from the floating platform at 1242 GMT (8:42 am EDT), and sent the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit towards its final destination above 119 degrees West Longitude. The DIRECTV 7S is the heaviest commercial satellite ever launched, weighing in at 5,483 kg. This was the 10th successful consecutive mission for Sea Launch.

Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have come up with a new theory to help explain how giant radio galaxies could create cosmic rays; through a process called magnetic field reconnection. According to this theory, the magnetic field lines of the supermassive black holes at the heart of these galaxies connect and vanish, converting the energy of the field into a spray of particles. Cosmic rays are a mystery to astronomers because they have so much energy, there doesn't seem to be anything in the Universe that could propel them.

A journalist is an essential element in any responsible government. These people evaluate programs and activities the way food blenders process food. Tom Siegfried is a journalist but his target is not the government; it's physics and cosmology. He is gentler than a food processor and in Strange Matters, Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time he examines current and historical programs and activities, but of a scientific nature. He provides, like any good journalist, enough information to allow a reader to develop their own opinion, but not so much so as to preclude any choices.

Researchers from the University of Chicago are about to run the most complex simulation of a supernova ever attempted. The simulation will use 2.7 million hours of supercomputing time from the U.S. Department of Energy; computers which are used to simulate nuclear weapon explosions. Scientists think that a supernova explodes inside the core of a white dwarf star, and then expands towards the surface like an inflating balloon, but the exact stages are still unknown. The results from the simulation should be ready by summer.

The Sea Launch Odyssey launch platform and Commander ship arrived at the equator on Thursday to make preparations to launch the DIRECTV 7S satellite. If all goes well, a Zenit-3SL rocket will lift off from Odyssey on Tuesday, May 4, carrying the 5,483 kg satellite into a geosynchronous orbit. The DIRECTV 7S satellite will provide communication and broadcast services from its position at 119-degrees West longitude.

Researchers located a binary system in 2003, believed to be a spinning pulsar and a neutron star. But new evidence indicates that it's actually two pulsars orbiting each other; the first known example of a binary pulsar system. Pulsars fire out a concentrated beam of radio radiation like a lighthouse - when this beam falls on the Earth, the pulsar looks brighter. In this system, one pulsar's beam is illuminating the other pulsar, so it allows astronomers to accurately measure the interactions between the objects.

Here's a 1024x768 desktop wallpaper of The Bug Nebula (a.k.a. NGC 6302) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It's one of the brightest and most extreme planetary nebulae ever discovered. At the heart of the nebula is one of the hottest stars known in the Universe; yet it's surrounded by a blanket of icy material. It's believed that the material from the nebula was expelled 10,000 years ago, but won't last long before it evaporates under the heat of the parent star.

Sometimes it takes a prize to really propel an industry forward, like with the historic Orteig Prize, which rewarded Charles Lindbergh $25,000 for crossing the Atlantic by airplane. In its most recent budget, NASA has set aside some budget to reward groups who accomplish certain milestones. The agency will be holding a workshop on June 15-16 in Washington D.C. to gather ideas and brainstorm on what kinds of goals will leverage this budget the furthest.

The team responsible for the MARSIS radar instrument on Mars Express has advised the ESA to put off the deployment of its radar booms. Currently, the booms are folded up like accordions against the side of the spacecraft, and they're designed to spring into 20-metre hollow cylinders. New and improved computer simulations show that they could swing more wildly when deployed than originally predicted, and potentially damage parts of the spacecraft. MARSIS will study the sub-surface of Mars to a depth of a few kilometres, and should reveal underground reservoirs of water or ice.

This latest true colour image of Saturn taken by Cassini completely fills the field of view of the spacecraft's narrow angle camera. The photo was taken on March 27, when the spacecraft was 47.7 million kilometres away from the Ringed Planet. Subtle colour variations are visible across the planet, from the atmospheric bands to the rings. Cassini will reach the planet in July 2004.

The newest photo released by the European Southern Observatory shows an enormous collision on a galactic scale. Two galaxies, NGC 6769 on the right, and NGC 6770 on the left are locked in orbit around each other, and exchanging stars and dust. Although this is destructive to both galaxies, the bluish tint to the spiral arms indicates massive amounts of star formation in fertile galactic nurseries.

NASA's Spirit Rover took some new panoramic images of the "Columbia Hills", still a distant 2 kilometres, and 52 days away. Once Spirit reaches the base of the hills, operators will have the rover analyze the composition of the terrain and then decide whether to have Spirit actually climb one of the mountains and look for exposed outcroppings of rock. These areas would offer scientists a series of windows into the processes that shaped the formation of this part of Mars.

NASA has checked out its recently launched Gravity Probe B spacecraft, and everything seems to be working fine. The solar panels are producing enough power to run all of its electrical systems, and its communications systems are talking to operators on the ground. All four gyro suspension systems have been activated, and the gyros are now being prepared to gather scientific data. If all goes well, the spacecraft should confirm two predictions that Einstein made about general relativity: how the Earth bends space and time around it, and how it drags space and time as it rotates.

New observations show that Arctic sea ice isn't completely static; it undergoes back and forth motions twice a day, no matter how cold the weather gets. Researchers used Canada's RADARSAT Earth observation satellite to image the Arctic region up to five times a day. It found that the ice moved back and forth during a 12-hour cycle, caused by the Earth's rotation. This movement could create increased ice formation as the icepack thins, and prevent depletion of the icecaps.

Four planets are gathering in the night time sky, and the view is spectacular. On the evening of April 22, look to the West just after it's starting to get dark; you'll see Venus blazing away just above a delicate crescent Moon. Mars is just above Venus, and Saturn is still higher. If you turn to the East, the brightest object in that direction is Jupiter. On Friday, the Moon will instead be beside Mars, and then beside Saturn on Saturday. To really enjoy the experience, get your hands on a telescope and see these incredible objects up close with your own eyes.

The giant Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico - already the largest and most sensitive single dish in the world - is getting an upgrade, which should make it even more powerful. In the past, Arecibo had the ability to look at one spot in the sky at a time, and so it took many observations to build up a comprehensive image. The newly attached ALFA (Arecibo L-Band Feed Array) works like a camera to let the observatory look at seven times the area in the same amount of time. This should dramatically speed up Arecibo's ability to gather data, and let it search for rarer objects, like pulsars orbiting black holes.