Shuttle will give new life to Hubble

Nasa last night confirmed that it is to send astronauts on a daring mission to save the Hubble space telescope. Veteran astronaut Scott D. Altman will head a seven-man crew which will fly Discovery to the orbiting observatory in 2008. They will carry out vital repairs to extend Hubble's life and prevent it from falling to Earth. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced plans for the mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Maryland. He told staff: "We have conducted a detailed analysis of the performance and procedures necessary to carry out a successful Hubble repair mission over the course of the last three shuttle missions. What we have learned has convinced us that we are able to conduct a safe and effective servicing mission to Hubble." He added: "While there is an inherent risk in all spaceflight activities, the desire to preserve a truly international asset like the Hubble Space Telescope makes doing this mission the right course of action." The servicing mission had been called off in 2004 by Nasa's previous Administrator Sean O'Keefe, following the Columbia disaster that killed seven astronauts. Hubble needs repairs, including replacement of batteries and gyroscopes that keep it stable. If nothing is done, it will re-enter the atmosphere in a blaze of destruction sometime after 2010. The telescope, famous for its stunning images of galaxies and other wonders, is in a much higher orbit than the International Space Station. If there was an emergency, astronauts would therefore be unlikely to be able to reach the safety of the station. But Nasa are planning to have a second shuttle on standby when the servicing mission is launched. If there was an emergency, it would be launched within a week to rescue the first crew. The rest of the crew named for the Hubble mission are Gregory Johnson, John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino, Andrew Feustel, Michael Good and Megan McArthur. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

A year to celebrate astronomy

The International Astronomical Union has announced a year celebrating the science. They have named 2009 as the International Year of Astronomy to commemorate 400 years since Galileo viewed the heavens through a telescope. Planetariums and observatories are set to support the event. In the UK, celebrations are set to focus on a National Astronomy Week when local societies will set up their telescopes to show the public the sky. Theme of the week will be the Moon as it will be 40 years also since the first Apollo landing in 1969. Robin Scagell, vice-president of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "We are already helping plan a Moon Week in July 2009 when we hope to help people see the Moon and planets through our telescopes." An IAU spokesman said: "In 1609, Galileo Galilei first turned one of his telescopes to the night sky and made astounding discoveries that changed mankind’s conception of the world forever: mountains and craters on the Moon, a plethora of stars invisible to the naked eye and moons around Jupiter. "Astronomical observatories around the world promise to reveal how planets and stars are formed, how galaxies assemble and evolve, and what the structure and shape of our Universe actually are. "Today, humans are in the middle of a new age of discovery, one as profound as the one Galileo ushered in when he turned his telescope on those glorious star-filled nights 400 years ago." There is actually some dispute about who first used a telescope on the sky with some believing that British astronomer Thomas Harriot, from Oxfordshire, beat Galileo to it. The picture is an image of Galileo. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Fly your name to the asteroids

Nasa are giving everyone the chance to send their name into the stars aboard a new mission - but you need to get your skates on. The space agency will accept names until Saturday for a probe that will fly to the two biggest asteroids in the solar system. They will be added to a silicon chip that will fitted inside the Dawn spacecraft which is scheduled for launch in June next year. Project manager Keyur Patel said: "How many chances do you get to fly into the very heart of the asteroid belt?" Thousands of space fans have already submitted their names. Others have until Saturday, November 4 to send theirs via the mission website. The Dawn probe will be the first to fly around and examine two separate worlds. Using an ion engine to provide "light drive" on a four-year, three billion kilometer (1.9 billion mile) flight, it will go into orbit around the asteroid Vesta in 2011. After months of detailed study, the craft will fire its engine again and travel on to a separate rendezvous with the biggest of the asteroids, Ceres, in 2014. Dawn's Principal investigator Chris Russell, of the University of California Los Angeles, said: "This campaign will allow people from around the world to become directly involved with Dawn, and through that, become familiar with the mission's science." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Giant ocean once covered Mars

Mars was once covered with a planet-wide ocean, Nasa experts believe. The space agency's two robot rovers have detected widespread deposits of chemicals called sulphates which usually form in liquid water. A new analysis of the data from the buggies, Spirit and Opportunity, lead scientists to believe that the water was part of a sea that covered Mars millions of years ago. The discovery was revealed as the first of the rovers to land on Mars, Spirit, celebrated its 1,000th day on the planet. Opportunity landed three weeks later in January 2004. The latest findings came as a result of research by James Greenwood of Wesleyan University and Ruth Blake of Yale University, in Connecticut. But their work is bad news for alien hunters. The team say the ocean must have been rich in phosphorus, an elements that would normally be mopped up by any living organisms. If life was widespread on Mars, there would not have been so much phosphorus left in the water, they say. The scientists' results are published in the journal Geology. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Supply ship hits docking snag

The International Space Station had to drift with reduced power following a docking drama. A cargo ship carrying 2.5 tons of food and other supplies failed to connect properly with the outpost when it arrived from Kazakhstan. The space station switched off controls that normally keep its solar panels pointed at the sun to avoid colliding with the unmanned ship, Progress 23. Flight controllers suspected that an antenna on Progress had failed to retract as commanded. But after three and a half hours they decided a software error was to blame and the cargo ship docked properly. During the emergency, astronauts Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria, Mikhail Tyurin and Thomas Reiter powered down non-essential equipment to conserve electricity. But Nasa stressed that they were in no danger during the incident. On Friday the men were due to open the hatch to unload food, fuel, oxygen and gifts from their families. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Astronauts in danger from radiation

Nasa was told this week to do more to protect astronauts from deadly radiation in space. America's top science body said spacemen needed greater protection for planned missions to the Moon and Mars. The US National Research Council said astronauts were regularly exposed to cosmic rays from distant supernnova explosions. They were also in peril from violent storms on the sun that sent deadly particles flying through space. Health threats include cancers such as leukaemia, plus heart disease, cataracts and breathing disorders. Daniel Baker, author of the council's report, said: "One concern is that astronauts could become ill from space radiation effects and vomit in their space suits, which could be extremely serious." The report said a violent solar storm that fortunately occurred between the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions in August 1972 could have killed any astronauts. Dr Baker said: "We know that this storm was large enough that it could have had potentially fatal consequences to astronauts had they been on the moon at that time." The report suggests special storm shelters could be built inside spacecraft and on the moon to protect astronauts. It also calls for a colour-coded alert system to be devised to warn quickly of any incoming radiation from solar storms. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Russia 'to save world from asteroids'

A Russian space chief apparently promised this week to save the world from the danger of an asteroid impact. Viktor Remishevsky, deputy head of the Federal Space Agency, said his country was ready to build rockets to tackle any comets and meteors on course to hit us, the ITAR-TASS Russian news agency reports. But he said new defensive tools needed to be developed to help combat the cosmic threat. He said: “The Russian missile industry is capable of manufacturing anti-asteroid systems if necessary. But so far, there are no techniques to use the existing space machinery for fighting asteroids.” He added: “If a method of suppressing this danger with space machinery is found, we will make such systems. The missile industry can do that.” Russian experts have identified around 400 asteroids and more than 30 comets that could endanger Earth in the future. They are worried about asteroid 2907, which is nearly a mile in diameter, and could strike the Earth on December 16, 2880. Scientists have also still not been able to rule out a collision with a space rock called 99942 Apophis in 2036. Last year, Congress ordered Nasa to spend $20 million a year on a major operation to protect Earth from asteroids. They were instructed to focus on finding and tracking all space rocks 100 metres or more wide. They were also told to devise methods of deflecting any threatening Armageddon. Congress said their goal must be to catalogue and monitor 90 per cent of hazardous asteroids by 2015. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Telescopes 'could tune in to alien TV'

Astronomers are building telescopes powerful enough to watch alien TV channels. New radio telescopes are being designed which could tune into signals from television transmitters around other stars. Researchers in the USA tell New Scientist this week that our own civilisation is leaking signals into space from TV and FM radio stations and military radar. Radio telescopes designed to study the earliest molecules in the universe are just the right type to eavesdrop on those sort of signals too. The UK is involved in a project to build the world's biggest radio telescope in Australia or South Africa. The Square Kilometre Array will have more collecting power than eight million Sky minidishes. UK astronomer Ian Morison, of Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, told Skymania News that it will be powerful enough to pick up alien TV and radio broadcasts. Dr Morison said: "The telescope should be able to detect the leakage of any signals from planets around nearby stars. The secret is to pick up the aliens' early broadcasts before they go digital. That's when the signals become more focused and leak into space less." He added: "It could also pick up radar signals which extraterrestrials might use to check approaching asteroids that threaten to collide with them." Abraham Loeb, of Harvard University, Massachusetts, tells New Scientist: "By a happy accident, the telescopes will be sensitive to just the kind of radio emission that our civilisation is leaking into space." He says the latest radio telescopes are designed to pick up radio waves emitted by neutral hydrogen molecules in the early universe. Today these have a wavelength corresponding to a frequency of tens or hundreds of megahertz. "This overlaps with our civilisation's radio emissions, which are in the range 50 to 400 megehertz," says Loeb. Loeb and colleague Matias Zaldarriaga say the new generation of radio telescopes could pick up ET's leaking TV signals from stars as far as 1,000 light years away. Their big challenge would be to sort the aliens' faint broadcasts from interference from channels here on Earth. The image is a computer-generated artist's impression of the planned Square Kilometre Array. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Time to see the light, says Brian

Rock musician Brian May yesterday criticised the light pollution that is drowning out the stars over Britain. Guitarist Brian, of Queen, was replying to a question from Skymania News as he launched his latest epic, a book on astronomy. The celebrity, who has an honorary doctorate in astronomy, said it was sad that overuse of lighting in towns and cities was preventing people from seeing the wonder of the night sky for themselves. Brian said: "Light pollution is a very big problem that makes it very difficult to do astronomy from much of this country. "I've been lucky enough to go to places abroad where you can still see the stars well, like La Palma in the Canary Islands. They have a professor there, Carlos Sanchez, who has got himself a very powerful voice in local politics and lighting is very strictly controlled." Brian, 59, broke off from recording a new album with Paul Rodgers of Free to launch his book, Bang!, written with Sky At Night legend Sir Patrick Moore, 84, and the TV show's fellow presenter Chris Lintott. Brian told the event, held at the Royal Society in London: "We set out to write a proper account of the history of the universe in a form that can be understood by anyone." He added that Sir Patrick had invited him to co-write the book in 2003 when they were in Scotland together to watch a solar eclipse. He said: "It was Patrick's idea. I wasn't sure at first that I could do it but I'm very glad I did. I felt that if I could understand it then anyone could. OK, I've got a degree but I've been away from it for a long time." Brian said he got his first guitar for his seventh birthday and became interested in astronomy when he first watched The Sky At Night around the same time. Brian praised Sir Patrick's musical skills - he used to play the xylophone and has written operas and music for brass bands. In return, Sir Patrick praised Brian as "a very eminent astronomer." Chris Lintott added that Brian's resarch into the zodiacal light - a glow from sunlight shining on dust in the solar system - was still the authoritative work in the academic field. Don't forget, the book is priced at £20 in the shops, but you can support this site and purchase a copy for just £12 by clicking here. It is not yet published in America, but the launch was told that a publishing deal has been agreed. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Queen's Brian launches new Big Bang!

Queen guitarist Brian May unveils his latest major work this week - a book on astronomy. Bang! The Complete History Of The Universe will be launched with much razzamataz in the hallowed halls of the Royal Society in London on Monday, 23 October. And may I swiftly point out that you can buy it here and now for £12 - an amazing 40% discount on the £20 cover price - by clicking here! Superstar Brian completed his opus as part of a new band, working with astronomy legend Sir Patrick Moore and fellow Sky At Night presenter Chris Lintott. But the musician has certainly not been brought in simply to lend the power of being a pop star to marketing of the book. Instead he is himself a much respected astronomer who gave up PhD research into the distribution of dust in the solar system in the Seventies when Queen hit the big time. Brian clearly sees Bang! as a project at least as important as any new album. In fact he has been banging on about it regularly at his own website. Last week, as he explains himself, he turned down an invitation to jam with Meat Loaf at the Royal Albert Hall because he had been so busy promoting the book. Interviews had left perfectionist Brian no time to do a sound check, so he sat back and enjoyed the concert instead. Bang! has its own well-constructed website, complete with a suitably dramatic theme tune by Brian. He has also written an introduction on the site where he stresses: "Bang! is written in English, rather than the language of mathematics, designed to be clear to anyone not previously deeply immersed in astronomy, but with an appetite for understanding." The book is priced at £20 in the shops, but you can support this site and purchase a copy for just £12 by clicking here. It doesn't appear to be listed yet on Amazon's US site. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Watching solar storms in Stereo

Twin satellites will blast into space next week to take amazing 3D pictures of explosions on the Sun. The two probes, one on either side of the Earth, will act like a pair of giant eyes millions of miles apart. The £250 million, UK-backed Nasa mission, called Stereo, is due to launch on Wednesday from Cape Canaveral in Florida. For the first time, it will give scientists a unique view of the sun and space weather in three dimensions. The two satellite observatories, each the size of a fridge, will watch for massive, violent eruptions from sunspots that can hurl billions of tons of hot gas towards our planet, causing dazzling aurorae. The biggest explosions, equal to letting off billions of nuclear bombs, could zap communications satellites, disrupt power supplies and even put astronauts' lives in peril. Storms are expected to build up and worsen over the next few years as the sun goes through its 11-year cycle of activity. Experts say that the worst storms - called coronal mass ejections - could cause as much economic damage as a major hurricane or tsunami. The most powerful yet seen, in 1859, would today cause £40 billion of damage by destroying hundreds of satellites and wrecking power and communications networks. A more recent blast from a sunspot in 1989 caused millions of pounds worth of damage to power supplies around the world. And violent explosions in January last year would have made any spacewalking astronauts very sick from radiation poisoning. UK astronomers will work with data from the Stereo observatories, one of which will fly ahead of the Earth's orbit and one which will trail us in space. Solar explosions expert Dr Lucie Green, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey, told me today: "We want to understand how the Sun functions. "When the hot gases from an eruption stream into the Earth's atmosphere, the whole impact shakes up our magnetic field. That can cause all kinds of navigational and communications problems - even pigeons and other animals that navigate using the Earth's magnetic field can get lost!" The picture is a Nasa artist's impression showing one of the Stereo satellites in action. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

No signs of ice at Moon's south pole

Nasa's plans to set up manned colonies on the Moon were dealt a blow tonight when astronomers revealed they had detected no signs of ice there. The space agency was hoping that pockets of ice might lie near the lunar south pole and be used as water for drinking and to be converted into fuel. But Nature reports in tomorrow's edition that detailed radar maps of the Moon made from Earth show no evidence for ice in its craters. Radio dishes at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, and Green Bank in West Virginia, produced the highest-resolution radar pictures ever made of the Moon. They gave astronomers their best views of the landscape at the lunar south pole, where craters are permanently shadowed from sunlight. Theories that there could be ice in the craters were boosted in 1992 when similar craters on planet Mercury were found to contain ice deposits. A Nasa probe is being sent to the Moon in 2008 with the prime aim of seeking signs of water on the Moon. It will crash a missile into a crater deliberately to see if there is any ice. But Professor Donald Campbell, of Cornell University, who led a joint US and Australian team, said his radar observations had found no trace of water. He said: “These new results do not preclude ice being present as small grains in the lunar soil. There is always the possibility that concentrated deposits exist in a few of the shadowed locations not visible to radars on Earth, but any current planning for landers or bases at the lunar poles should not count on this.” The picture is a mosaic of images of the lunar south pole taken by Nasa's Clementine spaceprobe. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Stars born as two galaxies collide

The Hubble space telescope has taken a dramatic picture of a violent collision between two vast galaxies. But instead of destruction, the cosmic crash is causing the birth of thousands of millions of new stars. The merger of the Antennae galaxies, in the constellation of Corvus the crow, was photographed by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, high above the Earth. It sent back the best ever colour picture of the galaxies, given their name because of long filaments that stretch from them like the antennae of an insect. Astronomers say the two spiral galaxies began to merge around 500 million years ago. It is the closest and youngest such collision seen in the sky. Hubble reveals that their coming together has produced countless clusters of new stars, shining bright blue within a pink cloud of hydrogen gas. The European Space Agency, which jointly runs Hubble with Nasa, says our own Milky Way will collide with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy in around six billion years. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

New evidence for ancient life on Mars

The latest and best-equipped spaceprobe to Mars has discovered fresh clues suggesting life could once have formed there. Nasa chiefs are thrilled with detailed images and data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, now circling the Red Planet. One of MRO's first targets in early October was a valley where water is known to have been present for a long time. Principle investigator Dr Scott Murchie said the clay-rich areas showed some of the best evidence for conditions favourable for life on ancient Mars. A European orbiter, Mars Express, previously spotted ancient deposits of clay there which could only have formed in the presence of water. Now MRO has scanned the area, Mawrth Vallis, in detail and its spectrometer instrument examined its differing clay mineral content in detail. Upper layers of the valley have been eroded away, revealing an underlying layer that formed in wet conditions a few billion years ago. Scientists say the results will also help them to learn how the martian climate has changed over time. Another vast valley, Chasma Boreale, which juts into the north polar ice cap, revealed layers with varying amounts of ice in the soil. Dr Murchie, of Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, said: "You see more-ice-rich and less-ice-rich layers, which tells you that conditions changed from the time one layer was deposited to the time another layer was deposited. These layers are geologically young - on the order of thousands or millions of years - and may hold clues about climate cycles." MRO's high-resolution camera is powerful enough to spot detail the size of a person. It has already photographed the Nasa rover Opportunity and its tracks as it perches on the edge of a half-mile wide crater. The camera's principal investigator, Dr Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said: "These images are truly beautiful, and since they resolve features the size of people, you can visualize yourself hiking around in these diverse terrains." The image shows a region south of Mawrth Vallis and is a combination of infrared, red, and blue-green images. It has been enhanced to accentuate the colour differences. The bright material may be rich in clays and date back to a time when Mars had a wetter environment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Weather check for distant star

Nasa have made the first ever weather check on a planet orbiting another star. And they found it suffers extreme temperatures, being as hot as fire on one side and as cold as ice on the other. Scientists turned a heat-seeking space telescope called Spitzer onto the remote world which orbits a star in the system Upsilon Andromedae. The planet is a giant ball of gas, like our own companion world Jupiter, but it orbits very close to its own sun, circling it once every 4.6 days. Experts believe tidal forces have left the planet always keeping the same face pointed towards its parent star, just as our Moon always presents the same side to the Earth. According to the astronomers, the difference in temperature between the two sides of the planet, called Upsilon Andromedae b, is an incredible 1,400 degrees Celsius - 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit. Dr Brad Hansen of the University of California, Los Angeles, said: "If you were moving across the planet from the night side to the day side, the temperature jump would be equivalent to leaping into a volcano." The scientists' findings are the first ever made of the suirface of an extrasolar planet. The Spitzer telescope observes the universe with infrared eyes, detecting heat rather than normal light. Dr Michael Werner, project scientist for Spitzer at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, said: "This is a spectacular result. When we designed Spitzer years ago, we did not anticipate that it would be revolutionising extrasolar-planet science." Upsilon Andromedae b was discovered in 1996 and lies only 40 light-years away from us. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Galaxies trapped in Spiderweb

Astronomers have discovered a cosmic spider's web that is trapping small galaxies and gobbling them up. They have called it the Spiderweb Galaxy because of its incredible appetite for other clusters of stars. It was found in photos taken with the Hubble space telescope, such as that here, and is so far away that we are seeing it as it was early on the universe, just two billion years after the Big Bang. Dozens of smaller galaxies can be seen merging with the monster Spiderweb, which lies 10.6 billion light-years away from Earth. They are being sucked in like flies at speeds of several hundred miles an hour from distances of more than a hundred thousand light-years away. Dutch astronomer George Miley, from Leiden Observatory, discovered the Spiderweb with colleague Roderik Overzier in the constellation of Hydra, the water snake. Dr Miley said: "The new Hubble image is the best demonstration so far that large massive galaxies are built up by merging smaller ones." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

'Killer comet' scare denied

Experts are pouring scorn on reports that a deadly comet will collide with the Earth later this month. The scare spreading on the internet quotes a Russian astronomer, Nikolai Fedorovsky, as saying that the comet will hit us on October 28. Fedorovsky says he spotted the comet in a telescope and calculated its flight path. He predicts that the impact will unleash devastating tsunamis, earthquakes and avalanches. Fedorovsky is quoted as saying: "I’m not trying to scare anybody, I just want to warn the public. We should pay attention to this suspicious celestial body." I turned to a genuine comet and meteor expert, Dr David Asher, of Armagh Observatory, Northern Ireland. He told me: "Searching for potentially hazardous asteroids is a serious topic, but this claim of a comet crash is nonsense. There is no danger from any impact. Nasa and other astronomers keep a database of all known objects that come close to the Earth and there is nothing on it that poses any significant threat." Other professional astronomers in Russia agree there is no danger and accused Fedorovsky of being a publicity seeker. There is a moderately bright comet in the sky at the moment, visible with binoculars and called Comet Swan, but it will come nowhere near the Earth. The picture is not of a killer comet. It is an image of the comet Wild 2, taken by the Stardust probe. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Your chance to discover a planet

Astronomers are giving everyone the chance to discover a planet over the internet. They want the public to help in the search for new worlds orbiting distant stars. Participants do not need a telescope. Instead the project will use a network of home computers to analyse data recorded on 100,000 stars in the galaxy. Organisers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, got the idea from SETI - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence which lets you download a screensaver that searches for radio signals from aliens. The new project, called Systemic, runs through different computer models for target stars to work out what sort of planetary systems best fit the data. Software is available for download from the website http://oklo.org and the first set of data for analysis will be released next month. Astronomers have so far used other means to discover nearly 200 extrasolar planets orbiting other stars. But they are mainly giant planets like Jupiter. The California team hope the new project will identify stars with smaller planets like the Earth. Gregory Laughlin, associate professor of astronomy, said: "How good are we at detecting strange systems? Stars with three planets instead of two? Two instead of one? There are a lot of questions like this that can be addressed with a large-scale simulation. "We need public participation because the most interesting systems are very hard to decipher. I think it's realistic because the internet is a global thing. We have users from all over the world." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Milky Way is champion galaxy

Our Milky Way is king of the galaxies in this neck of the universe, UK astronomers have discovered. Our home galaxy has for several decades been considered runner-up to the giant Andromeda Nebula. But Andromeda, a collection of billions of stars, is much smaller than our Milky Way, a new study by British scientists reveals. Their results show that the Milky Way is one and a half times more massive than its neighbour. Both galaxies are among a collection of such clusters of wildly differing types and sizes that astronomers call the Local Group. The Andromeda Nebula - so-called before its true galactic nature was known - lies at a distance of 2.5 million light-years, which is right on our doorstep in cosmic terms. Also known as Messier 31, it can be seen with the naked eye under clear dark skies. (The accompanying Nasa photo shows it with smaller galaxies close by). Dr Mark Wilkinson, of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, weighed up Andromeda by carrying out a speed check on stars in much smaller dwarf galaxies that orbit it. The precise measurements, made with the European southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, allowed his team to estimate Andromeda's own mass, including a halo of invisible dark matter that extends beyond the galaxy that we can see. Their surprising results show that Andromeda is much less massive than had been thought, making our own galaxy the biggest. Dr Wilkinson said: "The best fit for the data showed that the Milky Way is about one and a half times more massive than Andromeda." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Star appearance at Saturn

One of the spectacles enjoyed by amateur astronomers is the sight of a bright star disappearing behind the limb of the Moon. Scientists call such an event an occultation and accurate timing of when they occur allows us to define the Moon's position in space with greater precision. The Cassini spaceprobe has made its own observations of another unique type of occultation - the passage of a bright star behind the rings of the planet Saturn. The star was Aldebaran, one of the brightest stars in the sky, which forms the eye of the constellation Taurus. Cassini took a series of images of Aldebaran on September 9 and watched its brightness fluctuate as it drifted behind the myriad of rings made up of tiny particles. The picture here shows the star as it shone close to a 325km (200 miles) wide gap in the rings known as Encke's Division. Cassini took the image from a distance of around 359,000km (233,000 miles). On Monday, October 9, Cassini made its latest flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The craft used its radar to search for more lakes following the discovery of the first in July. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Spock's star gives planet proof

Astronomers have checked out Mr Spock's home star and made a profound finding about the universe, they revealed tonight. They used the Hubble space telescope to gain proof that planets form from disks of dust and gas circling stars. The scientists' target was Epsilon Eridani, a star only ten and a half light-years away from Earth. It is considered by Star Trek fans to be the location for Spock's planet, Vulcan. Before now, astronomers had discovered more than 200 planets outside our own solar system. They had also detected disks of debris orbiting other stars. However, they had never observed a planet and a disk of debris around the same star. Now an international team led by the University of Austin, Texas, has found a planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani that is exactly lined up with a disk of dust and gas. Scientists have long believed that planets form from such dust disks. Philosopher Immanuel Kant first proposed the idea more than 200 years ago. Our own Sun's debris disk dissipated long ago because it is a middle-aged star, around 4.5 billion years old. Epsilon Eridani still has its disk because it is young, only 800 million years old. The Hubble observations reveal that the star's planet is 1.5 times the size of our own biggest planet, Jupiter, and orbits once every 6.9 years. The planet's presence was revealed by a slight wobble in the star's light. Astronomers say no Vulcan or any other alien could live on the giant planet because it is made up of gas. Picture: An artist's impression of the Epsilon Eridani system. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Mars rover snapped from orbit

The most powerful camera ever sent to another world has taken an amazing photo of one of Nasa's rovers on Mars. The robot Explorer, called Opportunity, is pictured at the rim of a spectacular crater on the Red Planet in the aerial shot. Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the stunning image with its HiRise camera on Tuesday, just days after it began scanning the planet. HiRise is so powerful that it clearly reveals Opportunity and you can even see its tracks in the martian sand at the edge of Victoria Crater. The crater, a half-mile wide asteroid impact site, is also revealed in great detail from the probe, flying 185.6 miles (297km) above the surface. Opportunity and its sister six-wheeled rover Spirit are still trundling about on Mars two years and nine months after they arrived there. Opportunity - the size of a small car - has driven more than five miles to reach Victoria Crater at Meridiani Planum, near the Martian equator. Their original mission was scheduled to last just 90 days. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory was thrilled with the Mars pictures. And he said today: "Stay tuned. If you think this HiRise image is spectacular, just wait." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Hubble boost to search for ET

New space research shows the universe could be swarming with aliens, a UK expert claims. The Hubble space telescope has found that there must be six billion stars with planets in our own Milky Way galaxy. And astronomers believe our galaxy is just one among 125 billion galaxies in the universe. Alien life expert Professor Barrie Jones, of the Open University, believes the implications of Hubble's observations give a big boost to the search for ET. He told me: "Hubble's discovery is very encouraging in the search for more potential habitats for life in the universe. "When we find planets the size of Jupiter around a star it indicates that there is a solar system like our own Sun's there. It means there are probably planets like Earth too." Professor Jones, a member of the UK's Astrobiology Society, added: "Hubble's discovery shows that the galaxy and universe must be teeming with planets and so the prospects are strong that many are inhabited." The space telescope found 16 Jupiter-sized planets orbiting stars close to the centre of the Milky Way. Previous planets outside our own solar system had only been detected around stars in our own neighbourhood. Last month, Nasa revealed that their computer simulations showed that more than a third of stars with giant planets were also orbited by planets with deep oceans like the Earth. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Atlantis hit by cosmic missile

Space shuttle Atlantis flew home with a cosmic bullethole in its hull, Nasa revealed today. The craft was hit by a meteor or fragment of space junk during its 12 days in orbit last month. It blasted a hole, shown in the picture, in the half-inch thick aluminium, right payload door. But the crew of six were in no danger because the doors were folded inside the ship during re-entry, officials said. The hole, a tenth of an inch across, was spotted when engineers examined Atlantis back at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. Nasa say they will be able to repair the damage before Atlantis is due to fly into space again in February. But the impact highlights the dangers of debris already in orbit around the Earth. Experts say humans are turning space into a cosmic junk yard. A Nasa team is already monitoring 13,000 man-made objects bigger than four inches across. But there are millions of smaller fragments in orbit, travelling at more than 20,000mph, which could rip a hole in a spacecraft or knock a satellite out of action. They include exploded rocket stages, lost hatches and tools, pieces of plastic - and even an astronaut's glove. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

'Six billion Jupiters' in Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered 16 new planets around distant stars, Nasa revealed tonight. Astronomers say the result suggests there are around six billion planets like Jupiter in our own galaxy. The remote worlds are much further away than any found before. They were detected circling stars in the centre of the Milky Way instead of neighbouring suns. Five of them are unlike any planets known because they zip around their parent stars in less then one Earth day. Scientists have dubbed them Ultra-Short-Period Planets. Hubble made the discoveries during a survey called the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). The orbiting telescope examined 180,000 stars in the crowded central bulge of our galaxy 26,000 light-years away. That is one-quarter the diameter of the Milky Way's spiral disk. The results appear in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature. Hubble's field of view was only two per cent the apparent size of the Full Moon. The number of planets detected therefore suggests that the entire galaxy contains aroound six billion planets the size of Jupiter, biggest world in our own solar system. Team leader Kailash Sahu, of Nasa's Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, said: "Discovering the very short-period planets was a big surprise. Our discovery also gives very strong evidence that planets are as abundant in other parts of the galaxy as they are in our solar neighbourhood." The planets were too far away to be seen directly by Hubble. Instead their existence was revealed by the dimming of their parent stars as they passed in front and eclipsed them. Experts say each planet would have to be about the size of Jupiter to block enough starlight and so be measurable by Hubble. The new planet with the shortest orbital period, named SWEEPS-10, has a "year" only ten hours long - the time it takes to orbit its star. The picture is an artist's impression of one of the new planets. Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Telescope is biggest digital camera

Astronomers from around the world are to help operate a revolutionary new telescope that could save the world from Armageddon. In the UK, scientists from Durham, Edinburgh and Belfast universities will fund the instrument, pictured right, which will scour the skies for any asteroids on a collision course with Earth. The PS1 Telescope, on the Pacific island of Maui, Hawaii, is being fitted with the world's largest digital camera. It will have 1.4 billion pixels - about 300 times as many as a