Missed! Another asteroid zips past

A mile-wide asteroid will skim past the Earth tomorrow in a cosmic close shave. The space rock, dubbed 2006 VV2, was only discovered in November by LINEAR, an automated telescope scouring the skies for such objects. Astronomers say the asteroid will appear to move at twice the speed of the Moon across the sky as it passes through the constellations of the Great Bear and Leo. It is too small to be seen with the naked eye but can be seen in stargazers' backyard telescopes. Amateurs in western Europe will be watching on Saturday night for a possible occultation of a magnitude 7.5 star. Nasa are planning to bounce radar signals off the asteroid from its Goldstone radio telescope in California's Mojave desert. That will give them more accurate information about the asteroid's size and shape. Asteroid 2006 VV2 is classified as a Potentially Hazardous Object by Nasa because its orbit around the Sun brings it so close to the Earth. Today's flyby will bring it to a distance of just 2.1 million miles from us. That is eight times as far as the Moon but a near miss in cosmic terms. An asteroid the size of 2006 VV2 could blast a crater the size of London and cause devastation for hundreds of miles around. Astronomer Jay Tate, who runs the Spaceguard UK centre at Knighton, Wales, told Skymania News: "Rocks like VV2 show how essential it is to monitor our bit of space. They are a very real danger and we need to find and track them. "Dinosaurs are extinct because they couldn't do anything about the asteroid hazard. We are still facing precisely the same risk." The Nasa photo is not of VV2 but shows Gaspra, an asteroid pictured by the Galileo spaceprobe en route to Jupiter in 1991. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Giant light-shows dance over Jupiter

Jupiter enjoys celestial light-shows so spectacular that they've been dubbed "Northern Lights on steroids" by astronomers. The dramatic magnetic storms - called the aurora - are so vast that they would dwarf the Earth. They are revealed dancing around the poles of Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, by an X-ray telescope in space called Chandra. Its image of purple aurorae superimposed on a Hubble photograph of Jupiter makes the planet look as if it has a Zebedee-style haircut. Previous spaceprobes had spotted that Jupiter gets displays of the aurora. But Chandra reveals that they are bigger and more spectacular than anyone had imagined. Randy Gladstone, of the Southwest Research Institute, Texas, said: "Jupiter has auroras bigger than our entire planet. They are like the Northern Lights on steroids. They're hundreds of times more energetic than auroras on Earth." Gladstone says that, unlike Earth's auroral storms, Jupiter's light shows never stop. He says this is because they are generated by the giant planet itself whereas Earth's auroras are caused by particles from the sun buffeting our magnetic field. Five spceprobes were launched in February to investigate our own aurorae. Jupiter has been put under extra-close scrutiny lately to coincide with Nasa's New Horizon spaceprobe making a close flyby on its way to distant Pluto. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Star Wars planets could be common

Planets like Tatooine in Star Wars really could exist in the galaxy, astronomers have discovered. The worlds are special because any aliens living there can gaze upon double sunsets just like Luke Skywalker in the hit movies. Scientists using a Nasa space telescope discovered that other solar systems are just as common around twin stars as around single ones like the sun. The heat-seeking observatory, called Spitzer, can spot disks of dust around distant stars - the debris believed to be left over after planets and asteroids have formed. Chief investigator David Trilling, of the University of Arizona, said: "There appears to be no bias against having planetary system formation in binary systems. There could be countless planets out there with two or more suns." It means anyone standing on a planet there could watch two fiery balls dip below the horizon, just like on Tatooine. A new paper revealing the findings appears in the April 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. In their survey, the most comprehensive ever undertaken, Dr Trilling's team turned the Spitzer telescope on 69 double star systems lying 50 to 200 light-years from Earth. All the stars are younger and more massive than our own middle-aged sun. The results showed that about 40 percent of the binary systems had disks - slightly more than in a sample of single stars. This told the astronomers that planetary systems are at least as common around binary stars as they are around single stars. The biggest shock for the team was the discovery that disks were even more frequent around the closest pairs of stars observed. That makes Tatooine-style sunsets even more likely. Dr Trilling said: "We were very surprised to find that the tight group had more disks. This could mean that planet formation favours tight binaries over single stars, but it could also mean tight binaries are just dustier. Future observations should provide a better answer." Picture: A Nasa artist's impression of a double sunset. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Mystery of Saturn's honeycomb pole

Space scientists are intrigued by a honeycomb feature at Saturn's north pole that is shaped like a perfect hexagon. Unlike the usual swirling, circular storms and hurricanes in the giant planets' clouds, the oddity has six straight sides. Nasa's Cassini spaceprobe, in orbit around the ringed planet, has taken a movie of the hexagon rotating about the entire north pole. Scientists first noted the oddity in photos from the Voyager missions into deep space in the early 1980s and then a Hubble picture in 1991. Now Cassini has shown its geometrical structure in detail and indicates that it is a long-lasting rather than temporary phenomenon. The orbiter's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer - a thermal camera - is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image. Saturn's north pole is currently tilted away from the Sun and is in darkness. Atmospheric expert Kevin Baines, of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, said: "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides. We've never seen anything like this on any other planet." The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across - enough to contain the Earth nearly four times. The hexagon appears to be unlike the feature that dominates Saturn's south pole - a hurricane resembling a giant eye. Scientists hope that understanding the hexagon's structure will help them pin down a precise figure for the length of Daturn's day - the rate at which the planet rotates beneath the clouds. Photo: Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Rock of ages! Brian's tribute to Patrick

Here is rock star Brian May as you have never seen him before - playing an old man on Mars. The Queen guitarist's famous shock of hair turns white as he plays a special space correspondent from the future in a 50th anniversary edition of The Sky At Night this Sunday on BBC1. Brian, a keen astronomer and scientist himself, pays tribute to the show's monocled presenter Sir Patrick Moore, who is now 85. Impressionist Jon Culshaw, from the BBC show Dead Ringers, brings humour to the programme by playing a younger version of Sir Patrick (see picture below). And, of course, now-regular co-presenter Chris Lintott will be playing his part bringing us up to date with latest astronomical happenings. The Sky At Night began in April 1957 and is the world's longest running show with the same presenter. Sir Patrick has presented every one of more than 600 episodes - except for one where he was knocked out by food poisoning. Brian is famous for a previous Golden Jubilee tribute when he played on the roof of Buckingham Palace for the Queen. But he soars even higher for Sir Patrick when he helps present the BBC special from his cosmic quarters on the Red Planet. Brian, who holds an honorary doctorate in astronomy, told visitors to the European AstroFest event last month: "The Sky at Night first took to the air when I was ten. I wrote in, when I was 11 or so, to ask what the wonderful inspiring music was. I got a personal letter back from Patrick I was thrilled. "Sir Patrick is the most totally modest man I have ever known. And the most generous. I still feel slightly presumptuous and humbled to call him my friend, but a great friend he certainly is." Sir Patrick is now confined to a wheelchair and suffers crippling arthritis which prevent him from using a telescope or playing his beloved piano and xylophone. In recent years, editions of the cult show have had to be filmed from his thatched home in West Sussex which has seen a stream of eminent scientists and astronauts visit. Sir Patrick told Skymania News: "The special is a lot of fun. We shall be looking forwards as well as backwards. It is the edition that I have had the least to do with because it was filmed in a studio. But I shall be there making my contribution from my home." Photos: BBC. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Oxygen found in star-forming clouds

Astronomers have made a breakthrough by discovering a particular form of oxygen for the first time ever in deep space. The elusive, vital molecule for life was detected in a cloud of gas 500 light years away by an orbiting observatory called Odin. The relatively dense cloud, in the constellation of Ophiuchus, is a cosmic nursery where new stars and planets are born. Previous attempts to find molecular oxygen by observatories on ground, balloon experiments and in space have failed, suggesting it was far less abundant than expected. A team of scientists from Sweden, Canada, Finland and France made the landmark discovery. Now they have to work out why there is a thousand times less of the molecule than chemists' theories had predicted. Pinpointing the oxygen molecule involved the careful analysis of more than 300,000 measurements of the spectrum of signals from the gas cloud. Astronomers say their discovery, which is published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, is important as it will lead to new insights into how interstellar clouds develop and form stars and planets. Odin, which was developed by the Swedish Space Corporation, carries a 1.1-metre diameter radio telescope operating in the millimetre and submillimetre wavelength ranges. It studies the Earth's atmosphere as well as deep space. The picture, from the SSC, indicates where the molecular oxygen was detected and shows how its fingerprint appeared in the spectral data. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Queen star Brian slams Nasa tests

Rock star Brian May has criticised Nasa over plans to make mice breathe toxic moondust. The Queen guitarist slammed their plans to test whether the rock particles cause lung damage as cruel and the torture of animals. Nasa scientists say the tests are vital to protect human astronauts when they return to the Moon by 2020. Spacesuits keep out the dust when the astronauts are exploring the surface. But the fear is that the microscopic dust could be carried back into their habitation modules where it could get into the air and be inhaled. The finest particles could cling to the lung tissue causing similar scarring to tobacco smoke and asbestosis. Brian says in his blog Brian's Soapbox: "Take precautions, Nasa guys, and design gadgets to keep the dust away. But keep your rotten hands off the mice. It's unnecessary, cruel, and morally not justifiable. "The only way you will TRULY know if this stuff hurts human beings is to try it on human beings. Find some humans who will volunteer. Or volunteer yourselves, goddam it . . . if you care. No small non-speaking mammal is able to give consent. You do not have the right to cause them suffering." Brian, a keen campaigner on animal rights as well as an astronomy author, adds: "Let's quit this business of thinking we are the only species on Earth that matters. Let's STOP the torture of animals." Brian is an expert on space dust. He was researching its distribution in the solar system for a PhD when he quit to find stardom with Queen in the Seventies. The last man to walk on the Moon, Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, complained of "lunar dust hay fever" when dust on his spacesuit got into the lunar module. The tests will be carried out by Nasa's Lunar Airborne Dust Toxicity Advisory Group. The picture shows Brian with Sir Patrick Moore for a special 50th anniversary edition of The Sky At Night this weekend. Just wait to see the picture I'll show you tomorrow! Photo: BBC. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Little moon has quite a pull on Saturn

Scientists are finding it a real drag trying to measure the length of a day on Saturn - and tonight they revealed why. One tiny moon's cosmic burps are weighing down the ringed planet's magnetic field so much that standard methods do not work. Erupting geysers on the rocky satellite, Enceladus, are making the force field around Saturn rotate more slowly than the planet itself. The result is that normal radio techniques used to measure the length of a day on giant planets become virtually impossible. Scientists have discovered the nature of the problem thanks to new data from Nasa's Cassini spaceprobe in orbit around Saturn. The planet spins remarkably quickly, in less than 11 hours. The problem has come in finding an exact figure. Cassini's data showed that Saturn’s magnetic field lines are being forced to slip by the weight of electrically charged particles from geysers spewing steam and ice on Enceladus. That interferes with a standard method of checking the planet's pulse by observing the rhythm of radio waves that Saturn beams out naturally. Cassini scientist Professor Michele Dougherty, of Imperial College London, said: "The direct link between radio, magnetic field and deep planetary rotation has been taken for granted up to now. Saturn is showing we need to think further." Dr Don Gurnett, of the University of Iowa, said: “No one could have predicted that the little moon Enceladus would have such an influence on the radio technique that has been used for years to determine the length of the Saturn day.” An added complication is that the length of a day on Saturn seems to be slowly changing over months to years. The day measured by Cassini is some six minutes longer than the day recorded by Nasa’s two Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s - a change of nearly one per cent. Scientists now want to find out whether this is because the geysers on Enceladus are more active now or if it suggests there are be seasonal variations as Saturn orbits the sun once every 29 years. The Nasa picture is a colour-coded image of an eruption from Enceladus on March 24, 2006, that sent particles streaming hundreds of miles into space. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Astronomers spot new city of stars

Astronomers have discovered 100,000 previously unknown stars in our own Milky Way. The huge haul of new suns lie together in a densely packed cluster, 30,000 light years away towards the centre of the galaxy. Dirk Froebrich, of the University of Kent, and Aleks Scholz, of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, made the find with German colleague Helmut Meusinger. They detected the new globular cluster using the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope on a mountaintop at La Silla, Chile. The stellar city is about seven light years wide, which is nearly twice the distance between the sun and our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Globular star clusters are like fossils of the early universe providing scientists with unique laboratory conditions to investigate various aspects of astrophysics. They represent groups of stars with similar ages, chemistry and distances. The newly-found cluster is thought to be around 10 billion years old and among the oldest objects in our galaxy. Dr Froebrich said: "The properties of globular clusters are deeply connected with the history of their host galaxy. We believe today that galaxy collisions, galaxy cannibalism, as well as galaxy mergers leave their imprint in the globular cluster population of any given galaxy. "Thus we hope to be able to use them as an acid test for our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies." Photo: ESO ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Vast stocks of ice at Martian pole

A European spaceprobe has discovered huge quantities of water ice around Mars's south pole, Nasa revealed tonight. Ground-penetrating radar aboard the Mars Express spacecraft shows there is enough ice to cover the entire planet with a sea of water 36ft deep. The astonishing finding was made by an instrument called MARSIS - the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding - that can see more than two miles below the surface. It made measurements of more than 300 slices through layered deposits covering the south pole of the Red Planet. The experiment aboard Mars Express was jointly built by Nasa and the Italian Space Agency. Jeffrey Plaut of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, said: "The south polar layered deposits of Mars cover an area bigger than Texas. The amount of water they contain has been estimated before, but never with the level of confidence this radar makes possible." The scientists' findings are published online this week in the online edition of the journal Science. Layers of ice at the poles hold most of the known water on modern Mars, though other areas of the planet appear to have been very wet at times in the past. Understanding the history and fate of water on Mars is a key to studying whether Mars has ever supported life, since all known life depends on liquid water. In December, Nasa announced major evidence that liquid water is still flowing on Mars. The image shows the thickness of the south polar layered deposits. Picture: Nasa/JPL/ASI/ESA/Univ. of Rome/MOLA Science Team/USGS ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Mission to collect chunk of asteroid

Space scientists are planning a mission to land on a menacing asteroid that could one day collide with the Earth. If approved, the Osiris probe will collect a sample of the space rock, dubbed 1999 RQ36, and bring it home. Experts believe it will hold clues to how life began. Nasa has awarded $1.2 million for a preliminary engineering study of the unmanned mission. It would launch in 2011, collect a chunk of the asteroid two years later and return it to Earth in 2017. RQ36 is just under half a mile wide and is officially classified as a "potentially hazardous asteroid" because of the impact risk. At its closest, it currently passes by just 40,000 miles further than the moon. Principal Investigator Michael Drake, of the University of Arizona, said the probe will "return a pristine sample of the scientifically priceless asteroid RQ36 to Earth for in-depth study." Osiris is named after the Egyptian god of life and fertility. Deputy Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta said: "We're looking at the kind of object that we think brought life to Earth - that is, objects that seeded Earth with early biomolecules, the precursors of life." The probe is expected to bring back about five ounces of the asteroid which will be examined by scientists around the world. The mission will also help scientists learn more about how to track the orbits of asteroids that might hit Earth and measure how the pressure of sunlight affects their motion - a force called the Yarkovsky effect. The Osiris proposal was among around two dozen submitted in response to an invitation by Nasa as part of its Discovery Program. A Japanese spaceprobe, Hyabusa, is currently flying home after collecting samples of another asteroid called Itokawa. Picture: An artist's impression of Osiris at the asteroid. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Let's go hang-gliding on Mars!

Nasa has come up with the ultimate in adventure sports - hang-gliding on Mars. And you can try it yourself in total safety because soaring over the Martian surface is purely a virtual experience. Space scientists have simulated the experience thanks to detailed images from the latest space probe to orbit the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter. The craft's high-resolution camera, HiRISE, imaged the landing sites of the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity for many different angles. That gave them the detailed, three-dimensional information to create artificial animations that create the illusion of flying around above the Martian surface. One of the animations sends you soaring over the spectacular, half-mile wide Victoria Crater in Mars' Meridiani Planum region. As you fly, you can see the rover Opportunity perched on the crater's edge. The second animation is made up of images of the Columbia Hills region inside Gusev Crater. Nasa's second rover, Spirit, has been trundling around this range of hills. The two robot rovers landed on Mars in January 2004. To view the animations, scroll down to "Other videos" on this page at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Images: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/U.S. Geological Survey. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Seas of methane found on Titan

A distant space probe has found giant seas of liquid methane on Saturn's biggest moon. Titan, which is half as big again as our own Moon, was already known to have rivers and a lake district. Now Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has found oceans as big as some seas on Earth in Titan's high northern latitudes. Cassini's radar instrument peered through the moon's orange, hazy atmosphere to see several very dark features near Titan's north pole. They are much larger than any similar features seen before, with the largest measuring at least 39,000 square miles. Dr Jonathan Lunine, of the University of Arizona, said: "We've long hypothesised about oceans on Titan. Now we have a first indication of seas that dwarf the lakes seen previously." Scientists say the seas' shape and dark appearance point to them being filled with liquids, believed to be a combination of methane and ethane, given the abundance of those gases in Titan's atmosphere. One large, irregular, dark feature stretches for more than 620 miles in the image, down to 55 degrees north latitude, making it only slightly smaller than Earth's Caspian Sea. Nasa are now planning to take another close look at the area when Cassini, which is orbiting Saturn, flies close in May. UK space scientist Professor John Zarnecki believes aquatic aliens could be swimming in Titan's seas. Professor Zarnecki, of the Open University, led the team that landed Cassini's piggyback probe Huygens probe on the slushy surface of Titan last year. Photo: Nasa/JPL. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store! It is powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Alien view of an eclipse of the Sun

A space observatory has witnessed a unique "eclipse of the Sun" of a type that can never be seen from Earth. Nasa's Stereo B satellite watched from a million miles away as the Moon slowly drifted in front of the solar disk. From Earth, the moon appears the same size as the sun in the sky. But Stereo's view, using cameras built in the UK, showed it as a much smaller silhouette crossing the sun's brilliant and active surface. The jaw-dropping images, captured in the extreme ultraviolet part of the spectrum, amazed scientists who saw them. One said it was like being in the wrong solar system! Stereo B is one of two space observatories launched last October to monitor activity on the sun. It sits a million miles behind the Earth while its twin craft flies a million miles ahead of us. As scientists were putting the two probes into their final positions, they tweaked Stereo B's flightpath in order to capture the unique transit of the moon across the sun. You can see a dramatic movie of the event using the links here. Nasa scientist Lika Guhathakurta said: "The images have an alien quality. "It's not just the strange colors of the sun. Look at the size of the moon - it's very odd. It's like being in the wrong solar system." The two solar observatories will watch the biggest explosions in the solar system, getting a 3D view of violent flares. They will check for any that hurl billions of tons of hot gas directly towards us at a million miles an hour, threatening communications satellites, power grids and even astronauts' lives. Britain has contributed £1.9 million to the £280 million space weather mission, called Stereo. Biggest UK involvement has come from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, and Birmingham University. Explosions on the sun - called coronal mass ejections - are equal to setting off billions of nuclear bombs. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Telescopes snap 1,000 black holes

Space telescopes have combined to take a snapshot of the sky that reveals more than a thousand of the biggest black holes in the universe. The hungry monsters are each up to several billion times more massive than the sun and they lie in the centres of galaxies. Light cannot escape from a black hole because its gravitational pull is so strong. However, they show themselves thanks to the huge amounts of light and energy generated by stars and dust as they fall into them. Astronomers used an X-ray space telescope called Chandra plus Spitzer, a heat-seeking infrared observatory in orbit, together with data from telescopes on the ground to take their snapshot. It covers an area of sky more than 40 times the apparent area of the full moon in the constellation of Bootes, the herdsman. The black holes show up as red, green or blue dots, depending on the level of X-rays they emit. Ryan Hickox of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said: "We're trying to get a complete census across the universe of black holes and their habits." Instead of staring at one relatively small part of the sky for a long time, this team scanned a much bigger portion with shorter exposures. Co-investigator Christine Jones said: "With this approach, we found well over a thousand of these monsters, and have started using them to test our understanding of these powerful objects." The investigators say their new survey raises doubts about a popular current model of a supermassive black hole which says it is surrounded by a doughnut-shaped region, or torus, of gas. Read the full release here. Picture: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Hickox et al.; Moon: NASA/JPL ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

US state rebels over Pluto's status

A US state is set to vote tomorrow to restore Pluto as a planet. New Mexico intends to make a unilateral declaration challenging last year's decision by astronomers to demote the distant world on the edge of the solar system. The state was home to Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto in 1930. It was the first to be spotted since Neptune in 1846 and the only one found from America. In a controversial move last August, the International Astronomical Union dumped Pluto from the premier league and into a second division of "dwarf planets". Today, the New Mexico Legislature plan to pass a resolution declaring that "as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet." The politicians will also mark a day in the calendar in honour of their "planet". The motion says that March 13 - the day the world's discovery was first announced - is to be declared "Pluto Planet Day". New Mexico's move is purely symbolic as it has no jurisdiction over outer space. But it is the latest move in an angry backlash that began in the US as soon as the IAU had voted in Prague. Objectors complained that the decision was taken by a tiny minority of delegates at the conference and was unscientific. It also overturned an official recommendation by an IAU committee chaired by UK astronomer Professor Iwan Williams. The New Mexico resolution is being moved by Joni Marie Gutierrez. She told the Wired website: "When they declared Pluto a dwarf planet, we took it as a personal affront." The above picture was assembled from images taken with the Hubble space telescope and represents Pluto's true colours. Credit: Eliot Young (SwRI) et al., Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Sunlight puts asteroid in a spin

An asteroid washed in sunlight has gone into a spin cycle, scientists have discovered. The pressure of the sun's rays is causing the space rock, named 2000 PH5, to turn one millisecond faster each year. Over the next 15-40 million years that will change its spin rate from once every 12 minutes to once in 20 seconds. The discovery was jointly made by astronomers Stephen Lowry and Alan Fitzsimmons, of Queen's University Belfast, and Jean-Luc Margot and Patrick Taylor of Cornell University in the US. It is the first time the so-called Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack or YORP effect, named after the scientists who predicted it, has been observed working in the solar system. Asteroid 2000 PH5 is one of the so-called Near-Earth Objects that cross our own orbit and so pose a potential impact threat. It comes within 1.1 million miles of Earth and is thought to be about 175 yards wide. Like most asteroids, it has an uneven shape and it is this which allows the sunlight to affect its spin. The scientists used a powerful radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, to bounce radar signals off the asteroid and produce images such as shown here. These helped them to measure its speed of rotation. Visual observation with giant optical telescopes around the world provided confirmation by checking how the asteroid's brightness varies as it spins. Dr Lowry said: "The warming caused by sunlight hitting the surfaces of asteroids and meteoroids leads to a gentle recoil effect as the heat is released. In the same way, if one were to shine light on a propeller over a long enough period, it would start spinning. It's a tiny, tiny effect but it's acting over millions of years." The team believe the increasing spin speed may eventually cause the asteroid to break up into two or more smaller space rocks. Although the YORP effect sounds immeasurably weak, the scientists say it plays an important role in changing the orbits of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter and could put some into orbits crossing the Earth's. Earth still faces a small but real risk of impact by an asteroid called Apophis in 2036. Picture: European Southern Observatory. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

50,000 galaxies in a tiny strip of sky

A tiny strip of sky that you could cover with your finger is packed with 50,000 galaxies, the Hubble space telescope reveals. The orbiting observatory spent a year snapping more than 500 photos of a patch of sky in the constellation of the Great Bear. Stitched together they make up a mosaic that is the length of two full moons and just half a moon in width. But the mosaic shows a snowstorm of galaxies, each made up of millions, billions or even trillions of stars like the sun. Astronomers say the cosmic panorama will give them fresh clues about the universe's younger days, from its "pre-teen" years to young adulthood. The many thousands of galaxies are unevenly scattered with some in groups and others widely spaced. One giant red galaxy reveals two black holes at its centre. Others are acting like lenses because their gravitational pull is distorting light from objects behind them. The man who stitched the three-billion pixel Hubble mosaic together was astronomer Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. He said: "These images reveal a wealth of galaxies at many stages of their evolution through cosmic time." The width of a finger held at arm's length could cover the patch of sky, which has been named the Groth Strip after a US physicist. Three other space telescopes and four observatories on the ground have also carried out a close inspection of the strip of sky to support the photos from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Their results are published online this month in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Photo: Nasa/ESA. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Eclipse of the Moon is total magic

A total eclipse of the Moon thrilled and delighted observers all over the world on Saturday night. From the UK, conditions were near ideal with clear skies across the country throughout the event, the whole of which occurred with the Moon above the horizon. It was the same story in Europe. The Mira public observatory in Belgium gave the world a continuous webcast of the eclipse. and a constant stream of excellent images was also obtained in Madrid, Spain. The Moon entered the Earth's main central shadow, or umbra, at around 21.30 UT. Observers watched entranced as it gradually became completely immersed and our natural satellite took on a magical red glow. There had been predictions that the Moon would shine quite brightly during this total phase. The brilliance can depend on the amount of volcanic dust in the upper atmophere and there has not been a major eruption for some time. In the event, observers were of the concensus that the Moon turned very dark in mid-eclipse, with many estimating a rating of L2 on the Danjon scale. The image above was taken by Skymania News reporter Paul Sutherland at 23.31 UT using a Canon EOS 300D camera, sold as the Digital Rebel in the USA, with an old M42 screw-thread 200mm lens. More excellent images from the eclipse can be seen in the gallery of the forum on the Society for Popular Astronomy's website. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!

Cassini looks down on Saturn's rings

A distant spaceprobe has captured a stunning new photo of Saturn, the jewel in the solar system. The Cassini probe - a joint Nasa-European mission - photographed the ringed planet from above. It is a view that is impossible to achieve from Earth. It shows the gas giant looking like a half moon sitting in a spectacular system of rings resembling a stripey dish. The complete circle of rings, made up of countless rocky fragments, is broken by Saturn's shadow from the sunlight, cutting across them. Cassini, an unmanned spacecraft which has been circling Saturn since 2004, had to spent months adjusting its orbit to fly in a higher and higher inclination to obtain the unique view. The distant world, second biggest planet in the solar system, lies around a billion miles from Earth. Cassini team leader Dr Carolyn Porco, of Boulder, Colorado, said: "Finally, here are the views that we've waited years for. Sailing high above Saturn and seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we've never seen before. It just doesn't look like the same place. It's so utterly breath-taking it almost gives you vertigo." The view is a mosaic of 36 separate images taken by Cassini's wide-angle camera from a distance of around 760,000 miles. Latest Cassini radar results also confirm the existence of lakes of hydrocarbons on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and an island 90 miles wide and 60 miles across in the middle of one of them. Read our earlier story on the lakes of Titan here. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania store!