Rock award for The Sky At Night

Scientists have officially named an asteroid after TV's The Sky At Night. The tribute was revealed this week at a party for its long-running presenter Sir Patrick Moore to mark 50 years of the BBC programme. The distant space rock has been labelled Caelumnoctu - Latin for The Sky At Night - plus an identification number 57424 which corresponds with the date the show first went out, April 24, 1957. The asteroid honour was fixed up by Professor Iwan Williams of Queen Mary, University of London. A different asteroid was previously named 2602 Moore after Sir Patrick in 1982. The Sky At Night 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 suffered food poisoning from a dodgy goose egg. As Chris Lintott reveals, the party for Sir Patrick at his Selsey home was a huge success, with British astronaut Piers Sellers the master of ceremonies. Rock star and astronomer Brian May appeared in a special edition of The Sky At Night earlier this month to mark the anniversary. The BBC photo, above, shows them together. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

New-found Earth may be fit for life

Astronomers have discovered the first ever planet resembling the Earth around another star - and conditions could be ideal there for life. Observations show that oceans of water could cover the new Earth's surface because it lies in the so-called "habitable zone" around its own sun. The distant world - the smallest ever found - is only half as wide again as our own planet. The discovery team say conditions appear to be perfect for any alien inhabitants. Previous planets discovered beyond the solar system have all been giant gas balls like our own neighbour Jupiter. Water was recently detected in the atmosphere of one. The new Earth-like planet is orbiting a red dwarf star called Gliese 581 in the constellation of Libra. It was spotted by European astronomers using a giant telescope on a mountaintop at La Silla, Chile, and is known as Gliese 581c. I recently reported that Nasa say they have the computer technology to detect Earth-like worlds. The Gliese 581 discovery team did not use this technique. Neither did they glimpse the world directly but instead were able to measure its orbital velocity. The planet is 14 times closer to its star than we are to our sun and zips round it in just 13 days. But the star is much cooler and less bright, say the astronomers, meaning conditions resemble those on Earth. Gliese 581 is one of the closest stars to us, lying just 20.5 light-years away. The discovery team, including Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists, are announcing their discovery today. Their leader Stéphane Udry said: “We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid. Models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth – or covered with oceans.” Colleague Xavier Delfosse said: “Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life. On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X.” A giant planet similar in size to Neptune had previously been found around Gliese 581 and the astronomers suspect there is a third around eight times the weight of the Earth. The picture is an ESO artist's impression of the new Earth. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Giant leap for UK Moon missions

Britain took a giant leap last night towards sending UK astronauts to the Moon and Mars. They announced a deal with NASA to become directly involved with America's Vision for Space Exploration that will send humans to explore the solar system. Signing the agreement is one small step for the UK Government. It promises to study ways in which the British National Space Centre and NASA might work together on robotic missions "to the Moon and beyond". But NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has made it clear to Skymania News that he wants Brits to join American astronauts in walking on the Moon and helping set up lunar bases. He recently told me: "The invitation absolutely is there for the UK to join us in those journeys. I hope that that level of participation would go so far as to include astronauts. If it does, then of course we will participate in training them." There is a busy campaign in Britain to train our own astronauts. In January, UK space chiefs announced plans to send robot probes to the Moon in 2010. One mission, called Moonraker, would land on the surface and study the rocks. An alternative, called MoonLITE, would go into orbit around the Moon and fire javelin-like missiles into its crust to find out what lies deeper in the lunar soil. The US-UK deal was signed in Washington last night. Science and Innovation Minister Malcolm Wicks said today: "During my recent meeting with NASA's Administrator Dr Michael Griffin, I was keen for the USA and UK to co-operate on exactly this sort of exciting endeavour. "I am delighted that this important agreement has been signed between our two space agencies which could provide an opportunity to harness the UK's world-class expertise in small satellite and robotic technologies." Professor Keith Mason, Chairman of the UK Space Board, which is BNSC's governing body, said UK expertise could help provide navigation, communications and analysis of the lunar surface. He said today: "This is a significant milestone for future cooperation with NASA. “NASA is committed to a long-term lunar exploration programme leading to a scientific research outpost, likely to be near the lunar South Pole, by 2020. In advance of this, permanent robotic communications and navigation infrastructure will need to be installed in lunar orbit in parallel with scientific reconnaissance of the surface. And this is where UK industry and academia could play a vital part. "We have unique expertise in small satellites and miniaturised instruments which could provide a low cost lunar telecoms capability, whilst simultaneously deploying probes to the Moon’s surface in order to characterise the surface and interior." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Star Trek shields to guard astronauts

Shields up! UK space scientists are preparing to build the first Star Trek-style deflector to protect astronauts on long missions to Mars. Science-fiction will become reality when the researchers create an artificial force field to guard crews from deadly cosmic rays and other radiation. So far, visitors to the International Space Station have had to hide behind thick protective walls during powerful storms on the sun. But under the British plan, crews on interplanetary missions will switch on a magnetic field that will produce a shield like that around the USS Enterprise. The team of scientists, led by Dr Ruth Bamford from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, unveiled their project at the National Astronomy Meeting in Preston, Lancs, today. The shield, called a magnetosphere, will mimic a similar natural magnetic field that surrounds the Earth, protecting us from space radiation. It produces the spectacular aurora, or northern lights, when hit by deadly streams from the Sun. In 1972, the crew of Apollo 16 had just returned safely from the Moon when a massive storm erupted on the Sun that was so strong it could have killed them. The prototype shield is to be built in miniature in the scientists' laboratory. But the aim is to produce full scale versions to protect spacecraft and manned bases on the Moon and Mars. The prototype will need to use cutting edge technology such as superconductors and technologies used in nuclear fusion. Picture: A Nasa artist's impression of a Mars ship. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Space mountain is named Snowdonia

Schoolchildren have named a mountain-sized asteroid Snowdonia after the beautiful Welsh region of the UK that is dominated by giant peak Snowdon. The name has been officially given to a space rock that is drifting in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. The youngsters helped work out its orbit to make sure it would not collide with Earth. It was discovered by a telescope on Hawaii that is operated over the Internet by schoolkids to find and track potentially threatening asteroids. The Faulkes Telescope Project puts schools on the front line of defence against a devastating impact like that which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The asteroid Snowdonia is not a threat as its orbit does not cross Earth's. UK children from schoools in Cambridge, Pontypool, Cardiff, Canterbury, London, Glasgow and Leamington Spa helped work out its orbit last spring following its discovery. Jay Tate, a former Army major who runs the Spaceguard Centre in Mid Wales and campaigns for more to be done to tackle the asteroid threat, praised the children's "Harry Spotter"-style work. He said: "Students working with the Faulkes Telescope Project produce some of the most important data on asteroids in the UK. Kids love it because they can watch things move, and more importantly because it's real - a far cry from many sterile classroom activities." The schoolchildren had the final say on three name suggestions made by German astronomers Lothar Kurtze and Felix Harmouth who found the asteroid. The name was picked because it acknowledges the location of the Faulkes Operations Centre at Cardiff University, as well as drawing attention to Snowdonia National Park. The Faulkes project's education director David Bowdley said: "Helping to study this asteroid and choose a name for it has been a great inspiration for the students. Working alongside real scientists has shown how much more can be achieved when people collaborate. In future we will be running many more projects like this where students work alongside astronomers to achieve real scientific outcomes." Photo: A view of Snowdonia in Wales by Paul Sutherland. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Space team go into interflora overdrive

Scientists appear to be on the brink of being able to admire the foliage on planets outside the solar system. And they reckon they could see signs of purple palm trees and exotic bushes with bright yellow leaves. It may be a while before Interflora goes interstellar. But the scientists say clues in the the faint light from alien worlds will help them detect what local plants is made of. They will be able to tell whether alien plants contain chlorophyll like those on Earth and so mainly look green, or whether some other chemistry is dominant giving them more exotic leaves and ferns. The scientists' report, in the latest issue of the journal Astrobiology, follows their study of light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth. It comes as another Nasa team claims it can produce the technology to identify other Earths around nearby stars. The plant study's lead author Nancy Kiang, of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, said: "We can identify the strongest candidate wavelengths of light for the dominant colour of photosynthesis on another planet. It makes one appreciate how life on Earth is so intimately adapted to the special qualities of our home planet and Sun." Maybe they will identify alfafa Centauri. The picture is an artist's impression provided by Nasa/JPL-Caltech. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Nasa say they can find Earth's twin

Space scientists have designed the technology to spot planets like Earth around other stars, they have revealed. For the first time, Nasa have demonstrated that a telescope in space could take a snapshot of our own twin outside the solar system. Previous planets found around nearby stars have been giant gas balls like Jupiter rather than rocky worlds like Earth. We can now even identify what is in their atmospheres. The problem with snapping other Earths is that the dim glow of the planet is drowned out by the glare of its own parent sun. But scientists have come up with a system of special masks and mirrors that would hide the starlight but leave the planet in view. It is essentially a sophisticated form of the coronograph used to block out the Sun. The challenge is like looking for a firefly next to a searchlight. But scientists from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California say their technology could enable a space telescope to photograph a distant planet 10 billion times fainter than its star. John Trauger, who presented a paper in the science journal Nature this week, said: "Our experiment demonstrates the suppression of glare extremely close to a star, clearing a field dark enough to allow us to see an Earth twin. This is at least a thousand times better than anything demonstrated previously." Picture: A computer simulation of a masked star, represented by the asterisk, and three planets. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Water found around alien world

Space scientists have spotted water for the first time in the atmosphere of another planet deep in the galaxy. The Hubble space telescope detected the crucial ingredient for life as steam on a planet in the constellation of Pegasus. Regular observations were made of the giant Jupiter-like world as it passed in front of its parent star which lies 150 light-years away and resembles our own Sun. During these transits every three and a half days, the planet appeared to swell in infrared light - a clear indication of the presence of water. Astronomers say the discovery suggests water is a common ingredient of planets' atmospheres throughout the Milky Way. Around 200 of the alien worlds have so far been discovered outside our own solar system. Astronomer Travis Barman, of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, made the discovery which was confirmed by computer studies carried out by Heather Knutson at Harvard University. He said: “We know water vapour exists in the atmospheres of one extrasolar planet and there is good reason to believe that other extrasolar planets contain water vapour.” The planet, called HD209458b and nicknamed Osiris, is termed a hot Jupiter because it lies only four million miles from its home sun. Life as we know it could not live there but the discovery boosts the chances that smaller planets around such stars might be home to ET. The discovery will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Shuttle set to fly again in June

Freak damage from giant hailstones forced Nasa yesterday to postpone the next shuttle launch until June. Engineers had hoped to repair dents in the main fuel tank in time for their ship to fly this month. But they have found 2,664 separate pits and gouges in the tank. Atlantis was due to blast off last month to continue construction work on the international space station. But a severe storm struck while the spacecraft was standing on launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in late February. Hailstones up to an inch and a half in diameter were found surrounding the launchpad after the storm. Atlantis itself was largely unscathed thanks to protective shields. Just a few heat tiles were scraped by bouncing hailstones. Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said he hoped to roll Atlantis back to the pad as early May 6 but it would be launched no earlier than June 8. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

UK set to fly to Moon with China

UK space scientists look set to join with China in a Moon landing. They have signed an agreement to investigate the possibility of flying British experiments aboard an unmanned lunar lander on the Chang'e II mission in 2012. The module will carry a rover that could now run about on the Moon's surface using instruments designed for the UK's ill-fated Beagle 2 probe to Mars. Professor John Zarnecki, head of planetary science at the Open University, is just back from talks in Shanghai on the joint mission and spoke exclusively to Skymania News about his trip. A prototype of a 5ft high Chinese rover, one of the contenders for the Chang'e II mision, was unveiled there this week. Professor Zarnecki, pictured above, told me: "What we are talking to them about is providing some of the instruments such as a robot arm and some of the instruments. "They could include some of the analytical instruments that were on the Beagle's PAW, to measure basic things like the density of the surface, the hardness and heatflow, which is a pretty basic measurement but we only know it roughly." (PAW was the delightful acronym for Beagle 2's Payload Adjustable Workbench). Professor Zarnecki said that Beagle 2's Professor Colin Pillinger would be keen to provide instruments to check the lunar rocks. He added: "The Chinese are smart. They admit they are new to space science and my gut feeling is that they want to do this pretty quickly. Although they could develop all these things themselves they realise that by working collaboratively they could speed things up." Professor Zarnecki said he had signed agreements to carry on working with China and they would be sending students, scientists and engineers to visit UK space centres at Oxford, Milton Keynes and Leicester. He planned to return to China to spend some time at one of their space universities such as the Shanghai Academy of Astronautics and Spaceflight. Professor Zarnecki said: "My dream is that come 2012, which is the planned landing date, we will have a Chinese rover trundling about on the surface of the Moon with UK instruments on it." The professor was chief scientist in the team that successfully landed a probe on Saturn's biggest moon Titan in 2005. Photo: Open University. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com • For more space reading, plus other bargains, check out the Skymania stores in the USA and in the UK They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence.

Cracking the riddle of the Big Bang

Brian Cox is used to working miracles. His band D:Ream's hit Things Can Only Get Better helped a once unelectable Labour party to win power in the UK in 1997. Today, with a doctorate in his pocket, he is preparing to work on something even more incredible - unlocking the secrets of how the universe began. Brian will tackle this massive challenge by exploring the smallest objects in nature - particles of the atoms that make up everything there is. He gave me a tour of his laboratory - a vast underground chamber on the border of Switzerland and France and close to Geneva airport. This is CERN, the European organisation for nuclear research. Here, 96 years after scientists first split the atom, Brian and around 1,800 buddies are planning to blast, pulverise, and smash it to pieces. They're building a fantastic £2 billion machine called the Large Hadron Collider that will recreate conditions that existed in the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang. That is the moment, astronomers believe, when everything in the universe, including space and time, blew into existence in one fireball of matter and energy. The experiments will help Brian and other muclear phsyicists to discover the recipe and the reasons for the material that makes up all the stars and galaxies. Odd then that their "observatory" lies 100 yards underground. It consists of a tunnel 17 miles long - roughly the same length as London's Circle Line - with giant detectors placed at strategic points along it. Brian's own detector, called Atlas, dominates a cavern the size of the nave in Westminster Abbey. When completed later this year, the machine's powerful magnets will fire atomic particles in opposite directions, accelerating them to speeds approaching that of light. Atoms are so small that a speck of dust contains around three trillion of them. They are made up of protons, electrons, neutrons and even smaller particles. Bunches of the protons will be fired so fast that they make 11,245 trips around the tunnel every second. Scientists say the resulting collisions will answer fundamental questions about the particles' make-up. Even more mind-bogglingly, they expect it to open the door to previously unknown dimensions - as many as ten of them! Brian (seen on the right in the photo) mentions, in a matter-of-fact way, that he believes the experiments will also create millions of black holes. Unlike those gobbling up stars at the centre of galaxies, these will be so microscopic that they will evaporate as suddenly as they form. That means there is no danger of the Earth being turned inside out, Brian assures me. But the prospect alarms organisations such as the US-based Lifeboat Foundation which believes scientists playing God could wipe out mankind in an instant. It certainly sounds the work of crazed, wild-eyed scientists in white coats from fifties B-movies. But Brian appears remarkably normal. He still has a pop star's good looks that belie his 39 years. But he was studying for his PhD when he played with D:Ream and now he has given up music completely to concentrate on particle physics. Brian tells me: "We're trying to understand the basic building blocks of the universe, how those building blocks stick together and, with a bit of luck, why those building blocks are there at all. The particles are unimaginably tiny. Brian says: "One of my favourite photos is from the Hubble space telescope and shows a patch of sky so small that you could hide it by holding a penny at arm's length. Yet in that picture are many thousands of galaxies, each containing one hundred thousand million stars." "The difference of scale between those thousands of galaxies and Switzerland's Mont Blanc is the same as between the mountain and the atoms we are probing." It is a study that explains such things as how and why the sun burns. So Brian's expertise was sought to help make the new British blockbuster sci-fi movie Sunshine. The film, made by Trainspotting and 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle, sets a doomsday scene where in 2057, the sun is dying and a space mission is sent to kickstart it with a nuclear bomb. It sounds a prepostrous idea, especially as astronomers generally agree that the sun has around another five billion years of life left in it. But Brian insists that the dramatic fate is a real possibility because he believes strange objects created in the Big Bang could threaten the sun's future. He says: "A host of strange things could have been created and still be flying around the universe today. It is just possible that these objects could cause havoc if they drifted into the heart of a star like the sun." Photos: The top picture is courtesy the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The photo with Brian Cox is by Paul Edwards of The Sun. Some fascinating physical facts CERN was founded in 1954 to bring European nations together after the war. Today it has 3,000 full time staff from 98 countries. Fifteen per cent are British. Hospital scanners around the world are based on the early detectors built to carry out particle physics. Superconducting cables being built for the new Large Hadron Collider would run around the equator nearly seven times. If their strands were laid end to end, they would stretch to the sun and back five times with enough left over for a few trips to the moon. Pipes in the LHC hold a vacuum close to that in outer space. Engineers check for leaks so small that if they were in a car tyre it would take 10,000 years to go flat. Part of the LHC will be the world's largest deep freeze and could hold as many sausages as 140,000 fridges. Particle accelerators are used to dry the paint on soft drinks cans. British boffin Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web as a means of sharing data while working at CERN. The scientists are now working on a web replacement called the Grid. CERN is the world's biggest laboratory devoted to fundamental science. It produces anti-matter which annihilates itself and ordinary matter when they come into contact. 99.999999999999 per cent of an atom's volume is empty space. If the proton in an atom were a pea at the centre of Old Trafford, the corresponding electron would lie at the back of the stands. The sun is a nuclear reactor the size of a million Earths and burns 600 million tons of hydrogen a second. ©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.