Giant spider found on Mercury

Forget Ziggy Stardust's Spiders from Mars. Space scientists have discovered a giant alien arachnid on the planet Mercury. It is lurking at the centre of one of the biggest impact craters in the solar system. The spider is a rock formation quite unlike anything ever observed before, and there is nothing like it on our own heavily-cratered Moon. It is made up of more than 100 raised, narrow troughs that radiate from a smaller crater inside the 800-mile wide Caloris Basin. The peculiar formation is among features snapped by a passing unmanned Nasa spaceprobe, called Messenger. Other images show huge cliffs snaking for hundreds of miles across Mercury's face. The probe took more than 1,200 photos of nearly a third of the 3,031 mile-wide planet during its close encounter on January 14. They are now being closely studied by the space agency. The latest results, from the first visit to Mercury in nearly 33 years, are forcing scientists into a radical rethink of how the closest planet to the sun evolved. Unlike the Moon, which is believed to be geologically dead and sterile, Mercury appears to have volcanoes and there are clear signs of lava oozing from the planet's crust. Interestingly, radar observations from Earth had suggested that Mercury has a liquid core. Messenger also detected a weaker magnetic field than that discovered by the last visitor, Mariner 10 in 1975, believed due to the craft flying different trajectories. Messenger's chief scientist Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution, Washington, said: "This flyby allowed us to see a part of the planet never before viewed by spacecraft, and our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data." Messenger flew 124 miles above the closest planet to the Sun, taking close-up pictures of its Moon-like mountains and craters. The probe, which was launched in August 2004, will eventually go into orbit around Mercury in 2011 after a 4.9 billion mile journey looping through the solar system. A joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury, called BepiColombo, is due to launch in 2013. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Runaway star is fleeing black hole

Astronomers from America and the UK have collaborated to identify the origin of a young star speeding away from the Milky Way at an incredible 1.6 million miles per hour. They believe it is unique because it must have been fired like a bullet from a yet-undiscovered black hole in a small galaxy that orbits our own. The runaway, labelled HE 0437-5439, is a hot, blue star nine times the mass of the Sun and around 35 million years old. We reported its discovery in 2005. It covers 450 miles per second as it races through the cosmos. But unlike previous fast-moving stars, it is alien to our own Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers Ian Hunter and Robert Ryans, from Queen's University Belfast, closely studied the runaway star with colleagues from Carnegie, Washington. They believe it once had a mate, being one of a pair of stars spinning around each other. But the stars ventured too close to a black hole 1,000 times the size of the sun. As one star was pulled into the black hole, the other was whipped into a feenzy and flung out of the neighbouring galaxy, called the Large Magellanic Cloud. The astronomers say that nine previously found hypervelocity stars have all been ejected by a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Alceste Bonanos, of Carnegie, said: "We've ruled out that the star came from the Milky Way. Like evidence from a crime scene, the fingerprints point to an origin in the Large Magellanic Cloud." He added: "This is the first observational clue that a massive black hole exists somewhere in the LMC. We look forward to finding out where this black hole might be." Artwork: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Revealed! Stargazer snaps splatellite

An amateur astronomer has taken the first photo of the US spy satellite which is expected to crash to Earth in the next few weeks. John Locker recorded the top-secret craft tumbling in its faulty orbit as it passed over his home in the Wirral in Cheshire, north-west England. You can still see the satellite for yourself in the next few days as a bright, slow-moving star. The satellite was around 200 miles up and speeding across the sky as John took his photo of sunlight glinting from its bodywork. He used a £40 ($80) webcam attached to a typical amateur telescope in his back garden, an 8-inch Meade LX90, to capture his image. The photo suggests that the satellite, which is said to be the size of a small bus, failed to deploy its solar panels properly, causing it to fail shortly after launch on December 14, 2006. US defence chiefs had failed to name the satellite. But space enthusiasts have identified it as USA-193, a surveillance craft that is bristling with secret military equipment. It will re-enter the atmosphere in late February or early March. It also carries a full load of hydrazine fuel, which is highly toxic, dangerously unstable and can cause sickness if humans come into contact with it. Normally the fuel would have been used to help keep it in position and to help it come out of orbit safely at the end of its working life. The spy craft is in a highly-inclined orbit of 58.5 degrees. That means it flies over most of the Earth from the tip of Scotland in the north to Patagonia in the south. It could therefore crash almost anywhere. The Pentagon are said to be considering attempting to destroy the satellite with a missile but that could simply create a cloud of debris that would endanger other satellites and some could still fall to Earth. Communications consultant John previously hit the headlines in 2002 when he revealed that supposedly secret military spy plane operations in the Balkans could be watched by anyone with a satellite receiver. Photo: John Locker/Galaxy Picture Library. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Virgin boss's space tribute to mum

Sir Richard Branson unveiled the craft that will carry his passengers into space this week - and showed his soft side by decorating it with a picture of his mum. Every SpaceShipTwo will carry the logo of a busty beauty called Galactic Girl - a figure that the designers based on Eve Branson who was an air hostess in the pioneering days of air travel. The Virgin Galactic spacecraft will be launched from a runway by a jet-powered mothership called White Knight Two - and the first of those will be called Eve in a further tribute by Sir Richard. Skymania News flew to New York for a dazzling press event that showed off the fleet being built for Virgin Galactic by Scaled Composites, winners of the Ansari X Prize for the first private, manned spaceflight. Eve, 83, who is booked with Sir Richard's father Ted, 89, on one of the first flights, was clearly delighted by the dedication - and revealed that her son had checked she would not mind first. She said: "It is very fitting as I see myself as the mothership. Richard rang me first to ask my permission!" Eve admitted she was surprised by the saucy logo. But she added: "It is all in the spirit of things and harks back to the early days of flying. I was one of the first air hostesses back in the Thirties when it took two weeks to get from England to South America." Sir Richard's new "airway to heaven" will carry the first ordinary space tourists to the final frontier. More than 200 wannabe astronauts have already put down deposits to join the new 65 Mile High Club. Another 85,000 people from 125 countries have registered an interest. Each ticket to ride will cost £100,000 for flights in which six passengers at a time will experience many minutes of weightlessness on a sub-orbital flight to the edge of space. They will experience to see the curvature of the Earth and incredible views of the continents stretching for thousands of miles before gliding to a landing on Earth. Sir Richard has placed an order for five Galactic Girls and has options on a further seven. He has also ordered two White Knight Two motherships to send them soaring high above the atmosphere. Virgin Galactic Chairman Will Whitehorn said the White Knight will be ready for tests in around ten weeks and the first Galactic Girl by the summer. They will then undergo many months or testing before carrying paassengers. A model revealing the design of the new launch mothership came as a big surprise yesterday. White Knight Two has a twin-fuselage and will powered by four jet engines. It will take off from a conventional runway and carry the spacecraft between its twin hulls high into the atmosphere. There Galactic Girl will break free and fire its own rocket engine to propel it into space before it returns to land. Mr Whitehorn said that as well as the pilots, the ship would be able to carry relatives of the astronauts who could wave them off on their adventures. Space tourism has previously been restricted to a tiny handful of the mega-rich who have paid £10 million each to fly on conventional Russian Soyuz rockets to the International Space Station. Although many small companies are talking about space tourism, Virgin Galactic are the only one that has made any significant progress. A flight expert told me: "They are really the only show in town." A custom-built space port is being set up in New Mexico and plans are being made for flight from other parts of the world too, including Sweden and Lossiemouth in Scotland for trips into the spectacular Northern Lights. The spacecraft are being built by fledgling company Scaled Composites and work is pressing ahead despite an explosion that killed killed three of its workers during ground tests in California last July. The company, founded by rocket pioneer Burt Rutan, was fined $25,870 last week for safety violations. Pictures: Virgin Galactic. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Winged Messenger buzzes Mercury

A robotic spaceprobe became the first craft to visit the planet Mercury in almost 33 years yesterday. Nasa's Messenger probe flew 124 miles above the closest planet to the Sun, taking close-up pictures of its Moon-like mountains and craters. Photos due to be radioed back to Earth were expected to reveal terrain not seen by the last US visitor to Mercury, Mariner 10 in 1975. Messenger, which was launched in August 2004, will eventually go into orbit around Mercury in 2011. But oddly, last night's visit was the first of three flybys that it will make as it loops across the inner solar system. It means that the probe is only half way through a 4.9 billion mile journey that it must make before it eventually goes into orbit around Mercury. Messenger has already flown past the Earth once and Venus twice, using their gravity to propel it like a slingshot on its way. It will again skim the surface of Mercury in October this year and September 2009 . Pictures sent back last night were expected to include an 800-mile wide impact crater called the Caloris basin which is one of the biggest in the solar system. Mission scientist Louise Prockter said: "Caloris is huge, about a quarter of the diameter of Mercury, with rings of mountains within it that are up to two miles high. Mariner 10 saw a little less than half of the basin. During this first flyby, we will image the other side." Since Mariner's visit, planetary scientists have learned that Mercury has a liquid core. British engineers are about to sign a contract to build a European probe, BepiColombo, that will be sent to Mercury in 2013. Picture: An artist's impression of the flyby. (NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Hubble snaps a cosmic bullseye

The Hubble space telescope has snapped a cosmic bullseye - the first concentric pair of glowing rings spotted in the universe. The unique alignment of one ring nestled inside the other is the finest example of a phenomenon called an Einstein ring. The pattern, named after the famous scientist who predicted it, is caused by gravitational lensing - the pull of a massive galaxy in the foreground bends the light from two distant galaxies hidden behind it. Astronomers say that as well as showing a pretty pattern, the very rare phenomenon will help them learn about normally invisible substances dark matter and dark energy, plus the nature of distant galaxies and even the curvature of the universe. The double ring was found by an international team of astronomers led by Raphael Gavazzi and Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was announced this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. Tommaso says that they "hit the jackpot" because the odds of seeing such a special alignment are estimated to be one in 10,000. Leonidas Moustakas of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, said: "Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature. Dark matter is not hidden to lensing. The elegance of this lens is trumped only by the secrets of nature that it reveals." The foreground galaxy at the centre of the bullseye lies three billion light-years away. The inner ring and outer ring are made up of multiple images of two galaxies lying at much greater distances of six billion and 11 billion light-years. Team member Adam Bolton, of the University of Hawaii, was first to identify the gravitational lens on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - a detailed mapping of the heavens by robotic telescopes. He said: "The twin rings were clearly visible in the Hubble image. When I first saw it I said, 'Wow, this is insane!' I could not believe it!" Gravitational lensing has previously allowed astronomers to view some of the most distant galaxies in the universe. It worked like a natural telescope to bring into view objects that would otherwise have remained invisible. Other instances are seen in the Groth Strip - a tiny piece of sky imaged by Hubble and revealed to contain 50,000 galaxies. Photo: This Hubble close-up has had the bright central, foreground galaxy removed to show the rings more clearly. (Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Gavazzi and T. Treu). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

We are stardust and life is a blast

Planet Earth - and all life on it - had an explosive start, scientists revealed today. They have found conclusive evidence that the cosmic dust from which everything is made came from old stars that blew themselves to pieces - an event called a supernova. An international team of astronomers studied the remains of one massive stellar explosion, called Cassiopeia A, 11,000 light-years away. Using Nasa's Spitzer space telescope, they found enough cosmic dust from the blast to make up 10,000 planets the size of the Earth. Astronomers had long appreciated that cosmic dust spread throughout the universe helps new stars to start burning and form solar systems. But there was controversy over its origins. Dr Haley Gomez, of Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy, was part of the team that analyzed images from the heat-seeking Spitzer telescope of Cas A. The space observatory's sensitive infrared detectors revealed conclusively that the dust grains came directly from the supernova blast. The research showed that Cas A was once 30 times the mass of our own Sun but took just 10 million years to reach the explosion stage, when it provided a rapid source of dust. The dust grains were found to be made up of proto-silicates, silicon dioxide, iron oxide, pyroxene, carbon, aluminium oxide and other compounds, all located in the same place as the supernova gas. Team leader Dr Jeonghee Rho, of Nasa's Spitzer Science Centre, said: "Now we can say unambiguously that dust - and lots of it - was formed in the ejecta of the Cassiopeia A explosion." The scientists say that the dust they observed is relatively warm (100 degrees Kelvin, or minus 173 degrees Celsius) and so they have been unable to confirm the origin of much colder dust (20 degrees Kelvin or minus 253 degrees C) seen in distant galaxies. Cardiff scientists are working on cameras for a powerful new European space telescope, called Herschel, which is due for launch in July. Dr Gomez said: "At the moment we’re missing something. The dust Spitzer is looking at is quite warm. We think there’s colder dust in there, which Spitzer doesn’t see. We’re hoping that Herschel will allow us to see the colder dust. Herschel could completely change the way we see the Universe." The team's discovery that we are stardust will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. Picture: This Nasa image combines observations made with the Spitzer, Hubble and Chandra space telescopes. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

New solar system could breed life

Building blocks of life have been observed in a newly-forming solar system by the Hubble space telescope. Complex organic molecules were identified in a disk of red dust surrounding a star that is believed to be in the final stages of producing its own planets. Astronomers are excited because it suggests that Earth life need not be not unique and that it could be common for life to develop on other worlds. The star, labelled HR 4796A, is eight million years old and lies 220 light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus. Its dusty disk was examined with a heat-seeking instrument attached to Hubble called the Near-Infrared Multi-Object Spectrometer. The results follow the discovery, last year, of another ingredient essential to life as we know it - water - in another solar system. A US team used the orbiting telescope to discover that a deep red glow from the dust was caused by large organic carbon molecules called tholins. Such molecules no longer form on Earth but are believed to have existed here billions of years ago and to have led eventually to the creation of living organisms. The US study - the first discovery of tholins outside the solar system - was made by scientists from the Carnegie Institution and University of Arizona. Team member John Debes said: "Until recently it's been hard to know what makes up the dust in a disk from scattered light, so to find tholins this way represents a great leap in our understanding. "HR 4796A is twice as massive, nearly twice as hot as the sun, and 20 times more luminous. Studying this system provides new clues to understanding the different conditions under which planets form and, perhaps, life can evolve." Picture: In this Hubble image, the central star's light is masked to reveal the glow of its dusty disk. (John Debes). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Meteor search with Google jet

Nasa took Google searching to a new level today when they went hunting for meteors. Space scientists borrowed a private jet from the internet giant to fly over the Arctic and watch hundreds of shooting stars. The team, led by Peter Jenniskens, were also treated to a dramatic display of the Northern Lights on their ten-hour flight. They were monitoring a shower called the Quadrantids which was reaching its peak with a natural display of slightly late New Year fireworks. It was caused when the Earth ran into a river of debris left by a passing asteroid called 2003 EH1, and these dust particles burned up in the atmosphere. The Gulfstream V jet belongs to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They keep it at Nasa's Moffett Field base in California in return for allowing scientists to use it for occasional research. The dust grains, called meteors, appear to burst from a constellation called Bootes, the herdsman. You may still spot some over the next couple of days. The picture shows the team preparing to board their jet. Photo: Peter Jenniskens, SETI Institute. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Britain's top five UFO 'mysteries'

As I reported earlier, the UK's Ministry of Defence has agreed to open its secret files on UFO sightings over the UK. These are five of the most controversial incidents that UFO spotters hope will be solved (don't hold your breath!): 1. The Cosford Incident. On March 31, 1993, triangular-shaped UFOs were spotted by dozens of people in western Britain, speeding through the night sky. The MoD's man then running their "UFO desk", Nick Pope, told his superiors: "It seems that an unidentified object of unknown origin was operating in the UK Air Defence Region without being detected on radar. "This would appear to be of considerable defence significance, and I recommend that we investigate further, within MoD or with the US authorities." A meteorological officer said he saw a triangular-shaped craft flying at about 200ft. It made a low hum and fired a narrow beam of light which swept the ground. Skeptics say the sightings were actually of a Russian rocket booster breaking up in the atmosphere after putting a satellite, Cosmos 2238, into orbit. But Pope, who has since left the MoD, claims that “no satisfactory explanation” was ever found for the reports. He called Cosford the "big case" that made him believe extraterrestrials could penetrate Britain’s defences at will. 2. The Berwyn Mountain Incident. UFO believers claim that a flying saucer crashed in Wales on January 23, 1974, and that alien remains were discovered in a UK equivalent of the United States' famous Roswell Incident. The area was reportedly cordoned off and local villages visited by mysterious investigators, who they described as the "Men in Black". Police quickly set up a search team and had ten officers scouring the mountains, later to be joined by an RAF mountain rescue team from Anglesey. Their official report was that they found nothing. During the investigation, it was discovered that there had been an earthquake at the time of the reported UFO crash. The Institute of Geological Sciences said that if the size of the tremor had been due to an impact, there would have been a clearly visible crater, yet none was found. Skeptics say the UFO stories resulted from a combination of the earthquake, a meteor shower and the lights of poachers who were active in the mountains. 3. The Flying Cross Incident. A celebrated case championed by UFO believers was a flying saucer chased by two police officers across Devon on October 24, 1967. The patrolmen, Roger Willey and Clifford Waycott, followed the UFO through country lanes at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour in the early hours of the morning. But instead of being saucer-shaped, "it looked like a star-spangled cross radiating points of light from all angles,” PC Willey said afterwards. He added: "It was travelling about tree-top height over wooded countryside near Holsworthy, Devon. We drove towards it and it moved away. It then led us on a chase as if it was playing a game with us." Astronomers quickly came up with an explanation for the Devon Flying Cross. They said it was a case of mistaken identity and the officers had been chasing the planet Venus which was prominent in the morning sky at that time. 4. The Manchester Incident. As a British Airways Boeing 737 carrying 60 passengers approached Manchester airport on the evening of January 6, 1995, it was apparently buzzed by a bright, fast-moving UFO. The incident was enough to make the first officer duck instinctively as it flashed past. But air traffic controllers said they saw nothing on the radar. The pilot told them: "We just had something go down the right hand side just above us very fast. It had lights, it went down the starboard side very quick." At the time of the sighting, the Boeing was descending at 4,000 ft, about nine miles southeast of Manchester. The silent UFO was moving in the opposite direction and was visible for about two seconds. The pilots submitted a report that was investigated as a near-miss by the Civil Aviation Authority. But stargazers claim the airmen simply saw a fireball or brilliant meteor. Leading UK UFO skeptic Ian Ridpath commented: "These kinds of cases show that pilots and policemen make the same mistakes as everyone else when it comes to misidentifying objects in the sky. "The people who spend most time looking at the sky, amateur astronomers, report the fewest UFOs because they are less easily fooled." 5. The Rendlesham Incident. Britain's most famous UFO mystery began on Christmas night, 1980. There were countless UFO reports, including from aircraft passengers, of strange lights streaking through the skies over southern England. Then at 2.50am on Boxing Day, a brilliant light was seen to fall over Tangham Woods in Rendlesham Forest by a military cop at Woodbridge NATO base near Ipswich. Other airmen, fearing an aircraft had crashed, drove into the woods to investigate. They followed strange lights for an hour ans one said he saw an alien craft's metallic form. The incident was taken so seriously that police were called to the scene. Two nights later, other airmen entered the woods on a UFO hunt and reported seeing coloured lights which they followed for two hours. They also reported higher radiation levels than normal, burn damage to trees and three depressions in the ground where a UFO had landed. Skeptic Ian Ridpath spoke to a young forester, Vince Thurkettle, who identified the brightest light as nothing more alien than Orford Ness lighthouse, six miles away, seen through a gap in the trees. He said he had himself mistaken it for poachers' lamps. Ridpath says the lights seen that Christmas night across England were rocket debris from the satellite Cosmos 749 as it burned up in the atmosphere. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Truth will be out over British UFOs

Britain's Ministry of Defence has bowed to pressure and agreed to make public their own X-Files - formerly secret reports about UFO sightings. All 160 documents relating to "flying saucers" over the UK will be declassified and released over the next three years. The Government's decision comes less than a year after the French put their own secret list of UFO reports into the public domain. Believers in alien visitors hope the new documents, dating from the late 1970s to 2007, will unveil the truth about some of our own most baffling UFO sightings. But the MoD warn that those who believe in a cover-up will be disappointed by what they read. The MoD decision follows sustained pressure from several investigators who used the Freedom of Information Act to pressure the Government over individual incidents. Officials found that dealing with those they termed "UFO spotters" was taking up too much valuable time and resources. They therefore made the dramatic decision to reveal at last the UK's secrets of the skies. The files include 24 that DI55 - the Defence Intelligence Branch charged with investigating UFO reports - had been planning to destroy because they were contaminated with asbestos. The researchers campaigned successfully for the documents to be scanned along with 63,000 non-UFO military files numbering up to 12 million pages. They were led by Dr Dave Clarke, a senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, Gary Anthony and Joe McGonagle whose steady stream of demands for information put enormous strain on the MoD. An earlier success for the team was to identify the existence of a secret MoD document about UFO sightings called the Condign Report and to force its release last year. The first batch of reports are expected to be released in spring next year. But unlike in France, where their files were put on the internet for free, the UK files will be released to the National Archives who make a charge for providing documents to the public. An MoD spokesman said: "The subject of UFOs is one of the most popular subjects for Freedom of Information requests. Answering requests takes a considerable amount of time and resources and can involve officials in days of work, which frequently means trawling through old files to find the information requested. "By placing the UFO files on-line at the National Archive in a structured manner, the MoD is able to follow its remit for more open government and, by re-directing applicants to the National Archive site, reduce the amount of time it spends answering requests." But believers in a Flying Saucer cover-up might be disappointed by what they read, the spokesman suggests. He added: "By opening our files in this way, we may also help to counter the maze of rumour and frequently ill-informed speculation that surrounds the role of the MoD in the UFO phenomena." • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Check out our new guide to Mars too. And support this site by visiting Skymania's stores in the USA, the UK, Canada and France. They are powered by Amazon so you can buy with confidence. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com