Ancient record of asteroid impact

UK space scientists have discovered what they claim is an account of a devastating asteroid impact in Europe five thousand years ago. The disaster is chronicled on a mysterious clay tablet that has been stored in the British Museum since geologists found it in the 19th century. The tablet pictures an asteroid so big that its shape could be made out with the naked eye while it was still in space. Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell worked out that the asteroid, nearly a mile wide, struck Köfels in Austria as a blazing fireball. The tablet had been nicknamed the Planisphere because it shows drawings of the constellations and text listing their names. It was made by an Assyrian scribe and was discovered among 22,000 tablets in the remains of the Royal Palace at Nineveh in what is now Iraq. Space entrepreneur Bond and astronautics lecturer Hempsell, of Bristol University, used powerful computer programs to analyse the events depicted on the Planisphere. They discovered it is a copy of a notebook made by a Sumerian astronomer recording events in the sky before dawn on June 29, 3123 BC. The scientists found that half of the tablet notes planet positions and cloud cover, but the rest shows how the asteroid appeared in the heavens. By analysing the record of the asteroid's trajectory, the scientists linked the event to a giant landslide in Austria. Researchers had suggested in the 20th century that the landslide was due to a meteor impact but were puzzled by the lack of a crater. The newly uncovered record shows that this is because the asteroid flew in at a low angle and clipped the top of Mount Gamskogel in the Austrian Alps. This caused the asteroid to explode before it hit the ground seven miles ahead, pulverising the rock. The scientists say the exploding asteroid would have caused a back plume along its path across the Middle East and Mediterranean. Mr Hempsell said: "The ground heating would be enough to ignite any flammable material, including human hair and clothes. It is probable more people died under the plume than in the Alps due to the impact blast." Bond and Hempsell describe their work in translating the tablet in a new book, A Sumerian Observation Of The Kofels' Impact Event, published today. Scientists are busy working out ways to protect the Earth against future asteroid impacts. Picture: An illustration of the clay tablet. Courtesy Gary D. Thompson. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can 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

'Fry me to the Moon' memorial flights

Space undertakers have revealed plans to send human ashes to the Moon - with the help of private rocket companies, one based on the Isle of Man off the coast of England. First flights carrying cremated remains are scheduled to lift off next year at a cost of nearly $10,000 (around £5,000) for a gram of each astronaut's ashes. The memorial flights are being organised by US company Celestis who have already put human ashes into orbit around the Earth. They included Scotty from Star Trek James Doohan, the show's creator Gene Roddenberry and pioneer astronaut Gordon Cooper. The firm now plans to add ashes to the lunar landers being built by British-based Odyssey Moon and a private US space firm Astrobotic Technology. Both companies are competing in a £15 million contest sponsored by Google to land a privately-funded probe on the Moon and perform a range of tasks by 2012. Celestis chiefs say their dead passengers will actually help the missions - dubbed Luna 02 and Luna 03 - by providing ballast to stabilise the spacecraft. They already have some experience in lunar memorials. In 1998, they provided a capsule to carry cremated remains of comet expert Eugene Shoemaker aboard Nasa's Lunar Prospector mission. After one year in orbit, the probe was deliberately crashed, making the scientist the first to be laid to rest on another world. Celestis founder Charles M. Chafer said: "We are pleased to schedule these Luna Service missions to serve our global community of families and loved ones wishing to honour the life of a special person." Odyssey Moon is a mainly Canadian team that has based itself in Douglas to take advantage of tax breaks and other incentives offered to attract space entrepreneurs. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can 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

Observatory is backdrop for Bond

Action is bound to be breathless in the new James Bond movie - it is currently filming at the driest location on Earth, recognized by astronomers as an ideal observing site. Film bosses picked Cerro Paranal, home of a powerful European observatory in Chile, for scenes in Quantum Of Solace, starring Daniel Craig. The futuristic complex sits 8,500 ft high in the Atacama Desert - a landscape so alien that is is more like Mars. The harsh sand is red, no vegetation grows and visitors often find it difficult to breathe the thin air at such an altitude. Bombarded by dangerous ultraviolet radiation froom the Sun, it is said to be the driest place on our planet, with less than ten per cent humidity. Astronomers using the giant telescopes seek shelter in a futuristic domed "hotel" that protects them from the radiation and provides moist air to breathe. Its luxury facilities include a tropical garden and pool. Craig is currently shooting at the alien location with Ukrainian beauty Olga Kurylenko and French star Mathieu Amalric who plays evil tycoon Dominic Greene. Action centres in and around the space-age complex and its nearby airstrip. Quantum Of Solace producer Mike Wilson said: "It is a true oasis and the perfect hide-out for Dominic Greene, our villain, whom 007 is tracking in our new James Bond film." Picture: The Paranal Residencia. Credit: ESO. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can 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

Titan's ocean may contain alien life

A vast underground ocean has been detected on the most Earth-like world in the solar system - and a leading expert believes it could be teeming with alien life. The sea of water and ammonia lies around 100km (60 miles) beneath the surface of Titan, the largest moon orbiting the ringed planet Saturn. So could heat from its centre have kick-started primitive life? The UK's top Titan scientist, Professor John Zarnecki, told Skymania News today: "We know that Titan is swimming in organic chemicals. "There has got to be some energy down there and it would not take much energy to allow life to begin. "We suspected there might be an ocean beneath Titan and the new data is very exciting. It is now very hard for there not to be an ocean." Rivers and lakes of methane have already been found on Titan and it rains from the orange atmosphere which is the densest known in the solar system after our own. Astronomers say Titan resembles a young Earth and the ingredients are there for carbon-based life to form. But it had been thought too cold for there to be any life there yet. Now, however, the discovery of the deep ocean changes everything. It is invisible but Nasa's Cassini spaceprobe discovered overwhelming evidence that the sea exists. Space scientists had used the probe's radar to pinpoint the locations of 50 surface features on Titan including lakes, canyons and mountains. Over a few months, these features were found to have moved by up to 19 miles. The experts deduce that this means the surface crust of Tian is separated from its core by the underground ocean. Professor Zarnecki, of the Open University at Milton Keynes, was in charge of experiments when a probe called Huygens detached from Cassini and successfully parachuted to a landing on Titan in January 2005. He said he believed that life on Titan could resemble the extremophiles - bugs that have been found in the most inhospitable places on Earth including boiling ocean vents and radioactive environments. Professor Zarnecki is working on plans for more missions to Titan to send balloons flying through its atmosphere and surface rovers. He believes we will one day explorers will even manage to reach the underground ocean - although not in his lifetime. Picture: A Nasa artist's cutaway of Titan, with Saturn visible in the distance. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. And you can 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

Most distant, powerful blast yet seen

The most powerful explosion ever witnessed in the universe was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye this week. It blew up half way across the universe, making it also the most distant object visible without a telescope. The blast - first detected by Nasa's Swift satellite on Wednesday - happened 7.5 billion light-years away. That means it actually occurred 7.5 billion years ago, before the Earth even formed, and its light has been racing to meet us ever since. By contrast, the light of the Moon takes just one and a quarter seconds to travel 240,000 miles to our eyes. Astronomers term such an explosion a gamma ray blast, caused when a massive star collapses to form a black hole. The discovery shatters the record for the furthest object visible with the naked eye alone. Swift is an orbiting observatory operated by Nasa in conjunction with, in the UK, the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in Surrey. Its principal investigator, Neil Gehrels, of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, said: "This burst was a whopper. It blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far." Amazingly the blast was one of four gamma ray bursts witnessed in one day by Swift, whose work we have reported before. The first such blast viewed live happened in February 2006. Telescopes around the world raced to catch the afterglow from the record explosion, labelled GRB 080319B, in the constellation of Bootes, the Herdsman. Several reported that it briefly became as bright as faint stars visible to the naked eye in clear dark skies away from light pollution. Experts say the blast was 2.5 million times more luminous than the brightest supernova ever observed. The most distant object usually visible to the keen-sighted is a galaxy called M33 in Triangulum, just under 3 million light-years from Earth. Swift science team member Stephen Holland said: "No other known object or type of explosion could be seen by the naked eye at such an immense distance. If someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid." • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can 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. Picture: The extremely luminous afterglow of GRB 080319B imaged by Swift's X-ray Telescope (left) and Optical/Ultraviolet Telescope (right). Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, Skymania.com

Hubble shows it can spot signs of life

A team of British and American astronomers have discovered, for the first time ever, a chemical that could spark life on a planet orbiting another star. They used the Hubble space telescope to spot the tell-tale signature of the molecule methane in the atmosphere of a giant gasball the size of Jupiter lying 63 light-years away. Finding the gas - which is also produced by cows breaking wind on Earth - follows the discovery of water on the same planet last year. The new find is a breakthrough because it proves that astronomers finally have the power to detect signs of life itself outside our own solar system. Dr Giovanna Tinetti, of University College London, was part of the team that made this first-ever discovery of an organic molecule on another world. The planet, labelled simply HD 189733b, lies in the constellation of Vulpecula, the Fox. Her observations, made with colleagues from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, also confirmed the existence of water molecules that was made last year using another space telescope called Spitzer. Dr Tinetti said yesterday: "We haven't found life on another planet yet, but this in an exciting step towards showing that we can detect these signature molecules where they are present in the Universe." Methane is a natural gas produced on Earth from sources including oceans, wetlands, rubbish tips and cows breaking wind - it is estimated that all the cattle in the world produce 100 million tonnes a year. But scientists are ruling out windy aliens as the cause of the methane they have detected. Dr Tinbetti said: "The planet's atmosphere is far too hot for even the hardiest life to survive — at least the kind of life we know from Earth. It's highly unlikely that cows could survive here!" Only last week, we reported how clouds of water had been detected in the dust and gas orbiting a young star. That followed the discovery of organic molecules in another newly forming solar system. The flood of new findings confirm the view expressed by Nasa last year that telescopes are now collecting enough information from the atmospheres of exoplanets to identify ET's fingerprints. In the latest find, the methane - made up from carbon and hydrogen - was detected as the planet passed in front of its star, allowing light travelling through the atmosphere to be analysed. Under the right circumstances methane can play a key role in the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it - a process called prebiotic chemistry. Team leader Mark Swain said: "This is a crucial stepping stone to eventually characterising prebiotic molecules on planets where life could exist." He added: "With this observation there is no question whether there is water or not – water is present." The planet is nothing like the Earth. It is of a type called a "hot Jupiter" and zips round its parent star so quickly that its year is just two Earth-days long. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. And you can 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

Clouds of water circle young stars

Vast amounts of water and chemicals essential for life have been found circling a young star in the region where planets form. Water has been found in the same zone around two other infant stars. The organic gases and water vapour were picked up by astronomers studying a star in the constellation of Taurus the Bull with a Nasa heat-seeking space telescope called Spitzer. Their results also suggest that these molecules were created around the young suns and did not condense from the dense clouds of gas between the stars. The news follows the separate discovery of organic molecules around another star by the Hubble space telescope, reported in January. Scientists hope the new results from AA Tauri, 450 light-years from Earth, will shed new light on how our own solar system formed and how life can develop on other worlds. The breakthrough was made by John Carr, of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, and Joan Najita, of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, at Tucson, Arizona. They developed a new technique to increase the capabilities of Spitzer's infrared spectrograph so they they could learn more about how the gases are distributed in the planet-forming disks. These flattened disks of gas and dust that encircle young stars are believed to provide the building materials for planets and moons and eventually, over millions of years, evolve into orbiting planetary systems like our own. Car said: "Most of the material within the disks is gas, but until now it has been difficult to study the gas composition in the regions where planets should form. Much more attention has been given to the solid dust particles, which are easier to observe." Carr and Najita took a close look at the gases in the planet-forming region around AA Tauri. They were able to detect the minute spectral signatures for three simple organic molecules - hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and carbon dioxide - plus water vapour. They also found there are more of these substances in the dense interstellar gas, called molecular clouds, from which the disk originated. Car said: "Molecular clouds provide the raw material from which the protoplanetary disks are created. So this is evidence for an active organic chemistry going on within the disk, forming and enhancing these molecules." A separate team from the California Institute of Technology used the same technique with Spitzer to find water molecules in the disks around two other young stars. The chief investigator on that team, Colette Salyk, said: "This is one of the very few times that water vapour has been directly shown to exist in the inner part of a protoplanetary disk - the most likely place for terrestrial planets to form." Previous exciting results from Spitzer include evidence that a planet like Earth is forming around a star in Centaurus. Picture: An artist's impression of a very young star encircled by a disk of gas and dust, the raw materials from which rocky planets such as Earth are thought to form. (Nasa/JPL-Caltech). • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can 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

Ingredients of life found in meteorites

Scientists have discovered exciting new evidence that life was brought to the Earth from space. They found the highest ever concentration of life's essential ingredients in two ancient meteorites that crashed to the ground long ago. The space rocks were discovered lying in the Antarctic by explorers in the 1990s after centuries preserved by nature's own deep freeze. A study led by Dr Zita Martins, of Imperial College London, shows that they hold high levels of amino acids which form the basis of proteins and enzymes - the building blocks of all biological life. The carbon-rich meteorities - termed chondrites - are believed to be fragments of asteroids that formed shortly after the birth of the solar system. Earlier research found the building blocks of life in carbon bubbles within a meteorite that fell over Canada in 2000. Dr Martins and international colleagues believe the Antarctic meteorites provide clear evidence that the early solar system was richer in life's raw materials than previously thought. They say these materials may have helped to kick-start life on this planet. Dr Zita Martins, from Imperial College's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: "We know that approximately 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago the Earth underwent heavy bombardment from meteorites which brought molecules to our planet, just before life emerged on Earth. "However, there is a gap in knowledge about how life came into being. Our work has shown that it may have been meteoritic amino acids and other biologically useful compounds that spurred life into existence." By analysing the content of the two meteorites, Dr Martins' team were able to determine that, unlike Earth based amino acids which prefer a lighter variety of carbon, their samples were made from a heavier carbon which could only have been formed in space. Dr Martins says her work provides new insights into the chemistry of the early solar system and the resources available for early life. "Our increasing understanding of the materials available for the first living systems in the solar system suggests that we are all products of cosmic chemistry," said Dr Martins. Dr Martins conducted her research with colleagues at the Leiden University, Netherlands, in association with the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Their work on the two meteorites - dubbed EET92042 and GRA95229 - is published online in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The Antarctic has proved a fertile hunting ground for meteorites because they can lie undisturbed on the snow and ice for many thousands of years. One meteorite found there from Mars hit the headlines in 1996 when Nasa announced they had found signs of fossilised martian bacteria inside it. It is now believed that the "fossils" are really terrestrial contamination but scientists say there are still signs of life's building blocks in that meteorite too. Traces of martian organisms are also said to have been detected in a meteorite that fell over Egypt in 1911 and which has been kept in the Natural History Museum in London. Picture: An artist's impression of asteroids drifting in space. NASA/JPL-Caltech • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can 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

Cassini takes shower by alien moon

Nasa scientists will give a spaceprobe a bit of a shower tomorrow when they send it flying through jets of water spouting from a distant world that could be home to alien life. They will steer their Cassini craft into its closest-ever flyby, skimming just 30 miles past a moon orbiting Saturn called Enceladus. The scientists are fascinated by geysers erupting from cracks in the rock near the moon's south pole. They believe the jets may be bursting from a vast underground lake which could be teeming with life. Cassini will fly into the edges of these plumes while it is still 120 miles from Enceladus and closing in for its unprecedented in-your-face encounter. It is unlikely to get a drenching but will collect samples of water-ice, dust and gas from the flyby. Experts say the particles in the plumes are the width of a human hair - too small to pose any real threat to the safety of their unmanned probe which has been studying ringed planet Saturn and its family of satellites since 2004. Nasa associate administrator Alan Stern said: "This daring flyby requires exquisite technical finesse, but it has the potential to revolutionise our knowledge of the geysers of Enceladus. The Cassini mission team is eager to see the scientific results, and so am I." The eruptions appear to be happening continuously, showering the 320-mile wide moon's surface and also adding material to one of Saturn's spectacular rings. They have already been found to be exerting a significant pull on Saturn itself. Nasa only discovered that Enceladus is geologically active thanks to the efforts of UK space scientist Professor Michele Dougherty, of Imperial College London. She pursuaded them to send Cassini just 90 miles above Enceladus in July 2005, a manoeuvre that revealed hot spots from which the dramatic geysers were operating. The Cassini mission is proving a major success for Nasa, providing a wealth of information and surprises. Only last week, it was discovered that another moon, Rhea, has at least one ring of its own. And Titan has been shown to have rivers and lakes resembling features on Earth beneath its hazy atmosphere. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can 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

Jules Verne takes flight into space

A brand new European spacecraft that could one day be converted to carry astronauts blasted off for the International Space Station today. The space tug, named Jules Verne after the early sci-fi writer, is bigger than a double-decker bus. It soared into orbit atop an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Space Agency's spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana. The robotic craft, termed an Automated Transfer Vehicle, is the most advanced spaceship ever built in Europe. It has a revolutionary, laser-guided autopilot system to allow it to dock automatically with the space station. But the 20-ton ship will not do so until April 3 at the earliest because it will wait for the shuttle Endeavour, due to launch on Tuesday to complete its own mission. The ATV is designed to carry cargo. But it is bigger than the Apollo command module and could easily be converted to a manned space ship if European politicians decide to do so. Nasa boss Mike Griffin commented: "It occurs to me that it's a fairly short step to go from the ATV to something that can carry crew. It's only a short step from there to an independent European manned spaceflight capability." Mission controllers in Toulouse, France, will put the craft through many complex maneouvres to test thoroughly that everything is working successfully. The Jules Verne's cargo includes 1,100 lbs of food, 300 lbs of spare parts for Europe's new Columbus module of the space station - plus fresh clothes for the astronauts up there. The ATV is scheduled to fly to the ISS every 17 months or so. Previous supplies have been delivered by shuttles or Russian rockets. Daniel Sacotte, of ESA, said after the launch: "Last month, with the docking of Columbus, Europe got its own flat in the ISS building. With the launch of the first ATV, we now have our own delivery truck." Space station astronauts will enter the Jules Verne to unload its cargo and fill it with rubbish during its four-month visit. In August, it will undock and be steered to burn up over the Pacific. Picture: An artist's impression of Jules Verne docked to ISS. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. You can also 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

Spacechips launch ad attack on aliens

It seems you just can't escape advertising nowadays - and yes, I know that includes this very site! But I must admit a feeling of gloom to read that a crisps manufacturer is to start beaming ads into space. More depressing still was that I read about it in a press release from a respected British university that showed they were clearly proud to be involved. Space scientists at Leicester have agreed to help snack giant Doritos beam a 30-second commercial to any unsuspecting inhabitants of a star system in the constellation of the Great Bear. It may be no coincidence that this comes at a time when, as has been widely reported, British science is facing a funding crisis and we face the unthinkable threat that the UK's most famous astronomy centre, Jodrell Bank, might close. Doritos, who make corn chips, are calling on the public to produce the advert, which sounds like a YouTube movie, with the theme of Life on Earth. And they have called on the expertise of Leicester's space team to broadcast the ad on June 12 using a powerful radar dish at the EISCAT space centre on Svalbard, inside the Arctic Circle. Last month it was revealed that some alien-hunters within SETI are calling for messages to be directly beamed into space to speed up the search for extra-terrestrials. All radio and TV signals have previously been leaking unavoidably into space. But the new space advertisement will be a clear message to the residents of planets orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris, a star that lies just 42 light-years away from us. That means the spacechips ad will not reach ET until 2050. But there are some who feel that it is a mistake to alert any other civilizations about our presence. Last month, Nasa broadcast the Beatles hit Across The Universe to the North Star, Polaris. Those aliens will not be able to hear it until the year 2439. Professor Tony van Eyken, of EISCAT, said: "With the transmission technology and planning we are employing, there is a much greater chance that the Doritos advert will potentially be seen by any alien life form." Picture: The dishes at Svalbard, pictured by Tom Grydeland. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. Please 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

Moon of Saturn has rings too

A moon orbiting the spectacular ringed planet Saturn has at least one ring of its own, space scientists have discovered. They are encircling the giant planet's second largest satellite, Rhea. The rings, which are too faint to have been spotted before, are the first rings ever detected around a moon in the solar system. The find was made by an international team led by UK astronomer Geraint Jones, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey. He used instruments aboard Nasa's unmanned Cassini probe to detect a disk of debris and at least one ring around 950-mile wide Rhea. The disk measures several thousand miles from one end to the other. In addition, there may be a dust cloud extending up to 3,000 miles from Rhea's centre. Saturns's own rings, which can be seen shining brightly in even small telescopes, are formed from a disk of countless particles of rock, grains of dust and small boulders. The new discovery is reported in the latest issue of the journal Science. Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. It is teaching us lots about Saturn and its vast family of moons, including Titan, with its vast oil reserves, and Enceladus, whose pull is making it hard to measure the length of the planet's day. Dr Jones began his investigations after being first alerted to dust around Rhea when Cassini made a close flyby in November 2005. Similar patterns of dust and electrons on either side of Rhea showed that rings and dust must exist. "Seeing almost the same signatures on either side of Rhea was the clincher," said Dr Jones. "After ruling out many other possibilities, we said these are most likely rings. No one was expecting rings around a moon." Space scientists say the rings could be the remnants of a collision with an asteroid or comet in Rhea's distant past. Other moons of Saturn, such as Mimas, show evidence of a catastrophic collision that almost tore that moon apart. Felllow Cassini scientist Professor Michele Dougherty, of Imperial College London, said: "Cassini has made great strides in identifying new features in Saturn's system, from rings around the planet to new moons. "This is the first evidence for a ring around a moon and provides a new opportunity for exploring how rings form, evolve and disperse." Picture: A Nasa artist's impression of the rings around Rhea. • What do you think? Skymania welcomes your comments and views. And please 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

Amazing new photos from Mars

A Nasa spaceprobe circling Mars has looked back to capture an astonishing photo of the Earth and Moon together. Our world appears as a blue planet with clouds clearly visible over the west coast of South America. The Moon is a smaller, silvery crescent in the "family snapshot", taken from a distance of 88 million miles. Both look beautiful but vulnerable as they hang in the vast, empty blackness of space. The picture, taken by the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet, was released by Nasa along with a stunning shot capturing the first avalanche ever witnessed on Mars. It shows clouds of ice, rock and dust billowing from the landslide down a towering slope near the Red Planet's north pole. The pictures were snapped from the HiRise camera aboard a robotic probe called Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Space scientists are excited because it is a clear demonstration that Mars is active geologically, just like the Earth. The picture of an avalanche in progress was captured while the Nasa team were actually checking for seasonal changes in an area of sand dunes covered with frost. Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona, spotted the dramatic event as she checked through hundreds of photos showing martian features as small as an office desk. Nasa had previously taken before and after images revealing slides of debris on a crater wall - something they first mistook for evidence of water. Ingrid said: "It really surprised me. It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years." Swiss colleague Patrick Russell, of the University of Berne, said: "We don't know what set off these landslides. We plan to take more images of the site through the changing martian seasons to see if this kind of avalanche happens all year or is restricted to early spring." The scientists will also watch the avalanche debris for any changes. They suspect that it is mostly ice which can be expected to evaporate as spring arrives on that region of Mars. Last year, dramatic shots of the Earth from space were also sent back from the Rosetta probe as it flew by, gathering speed, on its journey to a comet. • 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