Fourth European Dark-Sky Symposium, Paris Sep 30:  Delegates from dark-sky movements in ten European countries, and a contingent from the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), came together with environmentalists, biologists, local government officers and lighting professionals to discuss progress and challenges in the international dark-skies debate in Paris.    FULL STORY Scientists say supernova explosions imminent Sep 30:  Three powerful recent blasts from three wholly different regions in space have left scientists scrambling. The blasts, which lasted only a few seconds, might be early alert systems for supernovae, which could start appearing any day.    FULL STORY Evidence shaky for role of Sun in past climate changes Sep 30:  Computer models of Earth's climate have consistently linked long-term, high-magnitude variations in solar output to past climate changes. Now a closer look at earlier studies of the Sun and Sun-like stars casts doubt on the evidence of such cycles, their intensity, and their possible influence on Earth's climate.    FULL STORY Music rings of Saturn Sep 29:  Looking something like the fibrous bow of a violin, Saturn's colourful rings sweep through this spectacular natural colour view while two small moons look on.    FULL STORY Asteroid zooms safely past Earth Sep 28:  A mountain-sized asteroid made its closest approach to Earth on Wednesday, September 29th. Although asteroid 4179 Toutatis came no closer than four times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, this was the closest approach of any known asteroid of comparable size this century.    FULL STORY Herding Saturn's rings Sep 26:  Saturn's moon Prometheus is seen shepherding the inner edge of Saturn's F ring. Prometheus is 63 miles across and was captured in a close-up view by the Cassini spacecraft near the time of orbital insertion at Saturn. A number of clumps are visible here along the arcing F ring.    FULL STORY Chandra watches a glowing cloud dubbed the Mouse Sep 25:  Astronomers have used an X-ray image to make the first detailed study of the behaviour of high-energy particles around a fast moving pulsar. The image, from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, shows the shock wave created as a pulsar plows supersonically through interstellar space.    FULL STORY Hubble's view approaches the dawn of galaxies Sep 24:  Detailed analyses of mankind's deepest optical view of the universe by several expert teams have at last identified what may turn out to be some of the earliest star-forming galaxies. Astronomers are now debating whether the hottest stars in these early galaxies may have provided enough radiation to "lift a curtain" of cold, primordial hydrogen that cooled after the Big Bang.    FULL STORY Massive merger of galaxies is most powerful on record Sep 23:  An international team of scientists announced September 23rd that they observed a nearby head-on collision of two galaxy clusters. The clusters smashed together thousands of galaxies and trillions of stars. It is one of the most powerful events ever witnessed. Such collisions are second only to the Big Bang in total energy output.    FULL STORY Genesis team ships first recovered sample Sep 23:  The Genesis team has shipped its first scientific sample from the mission's specially constructed cleanroom at the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Dugway, Utah. The sample, containing what are known as "lid foils," was attached to the interior lid of the Genesis sample return capsule.    FULL STORY Space telescope will watch powerful cosmic blasts Sep 23:  An agile gamma-ray observatory with a focus on the most intense explosions in the cosmos — cataclysmic blasts occurring every day throughout the universe that seemingly foreshadow the creation of black holes — will be launched into space on October 26th.    FULL STORY High energy mystery lurks at the galactic centre Sep 22:  A mystery lurking at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy — an object radiating high-energy gamma rays — has been detected by a team of astronomers. The research was carried out using an array of four telescopes in Africa.    FULL STORY Sugar in space provides clue to origin of life Sep 21:  Astronomers have discovered a frigid reservoir of simple sugar molecules in a cloud of gas and dust some 26,000 light-years away, near the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy. The discovery suggests how the molecular building blocks necessary for the creation of life could first form in interstellar space.    FULL STORY Foreseeing the Sun's fate Sep 19:  For more than 400 years, astronomers both professional and amateur have taken a special interest in observing Mira stars, a class of variable red giants famous for pulsations that last for 80-1,000 days and cause their apparent brightness to vary by a factor of ten times or more during a cycle.    FULL STORY Huygens test successful Sep 19:  The European Space Agency's Huygens probe, now orbiting Saturn onboard the Cassini spacecraft, is in good health and successfully passed its fifteenth 'In-Flight Checkout' last week. This test procedure was the last but one planned before separation of the Huygens probe from Cassini in December.    FULL STORY Radical Antarctic telescope 'would outdo Hubble' Sep 17:  A novel Antarctic telescope with 16-metre diameter mirrors would far outperform the Hubble Space Telescope, and could be built at a tiny fraction of its cost, says a scientist from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney, Australia.    FULL STORY Intelligent telescopes survey the violent skies Sep 17:  British astronomers are celebrating a world first that could revolutionize the future of astronomy. They have just begun a project to operate a global network of the world's biggest robotic telescopes which will be controlled by intelligent software to provide rapid observations of sudden changes in astronomical objects, such as violent Gamma Ray Bursts, or 24-hour surveillance of interesting phenomena.    FULL STORY Genesis team hopeful about solar wind samples Sep 16: Genesis team scientists and engineers continue their work on the mission's sample return canister in a specially constructed clean room at the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Dugway, Utah. As more of the capsule's contents are revealed, the team's level of enthusiasm for the amount of science obtainable continues to rise.    FULL STORY Colourful threads and shadows of Saturn Sep 16: Saturn's faintly banded atmosphere is delicately coloured and its threadbare rings cross their own shadows in this marvellous natural colour view from Cassini.    FULL STORY Galactic contortionists captured in amazing image Sep 15: A stunning image released by the Gemini Observatory captures the graceful interactions of a galactic ballet, on a stage some 300 million light years away, that might better be described as a contortionist's dance.    FULL STORY Cassini orbiter snaps Saturn's family portrait Sep 13: A stately Saturn poses for a portrait with five of its moons in this Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera view. The moons visible include Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Mimas and Rhea.    FULL STORY Dark matter superstructure revealed by Chandra Sep 14: A nearby galaxy cluster is facing an intergalactic headwind as it is pulled by an underlying superstructure of dark matter, according to new evidence from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.    FULL STORY Glimpse of exotic matter in a neutron star Sep 14: Scientists have obtained their best measurement yet of the size and contents of a neutron star, an ultra-dense object containing the strangest and rarest matter in the universe.    FULL STORY Airborne observatory sees stars for first time Sep 12: For the first time, scientists have peered at the stars using the newly installed telescope aboard NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the largest airborne observatory in the world.    FULL STORY Dying star creates fantasy-like gas and dust sculpture Sep 11: In this detailed view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the so-called Cat's Eye Nebula looks like the penetrating eye of the disembodied sorcerer Sauron from the film adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings."    FULL STORY Cassini discovers ring and one, maybe two, objects Sep 9: Scientists examining Saturn's contorted F ring, which has baffled them since its discovery, have found one small body, possibly two, orbiting in the F ring region, and a ring of material associated with Saturn's moon Atlas.    FULL STORY Scientists follow doomed matter around black hole Sep 9: Scientists have pieced together the journey of a bundle of doomed matter as it orbited a black hole four times, an observational first. Their technique provides a new method to measure the mass of a black hole, and this may enable the testing of Einstein's theory of gravity to a degree few thought possible.    FULL STORY Mars may have had large sea near rover landing site Sep 8: Spacecraft observations of the landing area for one of NASA's two Mars rovers now indicate there likely was an enormous sea or lake covering the region in the past, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.    FULL STORY Galactic collision reveals fate of our Milky Way Sep 8: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has set its infrared sight on a major galactic collision and witnessed the future of our own Milky Way galaxy. 68 million light-years away, the Antennae galaxies are locked in a dance of death, with stars being ripped from their orbits and spiral arms being shredded into streamers that dangle in space. Several billion years from now, our home might look the same.    FULL STORY Brightest supernova in a decade captured by Hubble Sep 4: A University of California, Berkeley, astronomer has turned the NASA Hubble Space Telescope on the brightest and nearest supernova of the past decade, capturing a massive stellar explosion blazing with the light of 200 million suns.    FULL STORY