The Cosmic Mirror By Daniel Fischer Every page present in Europe & the U.S.!

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Rare hybrid eclipse observed from South Pacific, Americas Three cruise ships have successfully positioned themselves in the region where the 8 April solar eclipse was total, and all had clear skies (including yours truly on the MV Discovery), while others saw the eclipse as an annular in Central & South America or as a partial: totality pictures, reports and logs by Druckmüller, Fischer (trip timeline), Dittié, Ewers, Birkner, Speirs, Verreau, Royer, Aniol (scroll down!), and Hitt (index) from the MV Discovery, Dighaye, Hawley, Friedland (huge collection from many!), Jubier and Schneider & al. from the Paul Gauguin and Espenak, Bruenjes, Winter (incl. complex composites), Khodashenas and Klipsi (more) from the Galapagos Legend, annularity reports by the Whites and Poitevins, Heinsius, Saros, ProfJohn and Pyykkö, partiality reports by Zucker, Farrington and Verdin and from New Zealand, Pitcairn, Costa Rica, Colombia (also a Spanish version), Aruba and St. Croix, a photo gallery from SpaceWeather, a collection of satellite images of the shadow, long link collections by Krause (!), Poitevin and CIDA, news coverage by Sky & Tel. (more), MSNBC, Astron., VoA, Pitcairn News and AP [SC] and previews by Online Pitcairn, Inside Costa Rica, Grand Forks Herald, News24, S&T, APOD, FT, SC, AP and Science@NASA.

Update # 288 of Sunday, June 5, 2005 Posted in part from the MV Discovery - via satellite - while cruising the South Pacific, the business centers of Papeete airport, Tahiti, and the Lima Sheraton, Peru, internet cafes on Bora Bora and Easter Island, the Physikzentrum in Bad Honnef and the Planetarium Bochum.

Voyager 1 reaches edge of solar system / Radio flashes from Cosmic Rays / Deep Impact spots its prey / Exoplanet stories galore! / Bold Chinese astronomy plans / New NASA administrator confirmed / Solar sail to launch June 21 / DART mission ends early

Voyager spacecraft enters solar system's final frontier The Voyager 1 spacecraft has finally entered the solar system's final frontier: It is entering a vast, turbulent expanse, where the sun's influence ends and the solar wind crashes into the thin gas between stars. Already in November 2003, the Voyager team had announced it was seeing events unlike any in the mission's then 26-year history (see Update # 264 story 3). The team believed the unusual events indicated Voyager 1 was approaching a strange region of space, likely the beginning of this new frontier called the termination shock region. There was considerable controversy over whether Voyager 1 had indeed encountered the termination shock or was just getting close. The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between the stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from a speed that ranges from 1.1 to 2.4 million km/h and becomes denser and hotter. The consensus of the team is Voyager 1, at approximately 14 billion km from the sun, has at last entered the heliosheath, the region beyond the termination shock. The most persuasive evidence that Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock is its measurement of a sudden increase in the strength of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind, combined with an inferred decrease in its speed. This happens whenever the solar wind slows down. In December 2004, the Voyager 1 dual magnetometers observed the magnetic field strength suddenly increasing by a factor of approximately 2 1/2, as expected when the solar wind slows down. The magnetic field has remained at these high levels since December. Voyager 1 also observed an increase in the number of high-speed electrically charged electrons and ions and a burst of plasma wave noise before the shock; this would be expected if Voyager 1 passed the termination shock.	NASA Press Release and more, Univ. of Iowa and JPL Releases. SN, Plan. Soc., Nat'l Geogr., Dsc., WP, BBC, AFP, UPI, ST, BdW, RP, NZ, Bild. Steady progress for "New Horizons" With the assembly of the Pluto Probe and several successful mission simulations and system performance tests behind them, the team is gearing up for pre-launch space environment testing: the dtatus and a story. Ralph delivered: Ball Release. Environmental impact statement open for review: NASA page, FT, SD. MESSENGER has flipped and is now cruising with its sunshade facing the Sun and its Magnetometer boom extended; it also imaged the Earth: May 31, Apr. 20, Apr. 18 and March 8 Reports, Plan. Soc.
Radio flashes detected from Cosmic Ray showers Using the LOPES experiment, a prototype of the new high-tech radio telescope LOFAR, German physicists have recorded the brightest and fastest radio blasts ever seen on the sky: The blasts are dramatic flashes of radio light that appear more than 1000 times brighter than the sun and almost a million times faster than normal lightning. For a very short moment these flashes - which had gone largely unnoticed so far - become the brightest light on the sky with a diameter twice the size of the moon. The experiment showed that the radio flashes are produced in the Earth atmosphere, caused by the impact of the most energetic particles produced in the cosmos. These particles are called ultra-high energy cosmic rays and their origin is an ongoing puzzle. The astrophysicists now hope that their finding will shed new light on the mystery of these particles.	A paper by Falcke & al. and MPIfR and MPG Press Releases. RHIC sees quark-gluon "liquid" and not the expected plasma: BNL Press Release, PNU, CSM. Mini-Black Holes from the RHIC? BBC, SC, Welt. BH as a fluid: UW News. First big LHC magnet installed: CERN Press Release.
Deep Impact spots target comet, corrects trajectory, has camera problem Sixty-nine days before it gets up-close-and-personal with a comet, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully photographed its quarry, comet Tempel 1, for the first time, from a distance of 64 million kilometers. The image, the first of many comet portraits to be taken until the impact, is aiding Deep Impact's navigators, engineers and scientists as they plot their final trajectory toward an Independence Day encounter. The ball of dirty ice and rock was detected on April 25 by Deep Impact's medium resolution instrument on the very first attempt. While making the first detection, the spacecraft's camera saw stars as dim as 11th visual magnitude, more than 100 times dimmer than a human can see on a clear night. Unfortunately the other Deep Impact camera, theHigh Resolution Instrument, is somewhat out of focus and does not deliver images as sharp as hoped for - still it promises (especially after some mathematical deconvolution) the best, most detailed pictures of a comet ever taken, though. Meanwhile, on May 4, Deep Impact has adjusted its trajectory with a 95-second burn - the longest remaining firing of the spacecraft's motors prior to comet encounter. The expected time of impact is now 5:52 UTC on the morning of July 4 (which is the evening of July 3 in the primary ground observing region in and along the western Pacific). And around the world, preparations for the impact and its aftermath are gearing up.	Press Releases and status reports from various agencies of June 2 by NASA, UMD and JPL, May 30 by ESO and ESA, May 23, May 13, April 27 and March 25, the first Tempel picture (plus a test image of Messier 11), groundbased views of the comet by G�hrken, KPNO and Schedler and coverage by Plan. Soc. (earlier), FT (earlier), BBC (earlier), S&T, DiamBack, SN, Wired, CSM, Reg., Dsc., SC, ST, TP. Key Genesis science collectors are OK Scientists have examined four vital Genesis spacecraft collectors and found them in excellent shape: NASA Release, UPI.
Do we have three, two, one or zero direct images of exoplanets? Numerous press releases in recent weeks have claimed that astronomers have finally succeeded in photographing directly a planet in orbit around a star other than the Sun: If they all were true, we could have up to three such cases by now. But looked at in more detail, all candidates are problematic: We do now know indeed that 2M1207 b with some 5 Jupiter masses (and thus surely not a Brown Dwarf) is a companion to 2M1207 - but the latter is a brown dwarf, with about 25 Jupiter masses. The current semi-official definition of a planet, however, has it circling a star or stellar remnant: Thus by this definition 2M1207 b is a "sub-brown dwarf", not a planet. GQ Lup b is certainly orbiting a real star - but in this case the mass of its companion is highly uncertain. While some case can be made that it is only 2 Jupiter masses, it can - with current knowledge - be anywhere between 1 and 42 Jupiter masses (though the discoverers insist the lower estimates are more likely). Everything with more than about 13 Jupiter masses can fuse deuterium and is by definition not a planet but a brown dwarf, so this case is undecided. Similarly uncertain is the case of AB Pic B, which is again circling the true star, and its mass seems to be better defined than in the case of GQ Lup b - but unfortunately it falls right on the border between planet and brown dwarf, with three models giving it 13 and three others 14 solar masses ... In any case, none of those photographed exoplanet candidates is what one would be really looking for: They are shining in their own (infrared) light, because they are still young and very hot. The 'holy grail' of exoplanetography is to catch a 'normal' planet like our Jupiter (and eventually like Earth itself) around another star, reflecting its light - something probably reserved for a future generation of space telescopes a decade or so away. Another clear-cut case of a planet detection via microlensing has been reported (see Update # 276 small items for the first case) - and this time the lightcurve of the lensing event this spring has been covered particularly well, even by two New Zealand amateur astronomers with 25- and 35-cm telescopes who are part of an early warning network. The planet's mass is a few Jupiters, but the signal/noise ratio of the light curve is so great that even an Earth in orbit around the star could have been detected. Microlensing as a method for exoplanet detection has definitely come of age, and there seems to be quite a population of planets out there, accessible to this method. The great disadvantage, of course, is that each planet is detected only once, some ambiguities may remain, and usually its star, let alone the planet itself, is never detected by any means again. The first direct detection of photons from exoplanets has been achieved in two cases with the Spitzer Space Telescope in the thermal infrared: Two different instruments managed to detect emission from the exoplanets TrES-1 and HD 209458b by using a clever trick. Both of these planets transit in front of their 'suns' as seen from the Earth but also pass behind them - and during those occultations, the combined radiation from star + planet drops a little bit to pure stellar radiation. Subtracting brightness measurements with and without the planet present, the planet's signal can be isolated - and this works far better in the IR where the star is only some 400 times more brilliant than the planet than in the visible where they are a factor 10,000 or so apart. From the isolated planet light a lot can be learned about their properties, e.g. it is now known that the albedo of TrES-1 is only 31 percent and that it thus absorbs most of its star's light. The Canadian photometry satellite MOST has also tried to see the anti-transits of HD 209458b, so far w/o success, but the observations continue - and a new limit on the planet's albedo can already be set.	The case of GQ Lupi b: a new and an older paper by Neuh�user & al., an ESO Press Release and coverage by Plan. Soc., S&T, BBC, Reg., NwS ST, NZ. The other two candidates: papers about 2M1207b and AB Pic b, an ESO Release, Plan. Soc., S&T, BBC, BdW. And how the IAU defines a planet! The new microlensing discovery: a paper by Udalski & al., OSU and CfA Press Releases and coverage by S&T, SciAm, BBC, Austr., ABC, Merc., H. Sun and NwS. The anti-transit detections: papers by Charbonneau & al. on TrES-1, Deming & al. (PDF) on HD 209458b and Burrows & al. on the theory, plots [S&T] of the secondary eclipses of both, full bibliographies on TrES-1 and HD 209458b, Spitzer, Cornell, CfA, Carnegie and NASA Press Releases and coverage by S&T, Nat., Cornell Chr., Harv. Gaz., BBC, NwS, SF Gate, FT, VoA, ScA, CSM, Dsc., Guard., AP, AFP, ST, ZEIT, Welt, TP and BdW. The non-detection by MOST: Univ. of British Columbia PR. The exoplanet with the fattest star? It has 2 to 7 solar masses - and the discovery is also the first one from Germany: FSU Jena PM, TP. Wandering habitable zones: GSFC Release. Why the outer planets of Yps And are eccentric: Northwestern PR [SN]. Spitzer spies extrasolar asteroid belt This belt is much closer to the star than the Earth's asteroid belt, located closer to the star than Venus is from the Sun; there is also 25 times as much material in this extrasolar asteroid belt: Spitzer PR, S&T, Nat. Geogr., Dsc., BBC, Guard., ST, BdW.
PR China announces major investment in astronomy The main projects had been known in the West for a while, some of them for years, but now the People's Republic of China seems to be on the verge of making them come true: The National Astronomical Observatories - in which the main institutions are bundled since 2001 - have announced seven undertakings in total that are meant to carry Chinese astronomy great steps ahead and to bring on high technology in general. The three top projects are LAMOST, an optical 4-meter telescope that can take up to 4000 spectra simultaneously, SST, the first astronomical satellite made in China and dedicated to solar studies, and FAST which will become the largest radio telescope in the world, filling a complete valley Arecibo-style but with a collecting area of one square kilometer. The other, smaller projects include two more telescopes, major investment in lunar science and dedicated site testing in Tibet where a major observatory complex could be built in the future.	People's Daily, Xinhua [SD]. Also the homepage, an English intro and another English site about LAMOST, plus an earlier article and some technical details about FAST. SMART helps India Spares could fly on Indian moon mission: ESA Release, BBC, Reg. SMART & eternal light: ESA Release [alt.], AFP, NwS. Lunar eclipse imaged: ESA Release.

Mars Update More Mars Express papers have been published, and the deployment of the MARSIS radar has finally begun - though the first antenna was stuck a few days and only freed by heating. ESA Releases of June 1, May 11, May 9, Apr. 29 and Mar. 18, the May 9 status, JPL, Brown Univ. [SR] and FU Berlin Press Releases and coverage (also of the methane-on-Mars issue) of May 13: ST. May 12: BBC, PlS. May 11: Nat., SN. May 9: BBC, ST. May 6: NwS. May 5: BBC. May 4: AB. May 3: NwS, Reg. May 2: Wired, AB. May 1: BBC, Guard. Apr. 20: Star Bull. Apr. 19: SC. Mar. 28: SpRev. Mar. 26: Welt. Mar. 23: AB. Mar. 21: NwS. Mar. 18: TP. Mar. 17: BBC, NZ. Mar. 16: AB, AFP, SC. Current Mars pictures from the ground: OAA and MarsWatch galleries (and the 1st MarsWatch 2005 Newsletter)! And a preview of the coming Mars opposition by Science@NASA. Age determination problems: NwS, BdW. The MER missions have been extended again, Opportunity has freed herself after being stuck in a sand trap for 5 weeks - and Spirit has apparently photographed another nice meteor, while the one seen in 2004 is still being studied. An OBSPM PR on the old meteor, a raw image of the new one, Squyres' Diary, a Hazcam view back after Opportunity's excape,

JPL & NASA Releases and Status Reports of June 4, May 6, Apr. 29 [MER], May 24, Apr. 21 and Apr. 6, an early dust devil image, a GIF animation of another one and a fine movie of a 3rd, pictures # 79 86, 85, 84, 83, 81, 80, 79, 78, 75. 74 71, 70 and 68 and coverage of June 5: Plan. Soc., Wired, AP. June 4: SN. June 2: Plan. Soc., BdW. June 1: AB, SC. May 30: AB. May 26: Ast. May 25: FT. May 22: SFC. May 18: BBC, ST. May 17: NwS. May 9: BBC. Apr. 29: S&T. Apr. 28: Plan. Soc. Apr. 26: APOD. Apr. 22: Nat., BBC. Apr. 19: NwS. Apr. 11: BBC. Apr. 6: Plan. Soc., ST. Mar. 25: Plan. Soc. Mar. 18: Cornell Daily Sun, Mar. 17: S&T. Mar. 16: Dsc., ST. Antarctic guide to Martian weathering: PSRD. MRO reaches Cape for August launch: NASA Release, FT, BBC. Next lander Phoenix cleared for launch in 2007: NASA Release, BBC, SR, AP, ST. MSL hopes: AB. ARES set for test flight: Dsc. U.S. Mars program future: SD, SC. Crashed Polar Lander found in MGS images? Bright features look suspicious: MSSS Release, pictures # 79 44, 43, 42 and 41, Plan. Soc., S&T, BBC, NwS, AP, SC, ST. MGS images other orbiters, too: MSSS, JPL Releases, Plan. Soc., S&T, BBC. 200,000th image sent: MSSS Release, PhotoJournal. Changes on surface seen: Mars Soc. Odyssey evidence for rivers? NASM PR. Olivine-rich bedrock found - a clue on Mars' water history: U Hawaii PR [SR], PhotoJournal, Star Bull., AP, NwS.

Saturn Update Enceladus has a substantial atmosphere! Various NASA & ESA Releases of May 27, May 26, May 25, May 23 [Cass.], May 13 (another one [SR]), May 10 [JPL], May 6, May 2, Apr. 27, Apr. 26, Apr. 25 [Cass.], Apr. 6 and Mar. 16, a paper by Freire on Iapetus' possible history, the winners of the Huygens art contest (including the Cosmic Mirror's favorite!), more sounds from the Huygens mike, UA Releases of May 25, May 16 and Apr. 27, GSFC and LLNL Press Releases, a Saturn Feature of Apr. 29, raw images # 30854 (Epimetheus close-up!) and 5606, pictures # 79 60, 78 77, 76, 75, 74, 73, 72, 71, 70, 69, 68, 65, 75 13, 12, 11, 10, 74 59, 73 70, 66 59, 58, 57, 56, 55, 54, 53, 52, 51, 50, 49, 48, 47, 46, 45, 44, 43, 42, 41, 40, 39, 38, 37, 36, 34, 33, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21,

20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10, 09, 08, 07, 06, 62 39, 38, 37, 36, 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20 (Titan close-up of new area), 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 09, 08, 07 and 06 and coverage of May 31: BdW. May 28: Welt. May 27: PS. May 26: AB. May 25: AB, APOD, Welt. May 18: Ast. May 13: NwS, BdW. May 11: BBC. May 10: FT. May 9: Dsc., ST, TP. May 5: Plan. Soc. (new Titan mosaics). May 4: Plan. Soc., Nat., BBC, Wired. Apr. 29: BdW. Apr. 28: BBC, UPI. Apr. 26: NwS. Apr. 15: Plan. Soc. (earlier). Apr. 14: SC. Apr. 10: BBC. Apr. 8: NwS. Apr. 7: Guard. Mar. 21: Plan. Soc., AB. Mar. 19: Plan. Soc. Mar. 18: S&T, Plan. Soc., ST, BdW. Mar. 17: Nat., BBC, Reg., NwS. Mar. 16: Dsc. Ground-based discovery of 12 new Saturn moons, bringing the total to about 50: IfA page, Plan. Soc., S&T, Wired, BBC, NwS. X rays from Saturn's rings (and the planet's disk, too): a paper by Bhardwaj & al., a NASA [MSFC] Release and BdW.

ISS etc. Update The shuttle's return to flight has slipped to July the earliest (with Discovery back at the VAB), a German astronaut will become the 1st European to visit the ISS - where a new expedition has arrived by Soyuz - for ½ year, and Griffin has been confirmed as NASA Administrator. The shuttle status, an Ikonos picture of Discovery while on the launch pad, a Griffin statement of May 18, a transcript of his confirmation hearing on April 12, NASA & KSC Releases of May 26, May 19 (another one), May 14, Apr. 29, Apr. 13 (another one), Mar. 30, Mar. 29, Mar. 23 and Mar. 18, ESA Releases of May 27, May 20, Apr. 28, Apr. 14 and Mar. 24 (another one), Science@NASA of June 3, May 24, Apr. 28, Apr. 14 and Mar. 18, a GAO Report on Prometheus, Senate and JHU Releases on Griffin, a transcript of his 1st PC and May 12 testimony and coverage of June 5: Israel21c. June 3: FT. June 2: FT (earlier). June 1: AP. May 26: HC, BBC, FT. May 25: FT. May 24: SFC, HC, FT (other story), Dsc., UPI. May 23: FT, NwS. May 22: HC, ST. May 21: HC, FT, SN, ST. May 20: HC, Nat., FT, ST (other story). May 19: Nature, SN, Rtr. May 17: FYI. May 15: FT. May 13: BBC. May 12: SC. May 9: ST. May 8: SR. May 7: FT. May 6: SN. May 5: FT (Op), Dsc., BBC, ST. May 4: AD, SN, AFP. May 3: SR. May 2: CSM. Apr. 30: FT, HC, ST (other story). Apr. 29: SN, BBC, FT, HC, TP. Apr. 28: BBC, UPI. Apr. 25: FT, ST. Apr. 24: SN, BBC. Apr. 23: ST. Apr. 22: HC, ST. Apr. 21: BBC, Nation.

Apr. 20: SN, FT (earlier), ST (earlier), NZ. Apr. 19: SR, Dsc., SR, BBC, HC, SC, ST, NZ. Apr. 18: SN, FT, SpN. Apr. 17: FT (other story), BBC, ST, NZ. Apr. 16: SN. Apr. 15: S&T, FT, BBC, ST, NZ (früher). Apr. 14: FT (other and another story), Plan. Soc., SN, HC (other story), ST. Apr. 11: NZ. Apr. 7: FT, ST. Apr. 6: BBC. Apr. 5: SN. Apr. 4: SD, SpRev, FT, ST. Apr. 1: Dsc. Mar. 28: BBC, ST, NZ. Mar. 27: ST. Mar. 25: NwS. Mar. 24: FT (other story), ST. Mar. 23: Nat'l Geogr., Plan.Soc., FT (other story), ST. Mar. 22: SN, AFP, HC. Mar. 21: FT, JHU Gaz., HC, TP, SZ. Mar. 20: AW&ST. Mar. 18: FT (other story), NwS, ST. Mar. 17: SN, HC, Dsc., NwS. Mar. 16: FT (other story), HC, SN, ST. ESA is 30: Press Release (earlier), WDR, Welt. South Africa wants space agency, too: SD. Baikonur is 50: BBC, AP, AFP (sidebar), Welt. The HST crisis coming to an end? The preparations for a shuttle servicing mission have resumed under the new NASA boss, but a final decision depends on the shuttles successful RTF, and other future space telescopes are in jeopardy now - a statement and and earlier letter (PDF) by Sen. Mikulski, a call for action from the Mars Society, the HST (ESA) Status in April, an HST Release celebrating the 15th launch anniversary and coverage of May 27: FT. May 26: CSM. May 25: NwS. May 22: FT. May 20: S&T. May 19: NwS. May 13: NwS. May 9: S&T. May 6: HC, May 4: WildCat. May 1: ST. Apr. 30: FT. Apr. 29: FT, Dsc. Apr. 28: S&T. Apr. 27: Gua. Apr. 26: Gua., AFP. Apr. 25: BBC (earlier), USAT, Wired, UPI. Apr. 22: Nat. Apr. 21: CollectSpace, VOA. Apr. 18: SC. Apr. 13: ST. Apr. 12: SN, Wired, SR. Mar. 30: AP. Mar. 29: FYI. Mar. 22: NwS. Mar. 16: SC.

Progress for new NASA Jupiter orbiter NASA on June 1 announced that a mission to fly to Jupiter will proceed to a preliminary design phase - Juno would ne the second in NASA's New Frontiers Program: NASA and LockMart Releases, SN, ST. Swift spots, tracks its first short GRB On May 9th Swift recorded a short burst lasting just 0.03 second, swiveled around, and imaged a weak, fast-fading X-ray afterglow that revealed the event's location to within about 8 arcseconds accuracy: NASA Press Release, Nat., S&T, HC, BBC, Gua., NwS, ST. Swift Status of May 13. RAPTOR catches Swift burst after 25 sec: a paper by Wozniak & al. GALEX saw tremendous UV outburst of a seemingly harmless star and many other unexpected transient phenomena during its sky surveys: JPL Release, S&T, movie of a passing artificial satellite. DART mission flies, ends early, bumps into target sat As NASA announced the formation of a mishap investigation board to examine the partial failure of the DART spacecraft in mid-April, agency officials confirmed that DART apparently bumped into its target spacecraft during the test: Status, an Orbital PR, a NASA Release, an earlier MSFC Release and coverage by FT (earlier, still earlier), AW&ST, AD, SpaceRev, SN, HC, BBC, NwS, SC, Ast., ST (earlier, still earlier, even earlier). Last Titan launched from the Cape - and only one more will fly from Vandenberg: SN. No bigger Ariane 5 planned anymore: AFP. NOAA-18 launched: NASA, Boeing and NOAA Releases, Fla. Today, ST. GOES-N to go in early June: FT. Flaw of Delta 4 Heavy identified "Cavitation" in a liquid oxygen feed line was the root cause indeed - and remedies are on their way: USAF Press Release, FT (earlier), SN, ST. Vega on track for first launch in 2007: ESA Release. Britain's Skylark makes last flight - the 50-year-old space programme came to an end on May 2 with the launch of the last Skylark rocket from the Esrange launchpad: BBC, Guard. India launches remote sensing satellite - Cartosat-1 is designed to produce stereo imagery of the Earth with resolutions of 2.5 meters per pixel: ISRO Release, SN, Hindu, BBC, ST. Fireball over Germany analyzed; no meteorite likely It was captured by the European Network: DLR PM, ZEIT. Another bolide seen here on June 3/4: CENAP. An exploding meteor has possibly been imaged in this unusual view. Pictures of the 2005 AKM Meeting: Arlt. Silverpit 'crater' remains controversial - for some it's a perfect impact crater, for others not at all: BBC, BdW. Solar activity heats up A storm at first called a G-5 (it was later downgraded) on May 15 caused widespread aurorae: NOAA Advisory, aurora gallery, FT, ST. The activity remains high in general: large prominence on June 1...3 imaged by Haupt, Hartlap and G�hrken. Another big spot crossed the disk earlier in May: Science@NASA, S&T. Predicting X-flares: a paper by Wheatland. Smallest CME seen: PPARC PR. Solar 'tadpoles': Univ. of Warwick PR.

Solar sail to launch on June 21 or later The Planetary Society announced on May 23 that it will launch Cosmos 1, its solar sail spacecraft in a launch window opening on June 21 from a Russian submarine - the spacecraft will be the first orbital test of a solar sail; later in the mission the spacecraft will be used to test if the spacecraft can be propelled by microwaves beamed from the Earth: Plan. Soc. Updates and Press Releases of June 2, May 23 [SR], April 25 and March 25, the latest Updates and coverage of May 31: UPI. May 26: NG. May 24: AD, ST. May 23: SN. Mar. 26: SN. Mar. 17: UPI. NASA's sail ambitions: CNN. Sedna a fast rotator; no moon needed The period is only 10 hours - and the IR spectrum is really primitive: a paper by Gaudi & al., CfA and Gemini Releases, Plan. Soc. Hale-Bopp is still around, at about 20 mag. - and it still has a tail: S&T. Machholz in May: G�hrken. Rosetta Earth flyby photo contest winners announced: ESA Release (pix). New Earth & Moon fly-by pix: ESA, Plan. Soc.. Mission report: ESA. Dark Energy evident even locally? A controversial claim - in principle the mystery could have been detected 30 years ago: a paper by Maccio & al. and a U. Wash. Press Release [SR, EA]. Earlier: NwS. Accelerated expansion w/o Dark Energy? It could be a relic from inflation: a paper by Kolb & al., an INFN Press Release and coverage by S&T, NwS, Welt. More 'Dark' thoughts: Economist. Honor for Dark Energy researchers: MPG PM. More World Year of Physics activities (see also the header of Update # 286) are listed on the WYP 2005 site (the CM recommends Einstein in Bonn, of course). Also papers by Kezerashvili, Dadhich and Straumann, Inst. of Physics, ESA and an Indiana Univ. Press Releases, Science@NASA (earlier), APOD, AP, Nat'l Post, NwS, BdW, ZEIT, TP, Welt (früher) and NZ - and clever visualizations of relativistic effects. "Super star cluster" identified in Milky Way So far these extremely dense and massive young clusters had been known only in other, distant galaxies: ESO Release. X-rays from an extremely young protostar surprise: ESA, NASA Press Releases. Best candidate for an intermediate-mass black hole? The source shows QPOs: Chandra Release. Strange polarization pattern of 3C 273's jet could come from interaction with IGM: NRAO Press Release. Fine dust missing in the Crab nebula, perhaps blown away by the pulsar: U. MN Press Release. Howard Benedict dead at 77 - he covered more than 2,000 rocket and missile launches during his 37 years reporting for The Associated Press: Astronaut Scholarship Foundation PR, FT, CollectSpace. Foton microgravity science mission launched on May 31, to remain in orbit for 16 days: ESA PR, SN, ST. A cool IR view of the Sombrero nebula from Spitzer: JPL Release, PhotoJournal. Dust levitation on the Moon - a research topic since the Apollo missions: Science@NASA. The Earth in gamma rays as seen by CGRO: NASA Vision. H.E.S.S. spots unidentified high-energy sources in the Milky Way: PPARC Press Release, MPG and RUB PMn, NwS, NZ. Europe under snow in early March as seen by Envisat. And the Bromo volcano in Indonesia as seen by Proba.

Dozens more science & space stories of late March to early June are covered in the MegaLithos News A44 to A50a, A51 to A60 and A61 to A67 (scroll down each page) and most of them will not be repeated here for space reasons - the stories are in German but most links to English sources.