One of the things that has kept me busy this last week or so has been writing a mini-website for ESA.  The work presents the considered analysis of the Huygens data from Saturn’s moon Titan.  The six new stories can be found here, they build a picture of complex world, incredibly similar to Earth in some respects and totally alien in others.  Here is a taste of each of the six stories:

Building our new view of Titan
Today, two and a half years after the historic landing of ESA’s Huygens probe on Titan, a new set of results on Saturn’s largest moon is ready to be presented. Titan, as seen through the eyes of Huygens still holds exciting surprises, scientists say. …

Read the rest of this introductory article here.

Revealing Titan’s rugged surface
During its two and a half hour descent, the cameras on Huygens showed eager scientists on Earth spectacular regions of bright highlands with river drainages and canyons, bounded by dark plains on Titan. New information about the composition of the landing region is now ready for the public.

Read the full story for free here.

Titan’s mysterious radio wave
Huygens scored a first in 2005 by measuring the electrical conductivity of Titan’s atmosphere. The results hint at a new way to investigate the subsurface layers of Titan and could provide insight into whether or not Titan has a subsurface ocean.

Read the full story for free here.

Dissecting the dirt on Titan
Planetary scientists are a step closer to understanding the composition of the dust in Titan’s atmosphere. A decade-long programme of laboratory studies, aiming to reproduce Titan’s unique dust, or ‘aerosol’ population in specially constructed reactors, has proved invaluable.

Read the full story for free here.

Huygens’ path to Titan
Scientists now know exactly how Huygens made its way to the surface of Titan. The trajectory reconstruction is the culmination of two years of effort and is particularly valuable for a correct interpretation of the observations from all six scientific investigations on board.

Read the full story for free here.

The way the wind blows on Titan
A simulation of the winds encountered by Huygens has led planetary scientists to believe that its entire atmosphere is circulating around on a conveyor belt. This huge system of moving gas transports warm air from the southern hemisphere to Titan’s north pole and back again.

Read the full story for free here.

I have a new story published by ESA:

XMM-Newton has surveyed nearly two hundred forming stars to reveal how streams of matter fall onto the young stars’ magnetic atmospheres and radiate X-rays.  The results defy astronomers’ expectations, as the streams of falling matter interact with the star’s outer atmosphere, cooling it, while the ejected streams of gas heat up in shocks as they are ejected from the star.

Read the full story for free here.

I am to give a lecture to launch my book in the UK this Friday (1st June 2007) at the University of Hertfordshire.  I studied for both of my astronomy degrees at UH, and remain a visiting fellow, so it is with great pleasure that I am looking forward to speaking there in a few days time.  It is a special place to me.

The lecture is being held in the Lindop Building, College Lane Campus, Hatfield, at 7.00pm.  Light refreshments will be available from 6.30pm and a Reception, sponsored by Princeton University Press, to celebrate the launch of the book will follow the lecture. Copies of Stuart’s book will be available for purchase.

This event is free, but please email d.crann@herts.ac.uk for tickets, or leave a message on 020 8457 2705.

I look forward to seeing as many of my more local readers as possible.

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much this last week or so, I’ve been working flat out on a number of things, most importantly my new book.  More details next week, when the pace of work should return to more normal levels.

What a pleasure for me to read another complimentary review of The Sun Kings, this time in Library Journal. Margaret F. Dominy writes:

“Clark's style engages us immediately and holds us throughout. He portrays the science of the times as high drama in which rivalry between scientists was intense, severe, and, in many cases, personal. Not only will readers get a true feel for the science of the 19th century and the characters involved, but they'll learn a little solar science as well. This book will appeal to anyone interested in history and science, a great combination. …

”You can read the full review here.

There is also a brief review by Dennis Lythgoe in the Deseret Morning News. Read that review here.

I have a new feature published in New Scientist this week (issue 2604, cover date 19 May 2007).

When it comes to galaxies, astronomers have a lot in common with Victorian fathers. They have a pretty good idea of what is involved in their conception and they know what the end product looks like. But the actual birth itself is a total mystery.

Using optical telescopes, astronomers can peer back through space to a time around 1 billion years after the big bang. Even at this early stage there are galaxies, not as fully grown as the ones today, but recognisable as galaxies nonetheless.

To look back further in time means studying microwaves rather than light, and that's when we lose sight of galaxies altogether. Instead, we see a universal bath of radiation that carries the imprint of the way the universe looked just 300,000 years after the big bang. At that point in cosmic history, there were no galaxies - just rippling undulations in the density of...

The complete article is 2254 words long and is available here.
(a subscription is required)

Also in the same issue of New Scientist, I have a news story:

‘Dark energy’ – the constant we can't live without

It's like the gatecrasher who won't leave the party. The cosmological constant, the simplest explanation of why the expansion of the universe is accelerating, just won't go away, much as astronomers would like to see the back of it.

The cosmological constant originated as a "fudge factor" that Einstein added to general relativity to square its predictions with a universe that he thought was static. He later disowned it, when it was realised that the universe is expanding, but with the discovery in the late 1990s that this expansion is accelerating, the cosmological constant came back into favour.

In essence, the cosmological constant represents the "dark energy" of space-time that repulses gravity. There is one huge problem with it, though: the value for the cosmological constant predicted by particle physics is about 120 orders of magnitude greater than is consistent with the observed expansion of the universe. …

The complete article is 513 words long and can be read on the web here but a subscription is required.