This site, Hello from Earth is collecting
short text messages to be transmitted to Gliese 581d, a planet outside our Solar System that, from what we can tell, might support life. It's free to register and send a comment, but the deadline is 5pm Monday 24 August 2009 Sydney time (07:00 GMT Monday 24 August 2009).In the latest batch of images from the Cassini probe investigating Saturn, one of them shows, quite distinctly, a small object piercing the F ring of debris that surrounds Saturn. There's a picture of the bifurcated ring to the left there; click it for a larger image. It looks very much as if something small has cut a path through the dust in Saturn's F ring, moving through the ring from below, and leaving a trail of dust particles in its wake.
Tonight is the "best" night, in terms of sheer numbers of visible meteors per hour,
to see the Perseids. The Perseids are the dust and debris from the Comet Swift-Tuttle, and an annual August event. The moon will be fairly bright; it's a 55% Gibbous moon, so you'll want to avoid looking directly at the moon, since it's just as much a distracting source of light pollution as city and traffic lights are.
