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Cloud chasers studying Saturn's moon Titan say its clouds form and move much like those on Earth, but in a much slower, more lingering fashion.

Their forecast for Titan's early autumn -- warm and wetter.

Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have monitored Titan's atmosphere for three-and-a-half years, between July 2004 and December 2007, and observed more than 200 clouds. They found that the way these clouds are distributed around Titan matches scientists' global circulation models. The only exception is timing -- clouds are still noticeable in the southern hemisphere while fall is approaching.

As summer changes to fall at the equinox in August 2009, Titan's clouds are expected to disappear altogether. But, circulation models of Titan's weather and climate predict that clouds at the southern latitudes don't wait for the equinox and should have already faded out since 2005. However, Cassini was still able to see clouds at these places late in 2007, and some of them are particularly active at mid-latitudes and the equator.

Titan is the only moon in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere, and its climate shares Earth-like characteristics. Titan's dense, nitrogen-methane atmosphere responds much more slowly than Earth's atmosphere, as it receives about 100 times less sunlight because it is 10 times farther from the sun. Seasons on Titan last more than seven Earth years.

Scientists will continue to observe the long-term changes during Cassini's extended mission, which runs until the fall of 2010. Cassini is set to fly by Titan on June 6.

Michael Jackson's funeral is expected to be even bigger than Elvis Presley's in 1977, when 75,000 fans lined the streets of Memphis. If that happens, Jackson's funeral will become the biggest the entertainment world has seen.

Jackson's coffin was being kept under armed guard to deter fans from discovering its secret location. Jackson's funaral is expected to take place on Wednesday or Thursday at Forest Lawn cemetry in Los Angeles.

Following the funeral may be public service , expected to claim a global audience . Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor and Sir Paul McCartney are expected to be among mourners. Mourners are also likely to include Liza Minnelli , Jackson's former wife Lisa Marie Presley, Britney Spears , Justin Timberlake and Madonna. Jackson was raised as a Jehovah's witness who are forbidden from following funeral customs that are mentioned in Bible, including rowdy wakes and alcoholic toasts.

An unusually slow-moving solar jet stream buried deep inside the Sun is causing the lack of sunspots and low solar activity, say scientists from the National Solar Observatory (NSO).

The Sun usually follows a fairly regular pattern, cycling through an 11 year period of magnetic intensity – during which, characteristic behaviour such as sunspots, flares and corona mass ejections are typical – followed by 11 years of relative quiescence. At present, the Sun is in a phase of extreme quietness when it should have been displaying more signs of activity, a mystery that has been confounding scientists over the last year.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed the presence of ammonia on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

If there is an underground ocean on Enceladus, then ammonia would be vital to it. Ammonia acts as an antifreeze, allowing water to remain liquid at temperatures as low as –97 degrees Celsius . This is the first time that scientists have found ammonia on an icy satellite of a giant planet.

The world is getting ready to celebrate next month the 40th anniversary of historical Apollo 11 flight which is the first manned mission to moon and the officials of Tata Institute Of Fundamental Reasearch (TIFR) at Colaba are trying to find out a priceless picture that is missing from their office.

The picture was autographed and presented to TIFR by the three astronauts Neil Armstrong , Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins who were the first humans to land on the surface of moon. The picture was the size of an A3 size paper placed in the director's office in TIFR and used to attract a lot of visitors.

A new black hole more than 500 times the mass of Sun has been discovered using ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope.

Japanese Selene lunar orbiter have failed to detect any signs of water in permanently shaded craters around the South pole of the Moon.

Although the Japanese lunar orbiter found no ice it did find a crater much deeper than other lunar craters of a similar diameter and internal temperatures that could support ice delivered by comets over billions of years.

It has also returned beautiful images of the Earth and Moon as the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing by Apollo 11.

South Korea's space agency has announced it will attempt to fly its first satellite launcher this week.

The rocket's design and construction has cost about $400 million.

The new rocket, made from Russian and South Korean parts, could lift off as soon as Aug. 11 from the new Naro Space Center at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, about 300 miles south of Seoul.

A pulsar is a highly magnetised rapidly spinning neutron star , the dense core remaining aftera supernova explosion.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope solves the mystery of previously unidentified gamma-ray sources. Fermi has now uncovered 16 pulsars based on their high energy gamma rays alone.

Fermi can 'feel' the gamma-ray pulsations gives important information about the mechanism behind the emissions. Radio pulsars emit narrow beams of radio waves that sweep around like a lighthouse beacon, bathing the Earth in radiation to enable detections. If the radio beam misses the Earth, the pulsar cannot be detected by radio telescopes, but FermiÕs ability to detect so many radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars indicates that the gamma-rays are emitted in a beam that is wider and more fan-like than the radio beam.

Orion’s red supergiant Betelgeuse has been steadily shrinking over the last 15 years.

Betelgeuse is so big that if placed in our Solar System it would extend to the orbit of Jupiter. But thanks to long term monitoring by Berkeley’s Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI) at Mt Wilson, measurements of the star’s diameter reveal the giant to be shrinking. Over the last 15 years, the star has shrunk by more than 15 percent, equivalent to the same diameter as the orbit of Venus.

Despite its diminished size however, there is no evidence to suggest that the star is dimming. But we do not know why the star is shrinking.

Since the star’s size depends on the wavelength of light used to measure it, it is difficult to compare measurements. Tenuous gas in the outer regions of the star emits light as well as absorbs it, which presents a challenge in determining the edge of the star.

Cosmic blobs are immense reservoirs of hydrogen gas located in the early Universe. Black holes and star formation have been observed in cosmic blobs.

The glow of cosmic blobs in optical light had remained a mystery for the astronomers but with the help of telescopes such as Chandra X-ray Observatory,Spitzer Space Telescope and Hubble they have found that the source of power is coming from growing supermassive black holes and from newly forming stars.