Galaxy

Aphalanx of Imperial Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, two R2-D2 droids and a model who posed for a collectible Star Wars card game will walk the red carpet tonight at Baltimore's Senator Theatre. The film they're celebrating features awe-inspiring ruins, a bar crammed with colorful rogues, vertiginous cityscapes streaked with undulating lights and the last remnant of saber-bearing Jedi knights. But this isn't a sneak peek at visionary filmmaker George Lucas' next Star Wars installment, Revenge of the Sith - that's due out May 19. This is the world premiere of Revelations, a Star Wars "fan film," made for less than $20,000 by Shane Felux of Gainesville, Va. The 40-minute digital creation is part of a global phenomenon.

It would be stretching things to say the space spectaculars on tap for 2005 will have millions more of us out in the back yard peering up into the night sky. That's because the most astonishing celestial events on the stargazing calendar in 2005 are likely to require more time in front of a TV or a computer than out under a sparkling dark sky. For example, on Jan. 14, if all goes well, millions may be watching as the Huygens probe -- released Friday from...

Baseball METS: Placed P Matt Ginter on 60-day DL. Recalled OF Victor Diaz from Triple-A Norfolk. Football COLTS: Activated S Bob Sanders. Waived FB Cary Davis. Signed DT Jason Stewart to practice squad. DOLPHINS: Signed RB Leonard Henry to practice squad. Released RB Fred Russell from practice squad. PACKERS: Signed CB Al Harris to five-year contract extension. Released TE Steve Bush. RAIDERS: Activated CB Charles Woodson. Traded DT Chris Cooper to Cowboys for future considerations.

The grilled-cheese sandwich at Sun Moon & Stars might be the best you've ever tasted. The warm Swiss cheese oozes between thick slices of tangy, slightly buttery and perfectly toasted sourdough bread. Nestled alongside the sandwich is a generous handful of house-made potato chips - crisp, thin, slightly brown, delicately salted and completely free of grease. Top them off with a glass of fresh lemonade that's more sweet than tart, and you've got a treat. Sun Moon & Stars, which opened in February on Red Brook Boulevard in a sterile office park off Owings Mills Boulevard, could have coasted along as a deli serving bagels, sandwiches and salads to the power-suit crowd.

WASHINGTON -- Freddy Adu has just finished practicing with D.C. United and is lugging an equipment bag and water jugs off the turf field across from RFK Stadium. "It's a rookie thing," he says, smiling. "You've got to do it." Only two nights before, Adu had brought 17,000 fans to their feet in the 72nd minute of a game against the L.A. Galaxy -- a game United wound up tying, 1-1, when he unloaded a shot that banged off a goal post. He brought them out of their seats again a few minutes later when he let go a kick that forced the goalie into a diving save.

Pushing the world's biggest ground-based telescopes to their limits, astronomers have peered deep into cosmic history and spied something they shouldn't have: grizzled old galaxies in an epoch when only infant swarms of stars were thought to exist. The perplexing discovery, reported today in the journal Nature by two separate teams, could force scientists to scrap dearly held theories about how our Milky Way and other galaxies came to be. "Up until now, we assumed that galaxies were just beginning to form between 8 and 11 billion years ago, but what we found suggests that is not the case," says astronomer Karl Glazebrook of the Johns Hopkins University, who led one of the research teams.

WASHINGTON - Astronomers using NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory say they have detected the death cry of a sun-like star being ripped apart and partly devoured by a huge black hole. The star's last gasp, described yesterday by scientists at NASA headquarters, was a powerful X-ray flare that erupted from the center of a previously quiet galaxy. Albert Einstein theorized the existence of black holes in 1915 - objects so massive that even light could not escape their gravitational grasp.

Tapping the powerful Hubble Space Telescope and a rare quirk of cosmic physics, astronomers have discovered the most distant galaxy in the universe, a faint, record-setting smear of light that flared just 750 million years after the big bang. If confirmed, astronomers said, the discovery could provide new clues to fundamental questions such as when stars first began to shine and how a few simple chemical building blocks in the early universe evolved into the dazzling gallery of objects we see today.

These galaxies are not only long ago and far away. They're also the earliest and most distant ever photographed. And there are thousands of them. They're the galaxies of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field - the first fruits of a continuing project at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Eventually, astronomers expect to capture the glow of tens of thousands of them. And the systems are all waiting in what looks like an "empty" spot of sky just one-tenth of the diameter of the moon.

GLASGOW, Scotland - Marc Lester expects jeers and boos to ring loudly in his ears when he lines up in the color purple of the Frankfurt Galaxy at World Bowl XI today. Morgan State's all-time leading wide receiver confronts traditional foe Rhein Fire in the annual championship game of NFL Europe at Hampden Park (noon on Fox). Lester is the primary reason the hometown Scottish Claymores will not contend for the World Bowl, and he will feel the wrath of their bitter supporters. The Ravens' practice squad receiver scored four touchdowns, including three in one game, in sweeping the Claymores during the regular season.