STELLAR PERFORMANCE.

This article focuses on the study of astronomy in Canada. Canadians are masters of the universe. Sure, the U.S. leads the world in spending on space research, laying out roughly US $7 per American each year, while Britain, France and Germany budget between US $4 and US $5 for every citizen. Canada spends just US$1 per capita, less even than Australia. Yet by one important measure -- the confidence of their peers -- Canadian astronomers produce some of the best astrophysical science on the planet. Thomson Scientific, a Philadelphia-based information clearing house, reported Canadian scientists published 4,836 research papers on space in the past decade. Those studies in turn were referenced 76,921 times in other scientific papers, for an average citation rate of 15.91. If one were to list Canada's 150 most cited scientists from the many different fields of study, about 15 would be astronomers, say Jaymie Matthews, associate professor of astronomy at the University of British Columbia. William Harris, a frequently cited astronomer at McMaster University in Hamilton, likens the Canadian success to a talented student making a movie with next to no money. The young director is forced to be innovative. Lack of funding has forced scientists to pick their projects wisely, observes Ray Carlberg, an astrophysics professor at the University of Toronto. Last year's most quoted paper -- cited 1,058 times -- mapped the radiological afterglow of the big bang, in the process helping confirm theories of how the universe came to be. What Canada lacked until only recently was the ability to make observations from space. That changed with MOST, a suitcase-sized, $10-million rocket-borne telescope that was blasted into space in 2003. Backed by the Canadian Space Agency, MOST has already outlived its life expectancy and has another two, maybe three years to go, says Matthews, the project's mission scientist.