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Astronomical News

There's a snowman at the edge of the solar system
Nasa's New Horizons: 'Snowman' shape of distant Ultima Thule revealed
By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
  • 3 minutes ago

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Image copyrightNASAImage captionThe snowman rotates at a rate of about 15 hours
The ice world known as Ultima Thule has finally been revealed.
A new picture returned from Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft shows the diminutive, distant world to be two objects joined together to give it a look just like a snowman.
The US probe's images acquired as it approached Ultima hinted at the possibility of a double object, but the first detailed picture from Tuesday's close flyby confirms it.
New Horizons encountered the Ultima 6.5 billion km from Earth.

etc

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46742298
 
Wonder if they'll find the mountain-sized diamonds in the mascons. It was speculated they would be there on the earth side, but the degree intensity and frequency of impacts on the outer side makes it seem more likely to host them.
 
It's a crying shame we haven't seen better resolution pics of Ultima Thule yet.

Guess the govt shutdown has kyboshed those for now?
 
New Horizons footage of Pluto. Amazingly sharp images. One discovery - because of the size of largest moon Charon & it's proximity, the two orbit around a centre outside of Pluto.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="
" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Interesting video, I'd never quite grasped the concept of a naked singularity before, idea seems to be that if a black hole spins above a certain speed the centriputal force counteracts the gravity just enough to make it so the escape velocity is less than the speed of light.


Edit: Gravity not grabity
 
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Life on the Moon!

Seeds taken up to the Moon by China's Chang'e-4 mission have sprouted, says China National Space Administration.

It marks the first time any biological matter has grown on the Moon, and is being seen as a significant step towards long-term space exploration. The Chang'e 4 is the first mission to land on and explore the Moon's far side, facing away from Earth.It touched down on 3 January, carrying instruments to analyse the region's geology.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46873526?ncid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__011519
 
Life on the Moon!

Seeds taken up to the Moon by China's Chang'e-4 mission have sprouted, says China National Space Administration.

It marks the first time any biological matter has grown on the Moon, and is being seen as a significant step towards long-term space exploration. The Chang'e 4 is the first mission to land on and explore the Moon's far side, facing away from Earth.It touched down on 3 January, carrying instruments to analyse the region's geology.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46873526?ncid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__011519
It's a test, a proof of concept before they roll out the Chinese farms on the moon.
China is so hungry for food, they'll start growing their beansprouts up there.
 
Also makes a Moonbase more feasible.
Recently installed the 'ISS HD live' app for seven year old granddaughter. Viewing same with school friends the other night, she asked, "how is that possible?"...

Just that an instantaneous thought occurred, 'Certainty didn't have it in my day...".

This results of this Chinese space mission are absolutely, potentially phenomenal.

So, in one night, I could show granddaughter and pals a live view of earth and noted that, arguably, life now exists on the moon...

Combined with recent scientific papers regarding a new paradigm re dark matter & dark energy, have duly had an epiphany, this said evening...

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Nasa's New Horizons: Best image yet of 'space snowman' Ultima Thule
By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
  • 25 January 2019

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Image copyrightNASA/JHU-APL/SWRI
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The New Horizons probe has sent back its best picture yet of the small, icy object Ultima Thule, which it flew past on New Year's Day.
The image was acquired when the Nasa spacecraft was just 6,700km from its target, which scientists think is two bodies lightly fused together - giving the look of a snowman.
Surface details are now much clearer.
New Horizons' data is coming back very slowly, over the next 20 months.
This is partly to do with the great distance involved (the separation is 6.5 billion km) but is also limited by the small power output of the probe's transmitter and the size (and availability) of the receive antennas here on Earth. It all makes for glacial bit rates.

etc

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47000888
 
Bye bye Ultima Thule (but more images of the encounter to come)

Feb. 8, 2019

New Horizons’ Evocative Farewell Glance at Ultima Thule



Mission scientists created this "departure movie" from 14 different images taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shortly after the spacecraft flew past the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule (officially named 2014 MU69) on Jan. 1, 2019. The central frame of this sequence was taken on Jan. 1 at 05:42:42 UT (12:42 a.m. EST), when New Horizons was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond Ultima Thule, some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. The object’s illuminated crescent is blurred in the individual frames because a relatively long exposure time was used during this rapid scan to boost the camera’s signal level – but the science team combined and processed the images to remove the blurring and sharpen the thin crescent. This is the farthest movie of any object in our Solar System ever made by any spacecraft. The images reveal an outline of the “hidden” portion of the Ultima Thule that was not illuminated by the Sun as the spacecraft zipped by, but can be “traced out” because it blocked the view to background stars also in the image.
Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Video animation
An evocative new image sequence from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft offers a departing view of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) nicknamed Ultima Thule – the target of its New Year’s 2019 flyby and the most distant world ever explored.

New Horizons took this image of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule) on Jan. 1, 2019, when the NASA spacecraft was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond it. The image to the left is an “average” of ten images taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI); the crescent is blurred in the raw frames because a relatively long exposure time was used during this rapid scan to boost the camera’s signal level. Mission scientists have been able to process the image, removing the motion blur to produce a sharper, brighter view of Ultima Thule’s thin crescent.
Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory


These aren’t the last Ultima Thule images New Horizons will send back to Earth – in fact, many more are to come -- but they are the final views New Horizons captured of the KBO (officially named 2014 MU69) as it raced away at over 31,000 miles per hour (50,000 kilometers per hour) on Jan. 1. The images were taken nearly 10 minutes after New Horizons crossed its closest approach point.

etc

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-evocative-farewell-glance-at-ultima-thule
 
Good news ... You can hit the snooze button on the Intergalactic Doomsday Clock, because our collision with the Andromeda galaxy is farther off than previously suspected ...
We Finally Know When Our Milky Way Will Crash Into the Andromeda Galaxy
Our Milky Way galaxy will survive in its current form a bit longer than some astronomers had thought, a new study suggests.

The monster collision between our Milky Way and fellow spiral galaxy Andromeda will occur about 4.5 billion years from now, according to the new research, which is based on observations made by Europe's Gaia spacecraft. Some prominent previous estimates had predicted the crash would happen significantly sooner, in about 3.9 billion years. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/64736-milky-way-andromeda-collision-timing.html
 
Good news ... You can hit the snooze button on the Intergalactic Doomsday Clock, because our collision with the Andromeda galaxy is farther off than previously suspected...
Does this count as, 'Fortean'?

My daughter, Donna, aware of my inherent interest in Astronomy, recently asked, 'what if there was a supernova, would we be affected'?

Duly realising I wasn't actually sure of any such impending event, checked the evident timescale.

It would seem that, before any apocalypse concerning the, 'Milky Way' in entirety, there is a more pressing concern:

Will star Betelgeuse explode?
January 13, 2019


https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday

Noted therein, "When will it happen? Probably not in our lifetimes. But, in fact, no one really knows. It could be tomorrow or a million years in the future"...

...back up a wee bit there... "It could be tomorrow"...

See, knew it was a smart move to sponsor local schoolchildren to dig a deep burrow (they think it's for badgers...).
 
Sirius is smoky-bright in the skies above south central Scotland tonight (2220 UTC).
Diagonally-down from Orion, in Canis Major.

And Betelgeuse is flickering fast & bright...
2019-02-18 22.53.47.png


(I completely missed Venus this morning- better luck tomorrow)
 
Does this count as, 'Fortean'?

My daughter, Donna, aware of my inherent interest in Astronomy, recently asked, 'what if there was a supernova, would we be affected'?

Duly realising I wasn't actually sure of any such impending event, checked the evident timescale.

It would seem that, before any apocalypse concerning the, 'Milky Way' in entirety, there is a more pressing concern:

Will star Betelgeuse explode?
January 13, 2019


https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday

Noted therein, "When will it happen? Probably not in our lifetimes. But, in fact, no one really knows. It could be tomorrow or a million years in the future"...

...back up a wee bit there... "It could be tomorrow"...

See, knew it was a smart move to sponsor local schoolchildren to dig a deep burrow (they think it's for badgers...).

It may have already gone supernova but the light not reached us yet..
 
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