Mars will kill you

Good things come in small packages. In this case it's a tiny, dwarf galaxy - Bedin 1.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/new-galaxy-bedin-1/

 

another piece of space news - this is actually kind of a big deal

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/02/03/cotton-plant/

 

How they discovered it is kind of interesting. The Hubble was looking at a globular cluster of stars about 13,000 light years away, associated with our own Milky Way galaxy.

But the photos also showed a much fainter collection of stars in the background, behind the target cluster. In the NASA/ESA photo below, the bright stars in the foreground are what they wanted to look at, and the fainter collection in the left background is the new discovery.

It's only about 3,000 light years across, a dwarf compared to our own galazy, estimated at something like 100,000 light years. These dwarf galaxies are usually associated in terms of proximity and gravity with larger galaxies, but this one seems to be out there by itself. Another interesting feature is that the stars that make it up seem to have very low metallic content, suggesting that they might be very old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_spheroidal_galaxy

 

Virgin Galactic's rocket plane is scheduled for its next test flight on February 20. The last test flight reached the edge of space.

And Richard Branson says that they are shooting for July 20th for another flight, because it's the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and that he wants to be riding on that one.

https://news.yahoo.com/richard-branson-says-hell-fly-space-july-084507883.html

 

Ok which one of you stepped on Ultima Thule??

What originally looked like a snowman might not be the two spheres that it originally appeared to be. Images taken when New Horizons was moving away and only recently downloaded suggest the it really might be something more like two circular pancakes fused edge to edge. While the previous shape would be relatively easy to explain, formation wise, the newer shape is more of a head-scratcher.

JHUAPL says: "We had an impression of Ultima Thule based on the limited number of images returned in the days around the flyby, but seeing more data has significantly changed our view," Stern said. "It would be closer to reality to say Ultima Thule's shape is flatter, like a pancake. But more importantly, the new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. We've never seen something like this orbiting the Sun."

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190208

 

One big reason I like science is because of science fiction literature and movies. They were lots of fun for me as a kid and right up until today. When Worlds Collide is a classic movie



But then we find that sometimes planets really do collide. That's too cool (in a disastrous sorta way). Colliding exoplanets . . .

https://earthsky.org/space/2-colliding-exoplanets-kepler-107-system

 

Mars One is dead

https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/11/mars-one-is-dead/

 

Two words: Space Harpoon

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/deploy-the-space-harpoon/

 

I'm glad to discover that I'm not the only one who was sad on this day

https://laist.com/2019/02/16/jpl_mars_rover_opportunity_battery_is_low_and_its_getting_dark.php

 

There was something reassuring about the idea that the brave little thing was still up there, rolling across the landscape of Mars after so many years.

Like one of the twitterites wrote: "That "my battery is low and its getting dark" got me. You did great, sweetie. You did so great. "

 

Gotta be ready for the arrival of Space Whales.

 

Mars weather reports from the Insight lander are now online.

JPL release here:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7337

Weather report for Sunday Feb 17 (the latest one up) is here:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/

High of 2 degrees F. Low of -138 degrees F.

(As chilly as Winnipeg!)

Average wind speed 12 mph from the SW.

 

Jonathan McDowell reports that today's flight of Spaceship 2 was scrubbed due to bad weather.

 

Israel's little Moon-lander is set to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 at 8:45 PM EST/5:45 PM PST today, Thursday Feb 21. The launch will also carry an Indonesian communications satellite and a USAF payload in a ride-share arrangement to a lofty geostationary orbit. It will be the third trip to space for this particular booster. It previously flew in July and October 2018. After putting its payloads up, the booster will attempt a landing on SpaceX's landing barge/"droneship" out in the Atlantic.

Apparently the plan with the lunar lander is to put it into a geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles up, along with the communications satellites. (That's why the booster won't be returning to Cape Canaveral, it takes lots of fuel to do this. So it will have to land out at sea.) The lander is mostly fuel by weight and will then fire its own engines several times, making its orbit more and more elliptical. Its apogee will eventually approach the Moon where the plan is for the Moons gravity to capture it into a lunar orbit. From there, it will use the last of its fuel to attempt a lunar landing in early April sometime.

The launch and landing attempts will be livestreamed here:

 

Successful launch. Second stage and its passengers (an Indonesian com-sat, a USAF research laboratory satellite and the Israeli Moon lander) are currently in coast phase with payload deployment still to come. The video signal from the booster was lost as it descended, but since it was a night-flight, there wouldn't have been much to see anyway. Despite the crummy landing video, the booster nevertheless nailed its third landing and is now sitting on its lovely landing barge out in the Atlantic. They say that this was the most challenging booster landing to date (presumably due to the fuel requirements necessary to get the payloads to the proper orbit) and they seem pleased that the first stage returned safely.

Edit: the Israeli SpaceIL lunar lander has separated from the Falcon 9 second stage and is now on its own. The Indonesian comsat has also deployed into a good orbit. (They don't have video of the USAF satellite, perhaps it's classified.)

 

It's been rescheduled for Friday morning. The problem Wednesday was high cross-winds that exceeded safety standards for landing. Today was windy and overcast. But Friday is supposed to be sunny with less wind.

Speaking of southern California weather, people in LA were shocked to see flurries of white flaky stuff falling from the sky! They couldn't figure out what it was!

Earthquakes? Space aliens? Zombie apocalypse? LA's seen it in countless movies and is ready for it. But white stuff falling from the sky? Who expected that??

Panic gripped the city.

The ever-vigilant LAPD was on the case.

https://twitter.com/LAPDHQ/status/1098728225822240768

https://twitter.com/SantaMonicaMtns/status/1098754070993559552

https://twitter.com/CHP_SantaBarb/status/1098761317744181248

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/bit-snow-los-angeles-suddenly-it-s-snowmaggedon-n974306

 

This thread has become a place to put all things "space-related" so I thought I'd throw in this story about a new Chinese sci-fi space movie The Wandering Earth

https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/the-wandering-earth-review-china.html

 

Virgin Galactic's rocket plane went today, reaching 89.9 km and is back safely on the ground. In addition to its two test pilots, it carried a passenger, the woman who will be in charge of familiarizing future space tourists with the process. She was checking out the experience, even floating around the cabin a bit in free-fall.

https://twitter.com/virgingalactic

Virgin Galactic photos:

 

Here's some Chandra X-Ray Observatory stuff...

It's a NASA satellite that observes the surrounding universe in x-ray wavelengths. That allows it to watch very energetic events like exploding stars and stuff falling into black holes.

Here's its primary website:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/

('Harvard's some university in Massachusetts.)

There's lots of high-energy astrophysical stuff behind the links on the left hand side of the page here.

http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2009/m101/

('SI' is the Smithsonian Institution. The Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory runs Chandra.)

Here's an interesting 'What is Chandra doing right now?' website run by some of the project's astronomers.

http://chandraobservatory.herokuapp.com/index.html

It seems to currently be running a series of calibration observations, the last 34 minutes ago.

Edit: Now it's looking at a giant cluster of galaxies and gas called Abell 1763.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aae9e7

https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5753