Nádhera!
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-captures-record-breaking-images-in-the-kuiper-belt

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft recently turned its telescopic camera toward a field of stars, snapped an image – and made history.

The routine calibration frame of the “Wishing Well” galactic open star cluster, made by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on Dec. 5, was taken when New
Horizons was 3.79 billion miles (6.12 billion kilometers, or 40.9 astronomical units) from Earth – making it, for a time, the farthest image ever made from Earth.

New Horizons was even farther from home than NASA’s Voyager 1 when it captured the famous “Pale Blue Dot” image of Earth. That picture was part of a composite of 60
images looking back at the solar system, on Feb. 14, 1990, when Voyager was 3.75 billion miles (6.06 billion kilometers, or about 40.5 astronomical units [AU]) from
Earth. Voyager 1’s cameras were turned off shortly after that portrait, leaving its distance record unchallenged for more than 27 years.

LORRI broke its own record just two hours later with images of Kuiper Belt objects 2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85 – further demonstrating how nothing stands still when
you’re covering more than 700,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) of space each day.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tiny-crystal-shapes-get-close-look-from-mars-rover

Star-shaped and swallowtail-shaped tiny, dark bumps in fine-layered bright bedrock of a Martian ridge are drawing close inspection by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

This set of shapes looks familiar to geologists who have studied gypsum crystals formed in drying lakes on Earth, but Curiosity's science team is considering multiple
possibilities for the origin of these features on "Vera Rubin Ridge" on Mars.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia22241/crater-tadpoles

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows an impact crater looking amusingly like a tadpole because of the valley that was carved by water that used to fill it.

The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 32.9 centimeters (12.9 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning); objects
on the order of 99 centimeters (38.9 inches) across are resolved.] North is up.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/juno-completes-tenth-science-orbit-of-jupiter

Juno accomplished a close flyby over Jupiter’s churning atmosphere on Wednesday, Feb. 7, successfully completing its tenth science orbit. The closest approach was at 6:36 a.m. PST (9:36 a.m. PST) Earth-
received time. At the time of perijove (the point in Juno's orbit when it is closest to the planet's center), the spacecraft will be about 2,100 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops.

This flyby was a gravity science orientation pass. During orbits that highlight gravity experiments, Juno is in an Earth-pointed orientation that allows both the X-band and Ka-Band transmitter to downlink
data in real-time to one of the antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California. All of Juno’s science instruments and the spacecraft’s JunoCam were in operation during the flyby, collecting
data that is now being returned to Earth.

Creating a hotspot for understanding Venus – the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory – Europlanet Outreach
http://www.europlanet-eu.org/...tspot-for-understanding-venus-the-planetary-spectroscopy-laboratory/

A new simulation facility at the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) could help revolutionise
our understanding of the hot, hidden surface of Venus. The Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory (PSL) can analyse rock samples similar to those found on the surface of Venus
at temperatures up to 1000 degrees Celsius, enabling researchers to interpret accurately data acquired by space missions and ground-based observations.

https://news.wsu.edu/2018/02/07/wsu-builds-nasa-alien-ocean/

Engineers know how to design submarines on Earth, but building one gets a lot trickier when the temperature drops
to -300 Fahrenheit and the ocean is made of methane and ethane.

Washington State University researchers are working with NASA to determine how a submarine might work on Titan,
the largest of Saturn’s many moons and the second largest in the solar system. The space agency plans to launch
a real submarine into Titan seas in the next 20 years.

The researchers re-created a Titan ocean in a laboratory. They have published a paper on their work in the journal,
Fluid Phase Equilibria.

Oběžná dráha kolem Slunce....ehm.....auta. :D
Tohle před 10 lety říct někde na veřejnosti, ihned skončíte na izolovaném pavilonu psychiatrické léčebny! :-))

Tesla Roadster orbit SpaceX launched by Falcon Heavy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH2tUmEjujw


So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish!

Stephan's Quintet with the CFHT
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/en/news/StephansQuintetLSB/

An extremely deep multi-band optical image from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT, Hawaii. USA) casts a new light on the formation process of the famous group
of 5 colliding galaxies. The image reveals structures undetected thus far, in particular a very extended red halo composed of old stars, and centered on an elliptical
galaxy, NGC 7317, which had been ignored in previous studies on the dynamics of the global collision. These results are published in the Monthly notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society by a team from the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg (France), CEA Saclay (France) and the Lund Observatory (Sweden).

Neskuteční bouráci!!! To byl balet!

WATCH LIVE: SpaceX launches the Falcon Heavy, the rocket that could go to Mars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQx6YBtQZbw

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21904/contrasting-crescents

In this view, Saturn’s icy moon Rhea passes in front of Titan as seen by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Some of the differences between the two large moons are readily apparent. While Rhea
is a heavily-cratered, airless world, Titan’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere is even thicker than Earth’s.

This natural color image was taken in visible light with the Cassini narrow-angle camera on Nov. 19, 2009, at a distance of approximately 713,300 miles (1,148,000 kilometers) from Rhea.

Oujééé...
Planety v systému TRAPPIST-1 pravděpodobně nesou značné množství vody | ESO Česko
http://eso.org/public/czechrepublic/news/eso1805/?lang

První náznaky složení exoplanet o velikosti Země

Nová studie sedmi planet obíhajících kolem mimořádně chladného červeného trpaslíka TRAPPIST-1 ukázala, že tělesa jsou většinou tvořena horninami a mohou nést dokonce větší množství vody než planeta Země.
Hustoty jednotlivých těles v systému, které jsou nyní známy mnohem přesněji než doposud, naznačují, že některé planety mohou obsahovat až 5 % hmotnosti v podobě vody – tedy 250krát více než v oceánech na
Zemi. Teplejší planety ležící nejblíže své mateřské hvězdy mají pravděpodobně husté atmosféry obsahující značné množství vodní páry, vzdálenější pak mohou být pokryty silným ledovým příkrovem. Čtvrtá
planeta systému je, pokud jde o velikost, hustotu a množství záření dopadajícího na povrch, nejpodobnější Zemi. Ze všech sedmi těles obsahuje největší množství hornin a má potenciál udržet na povrchu
vodu v kapalném stavu.