Zooming in on Pluto’s Pattern of Pits
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/zooming-in-on-pluto-s-pattern-of-pits

On July 14 the telescopic camera on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took the highest resolution images ever obtained of the intricate pattern of “pits” across a section of Pluto’s prominent heart-shaped region, informally named Tombaugh Regio. Mission scientists believe these mysterious indentations may form through a combination of ice fracturing and evaporation. The scarcity of overlying impact craters in this area also leads scientists to conclude that these pits – typically hundreds of yards across and tens of yards deep – formed relatively recently. Their alignment provides clues about the ice flow and the exchange of nitrogen and other volatile materials between the surface and the atmosphere.

An animation of Jupiter using the images from Voyager 1 (1979) and Cassini (2000)
SVS: Jupiter Cloud Sequence from Voyager 1
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003600/a003611/index.html
SVS: Jupiter Cloud Sequence from Cassini
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003600/a003610/index.html
NOTE: This animation is not accurate in some aspects, such as the timescale, lighting, object size, etc.

mickey mouse :)

Tahle momentka se povedla:

Akatsuki's first UVI image of Venus after orbit insertion | The Planetary Society
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/venus/akatsukis-first-uvi.html

JAXA held a press briefing today to confirm the successful arrival of Akatsuki into Venus orbit -- an even lower orbit than they'd hoped to achieve. Akatsuki is Japan's first successful planetary orbiter. It's been a long time coming: today's announcement came twelve years to the day after Japan had to abandon efforts to put Nozomi into Mars orbit. The presenters were project manager Masato Nakamura (中村), trajectory engineer Chikako Hirose (廣瀬), and project scientist Takeshi Imamura (今村). There were three main topics: Akatsuki's orbital trajectory, new images, and science plans.

Fakt Vánoce za rohem...
A Cygnus Christmas Delivery | International Space Station
Kjell: "Day 257. A delivery in time for Christmas decked with festive lighting. Goodnight from Space Station!"
Credit: NASA/JSC, U.S. Astronaut Scott Kelly. Release Date: December 9, 2015

:/

No extraterrestrial laser pulses detected from KIC 8462852, SETI reports
http://phys.org/news/2015-12-extraterrestrial-laser-pulses-kic-seti.html

The anomalous star KIC 8462852 has baffled astronomers with its erratic dimming, causing some to speculate that it's orbited by a massive structure built by an extraterrestrial civilization. To help evaluate that possibility, scientists searched for brief laser pulses from the distant star, but found none, as reported in a paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

News | New Clues to Ceres' Bright Spots and Origins
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4785

Ceres reveals some of its well-kept secrets in two new studies in the journal Nature, thanks to data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. They include highly anticipated insights about mysterious bright features found all over the dwarf planet's surface.

In one study, scientists identify this bright material as a kind of salt. The second study suggests the detection of ammonia-rich clays, raising questions about how Ceres formed.



This representation of Ceres' Occator Crater in false colors shows differences in the surface composition. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Oleg Kononěnko zachytil meteor z roje Geminid na ISS. Rišpekt! To musí být pohled (a pocit)...

U.S. Cargo Craft Arrives at Space Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whifN2A2aqE

"Pátý element" :)

American satellite started transmitting 46 years after being abandoned in 1967
https://www.thevintagenews.com/...ellite-started-transmitting-46-years-after-being-abandoned-in-1967

"An Amateur Radio Astronomer in North Cornwall accidentally picked up the signal in 2013 and after cross checking with various lists, has identified it as LES1 built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and launched in 1965. The satellite failed to reach its intended orbit owing to a wiring error and has been drifting out of control ever since."

:'-)

VIRGO: Zajímavý na tom je, že tahle fotka má jen o něco menší zvětšení, jako má samotnej Hubble (detektor MAMA): z Tomova pohledu měl HST velikost 0.00124°, snímač MAMA dosahuje FoVu 0.00694°, tj. Hubble by udělal selfie, kde by zabíral zhruba pětinu obrazu :)

Větší oříšek než cvaknout ISS...

Taken by Tom Harradine on December 4, 2015 @ Brisbane, Australia
Here is an image of the Hubble Space Telescope as it passed over Brisbane, Australia, on 4th December 2015.
It passed just under 600km overhead. The elongated shape of this 13x4 metre telescope was imaged through
a 12 Sky-Watcher Dobsonian telescope and a Canon EOS 600D with 1.4x teleconverter.

BIDAK: zítra.

Scott Kelly vyfotil startující Atlas s lodí Cygnus:

Japan orbiter seeks second shot at Venus : Nature News & Comment
http://www.nature.com/news/japan-orbiter-seeks-second-shot-at-venus-1.18943
Update, 7 December (1:40 a.m. BST): Japan's Akatsuki mission has entered orbit around Venus. The spacecraft burned its engines as planned on 7 December and was captured by Venus's gravity, says team member Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Over the next two days, mission scientists will track the spacecraft and determine how closely the orbit matches what scientists had hoped for. That information is expected to be released at 6 p.m. Japan time (9 a.m. BST) on 9 December.