From the lights of Ceres to the plains of Pluto

Ceres Occator crater - closest view yet...

The indefatigable Dawn explorer is dropping (slowly, the Ion engines are fragile) to its closest point in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, and hopefully a final solution to the true nature of those baffling lights.
We are told it will be in place for mid-December, so anytime now
From an orbit of 915 miles, it will drop to 230 miles , hopefully providing us with a final definitive moment when we can collectively nod knowingly, saying -'So that's what it is, hmmm'.
I suspect we'll still be none the wiser, but even so, it is a truly fascinating thing.
And to think it's on our nearest dwarf planet.
The closer we get, the more I am convinced that they are subsurface, molten sources, probably of intense heat, too.
If you check out the other images of Ceres, you can see many examples of similar, brightly coloured ejecta around the cratered surface.
I think it's a natural phenomenon of some kind - if it is an alien city, it's the equivalent of putting on every light in the city and shouting ' Here we are! Come and get us!'.
Which would be foolish on a cosmic scale.
Of course it could be a double bluff, and they want us to explore what appears to be a dead city...


Whilst entertaining such wild ideas, scientists have apparently proven that our reality is not a hologram, so - yeah, sorry to all the Matrix-philes and existentialists out there, but apparently reality is not an illusion.
Well, not a holographic illusion.

Meanwhile, Pluto continues to surprise with the latest high definition image downloads from New Horizons...

I'm amazed that this is a strip of land on a planet over 3 billion miles away...


Back on Earth...

'Nudol', Russian anti-satellite system

Russia has successfully tested its first anti- satellite missile.
The image above allegedly came from a Russian site - I especially like the blending of the hardline military vehicle with fluffy clouds and golden crops.
Seems almost peaceful...
This is proof that we are in a new era of space war - or at least the paranoid defence of our satellite capabilities.
This article makes for sobering reading.
For myself, I tend to think of satellites as GPS and mapping and such things - of course it's far more than that. Many nations are dependent on satellite functionality - business, military, communications, weather - so this is the beginning of overhead powerplay...groan.
Okay, so it's not the beginning - the U.S. already have ASAT, their own missile system ready - it's just that Russia and China have entered the fray.

This being the case, I just hope that the joint US / Russian Venus mission goes ahead, along with the proposed ESA/ Roskosmos moon mission - just to remind us all that we can work together and do constructive, forward looking things...

In other revelations this week, it is mooted that there was no Big Bang, and infact the Universe has existed forever . Whether I find this cheering or depressing is uncertain at present - the illustration of the man blowing up the expanding balloon / universe says it all , I think.

  So the universe expands, like a balloon - but who's inflating it - and what's out there?

Distant Galaxies and Nearby Nuts

M60 galaxy, with M60-UCD1 inset.      pic ©NASA,ESA, J. Seth

Far away, on the edge of our galaxy lies a teeny tiny other galaxy - except that this one (M60-UCD1) has a humongous black hole to outshine (in a dark sense) any other.
It has a mass of 21 million suns.
But fear not, it won't be devouring Earth anytime soon - it's 50 million light years distant.
On the other hand, we also know that the light we see from M60-UCD1 is showing us how it was 50 million years ago, so it could already be gone.
And the bottomless time distorting maw of the black hole could be looming ominously overhead, even as we speak.
Which is cheerful.
Sorry...

 Our night sky (viewed away from big cities and their light pollution), contains 4000 stars.
Which is quite a lot, if you ask me - but M60-UCD1 contains 140 million stars, of which 1 million  are visible simultaneously (if there was an Earthlike world there, and you looked to the night sky).

This is an artists impression of the galaxy M6 UCD1

On the similar but opposite end of the spectrum, we have Triangulum II , a really tiny ghost galaxy with a paltry 1000 stars - but the largest detectable quantity of dark matter.


To put the old space race in perspective, there was a nuclear powered spacecraft that was considered for travel to Saturn - in 1958 . It was known as the Orion project, and would have been propelled by exploding hundreds of atomic bombs ....

Oddly enough, the current craft for Mars is also known as the Orion, although its proposed use of nuclear fuel is a little less dynamic...
NASA have revealed their reluctance , however, to engage in deep space travel -
which, given the proposed 2030 manned landing on Mars gives cause for concern - personally I think the journey will be made by a commercial firm - SpaceX and Blue Origin seem capable, although almost certainly with a rather more cavalier attitude towards health and safety...
Recent announcements state the terrible risks involved, apart from issues like loneliness and 'cabin fever', the very real threat of meteor impact, cancer and fatal irradiation.

Recent revelations tell us that the humble water bear or Tardigrade has no less than 17.5 % of  its DNA adapted from other species ; the process by which it does so is unknown, but it surely makes them the prize candidates for deep space travel , with their resistance to extremes of temperature and lethal doses of radiation - they have already been to space (and seem decidedly alien after all) ...
On the other hand, shouldn't we be concentrating on Terraforming, right now ?
Certainly the Moon needs a makeover, what with all that greyness and corrosive moondust.

There is a new mission called Luna 27 which aims to establish a presence in the lunar South Pole  in 2020, so we should spruce it up a little...at least a shiny shopping mall or two.
Perhaps with Holsts Planet Suite as piped muzak.
I'm joking of course, but seriously - recent laws passed Stateside allow for the mining and possession of minerals occuring in asteroids.
This piece of unilateral granting of rights strikes me as a tad premature.
Do we know of any other body perhaps laying claim to mining rights or even ownership of our asteroid belt ?
I'm getting into Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy territory here, but let me pause to show this -

Bill passed recently in the U.S.A.

In my slightly naive way, I'm amazed that this is a real document .
Funny how reality is mimicking fiction on an almost daily basis now.
Just this morning , I was ruminating on the fact that we live in a world where The Man In The High Castle is a popular media show.

Original edition cover . Fair Use is invoked.

That such an obscure work by Phillip K. Dick should be fêted, restores my faith in humanity.
Then I get a rude awakening with endless news from the GOP rallies in the US, and I think how bizarre that reality Trumps fiction - in a cartoon way, almost.

To my mind, the evil spectre of modern Nazism was effectively lampooned in the film Iron Sky, in which a thinly veiled Sarah Palin - lookalike aims to lead the exiled Nazis from their hidden moonbase , on a warpath back to reclaim Earth.
Which was darkly funny.
Because it would never really happen...


Meanwhile, back in space...

The buzz at the moment seems to be around black holes - what they look like, how they grow, their potential for swallowing entire planetary systems, that sort of thing.
With this in mind, I share this download and print DIY  black hole game!
Fun for all the family - unless you lose the game and have to watch 'Event Horizon', with its grand guignol horrors , in which deep space exploration invokes a hellish reality . .literally.

In Closing...

 I am UK based and have been attempting to ignore the encroaching 'Black Friday' consumer thing - but Cards Against Humanity won the day for me, with their 'Nothing' sale, in which they sold absolutely nothing at five dollars a go, and raised over $70, 000 !
An admirable response to the lure of pure consumerist greed , except that I am also annoyed at my own failure to see the potential wealth inherent in exploiting irony. dammit.

The Dread Blank

That dreadline feeling...  

The image above is a collage I did, to show the feeling of impotent dread that accompanies approaching deadlines and 'writers block' .
Self-motivation is all very well, but sometimes I feel as though I should post a sign - 'gone fishing ', or somesuch - ' watch this space '.
I'm doubly anxious, as I foolishly decided to be gung - ho and join the writing challenge,  NanoWriMo this month, to bolster my writing ability. Ha!
Big fail.
The first thing I noticed was how sickeningly youthful everyone seemed and keen as mustard with those ludicrous word counts.
The proactive devices included constant pep talks via e-mail, and invites to forums and feelgood badges to mark every virtual mountain climbed and word count analysis and sage advice from Those Who Had Gone Before - they all combined to fire up my inner cynic -
' Hey, when I've finished doing all this, am I also expected to write 2000 words a day?'
In fairness, when I started, I was determined to write sequentially and coherently ;
which meant dotting the i's and crossing the T's
Bigger Fail.
That soon fell by the wayside, as I realised that there would be a further couple of months to 'fine tune' the Magnum Opus.
Which struck me as defeating the object a little.
So , I become even more cynical.
Then I just had to work on a new electronic nonsense (did I tell you that I occasionally make weird sounds ?)
After all, the Xmas Cash-In won't write itself.
I'll post a link when it's ready.
Ahem...
And oh, Xmas and Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and
Did I tell you that I am a World Class Procrastinator ?
Still, I wrote a stream of consciousness piece which I could concievably shoehorn into my space opera.
If  I introduce quantum mechanics and the idea of a parallel universe.
Where everyone speaks like a Monty Python character.
So, probably not then.
I've downsized my dreams.

I'm still quietly optimistic, however.
Hovering at 24,000 words...
Hey, there's a market for novellas, right?
Short attention spans, fast reads on the daily commute?
Good, because I hate those unwieldy six - book chronicles.


I digress - the purpose of this rant is to apologise for the lack of this weekly blog.
I hit the buffers.
Oddly enough, my original intention was just to post a notice about writers block, by way of apology.
So even this much is a bonus, yay! (waves ridiculously small flag).
Little victories.


Normal service will be resumed...promise!