Vanishing Satellites, Planetary Collisions and Nitrogen Lakes

News just in tells us that there has been a collision on Jupiter, probably involving a stray asteroid.
In a move that laughs in the face of improbability, it has been documented by not one, but two amateur astronomers - which conjures a strange image of dedicated, lonely skywatchers !
More to the point, it's bizarre that it should even be noticeable from Earth.
Let's look at the maths for a moment.
At it's closest point to Earth, Jupiter is approximately 628 million miles away.
The object which collided with the gas giant is estimated as a few hundred feet in diameter, so not exactly big.
Yet here is the footage.

Hitomi launch 17 Feb 2016            pic ©JAXA

It's great that amateur astronomers are on the case, because even professionals can mess up -  Japan have just lost their brand new orbiting telescope, barely weeks after launch.
In a blow to JAXA , the satellite named Hitomi, has broken up and is now beyond recovery.
It was designed to examine large and powerful events, such as supernovae and black holes, but the joint Japanese / NASA mission is no more.
It remains a mystery as to what exactly occured, but the 273 million dollar telescope is now so much space debris.
STOP PRESS: The satellite Hitomi has suddenly re-appeared, it has shed some debris, and is in a spin / freefall. 
Due to the uncertainty of this development, I'm not going to delete the previous article yet.
Awaiting further developments as of 30 March 2016.
Exciting !
Thank you !

The controversial (well, he is responsible for the downgrading of Pluto) , Mike Brown @plutokiller, has found another Kuiper belt object whose unusual movements corroborate his planet nine theory - note I said theory - his evidence has not yet been peer reviewed, so it's still early days - although he's probably getting lots of love from the Conspiracy / New Age Niburu contingent.
Cynical, me ?

Frozen nitrogen lake on Pluto       pic NASA/ JPL / Caltech

In other news, hawk - eyed photo scrutinisers (is there no actual name for this increasingly relevant pastime ?) have discovered a small ( 20 miles wide !) frozen lake on Pluto.
Don't book that sailing holiday just yet - it's a nitrogen lake, and without a sun to defrost the Nitrogen - on the other hand there appears to be warmth emanating from inside Pluto , hence the new geological areas, so, despite its position out on the edge of our solar system , Pluto is anything but cold and lifeless.
In a moment of serendipity, I learned today that -169°c is the temperature at which nitrogen liquifies, and nitrogen is the liquid in which proponents (clients?) of Cryonics are preserved.
How this impacts on the news from Pluto, I'm not sure, but there's probably a dystopian sci - fi in there, somewhere...

One place not to go kite flying (or probably even using light sails to harness photons as propulsion) , is the newly discovered supermassive black hole with winds of up to 200 million mph .
That's fast - infact, it's a significant percentage of the speed of light - imagine the ability to 'slingshot' a spacecraft , using the thrust to boost travel speed...

Just to boost those feelings of cosmic insignificance, our Milky Way galaxy ( of which we are a dot on the outer edge) , is part of the Laniakea Supercluster of 100,000 galaxies.

And on that note of cosmic insignificance, I say, cheerio - till next time !