Credit: NASA


Run-off from melting ice near Mars' north pole creates the illusion of lines of trees. Photo credit: APOD

After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap have been unsuccessful.

The venerable robot's primary task in the next few weeks will be to position itself to combat the severe Martian winter. If Spirit survives, it will continue conducting significant new science from its final location.

It is mid-autumn at the solar-powered robot's home on Mars. Winter will begin in May. Solar energy is declining and expected to become insufficient to power further driving by mid-February. The rover team plans to use those remaining potential drives for improving the rover's tilt. Spirit currently tilts slightly toward the south. The winter sun stays in the northern sky, so decreasing the southward tilt would boost the amount of sunshine on the rover's solar panels. 

Something awfully curious is happening 250 million miles away in the asteroid belt. Astronomers think they may be witnessing a never-before-seen collision between two asteroids.

The puzzle centers on a newly discovered object that superficially looks like a comet but lives among the asteroids. The strange object was discovered on January 6 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey. The object appears to be in an orbit inside the main asteroid belt - not a place where comets usually dwell.

The distinction? Comets swoop along elliptical orbits close in to the sun and grow long gaseous and dusty tails as ices sublimate off their solid nucleus and release dust. But asteroids are mostly in more circular orbits and are not normally expected to be as volatile as comets.

In comments veteran comet observer Jim Scotti correctly points out that several other weird comet/asteroid hybrids have been reported over the years. But there is high excitement this time because astronomers following the object are reasonably convinced that for the first time ever they have a ringside seat to watching an actual hypervelocity collision between two previously unseen asteroids. The asteroid belt is littered with debris from ancient shattering collisions, but astronomers have never before seen a head-on smashup in the works.

by Ray Villard, Photo Credit: Spacewatch/U of Arizona
 

(c) G. Els

Partial solar eclipse on the morning of Friday 15 January. Maximum cover for Jhb was around 19%.

More photos can be seen here
 

This image is a mosaic of a portion of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey South Field nearly 1/3 the size of the full moon. It was taken in September and October 2009 and combines data taken in 10 filters from infrared to the near ultraviolet. It made use of the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The survey used 104 Hubble orbits for the WFC images and 100 for the ACS images.

Galaxies in the image are as faint as 26.5 to 27th magnitude and shows 7500 galaxies. How many can you count? 

Image Credit: Virgin Galactic

SpaceShipTwo was unveiled to the world at a press conference on 7 December at the Mojave Spaceport, California. The spaceship, seen here carried by her mothership the VMS Eve, was named the VSS Enterprise by Richard Branson's daughter Holly.