Get yer ticket for Mars!

http://mars.nasa.gov/participate/sen...-name/insight/

Just done mine!

First noticed one of these on William Shatner's twitter a couple of weeks back and wondered what the heck he was on about with a picture of a ticket to Mars for next March!

For some reason it printed without my name though.

Clearest image yet of the bright spots on Ceres https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/cer...ing-new-detail

Latest images from Pluto http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-plut...-s-complicated

Yes I saw this - absolutely incredible images from the Kuiper Belt.

Foggy haze on Pluto http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34285426
This humble little dwarf planet is going to be keeping astronomers busy for a long time.

Indeed.

This is a story on Pluto from a few days ago.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....ures-on-pluto/

Here is a nice recent article on Enceladus - I really think that if there is life elsewhere in the solar system it is going to be on one of the oceanic moons.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...restrial-life/

Thanks for those links. Amazing stuff!

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/...?page=20150917

You are welcome.

Some beautiful images here from the 2015 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34256496

The Plutonian system is the gift that keeps on giving - some truly astonishing new high resolution images of the dwarf planet.

New Horizons has been a real triumph of scientific discovery.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....-res-closeups/

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/perplexi...m-new-horizons

Amazing. And this is only the start of the data coming from Pluto. I think we've got a lot more surprises in store.

Pluto's been hogging the limelight recently but now it's Mars' turn
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...mystery-solved

Intriguing. I wonder if they've found a fossil or something. That will be 4pm in the UK.

I've a feeling it's going to be water related. Either that or Curiosity's been clamped

The Daily Mirror seems to think that the Mars announcement on Monday could be the BIG one about life in the form of microbes. No chance!

Meanwhile back here on Earth there will be a decent supermoon lunar eclipse to view from the UK through the night in the early hours of Monday, 28th September from not long after midnight and the skies across Britain look favourable.

Daily Mirror are bonkers (like all the tabloids).

Supermoon preview, one day early, just in case it's cloudy! Pentax K-3 & 300mm+1.4x converter.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/640/2...7a7b9a0c_b.jpg by D'@ve on Flickr

NASA and others have a habit of of big publicity and then big let downs, e.g. all these Earth II reports when the exoplanets concerned aren't anywhere near being exact matches for Earth.

Expect to be let down tomorrow too. That Curiosity rover is not equipped to be able to detect microfossils and the Red Planet has been dead for a very long time:

A 106-centimetre (42-inch) telescope was installed in 1963 funded by NASA and was used to take detailed photographs of the surface of the Moon in preparation for the Apollo missions. In 1965 the astronomers Pierre and Janine Connes were able to formulate a detailed analysis of the composition of the atmospheres on Mars and Venus, based on the infrared spectra gathered from these planets. The results showed atmospheres in chemical equilibrium. This served as a basis for James Lovelock, a scientist working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, to predict that those planets had no life - a fact that would be proven and scientifically accepted years after.

And now for some proper astro news & updates:

Officials expect to delay next year’s launch of a European Mars orbiter and lander about two months — from January to March — to remove faulty pressure transducers from the landing craft’s braking system, the European Space Agency announced Friday. The launch includes an orbiter built to study the Martian atmosphere and search for trace gases such as methane, which could be a signature for ongoing biological or geological activity on Mars. A 600-kilogram (1,322-pound) stationary lander will accompany the Trace Gas Orbiter to Mars, aiming to complete Europe’s first successful touchdown on the red planet.

India's first-ever Mars probe is now one year into its historic mission, and it's still going strong. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft, also known as Mangalyaan, arrived at the Red Planet on the night of Sept. 23, 2014 (Sept. 24 GMT and Indian Standard Time), just two days after NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution probe (MAVEN) reached Mars orbit.

A rover and landing platform developed as a backup for China’s Chang’e 3 Moon mission will be repurposed to attempt the first touchdown on the lunar far side by the end of the decade, Chinese officials said. The Chang’e 4 landing probe will carry more science payloads than the Chang’e 3 mission, which touched down in the Moon’s Mare Imbrium region in December 2013, according to a Sept. 8 report by China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.

The NASA Cassini spacecraft first observed a jet of water vapour spraying from the southern pole of the small moon Enceladus — hinting at a large body of water beneath the ice — back in 2005. But how big is that body of water, and how does it not freeze over with such cold surface temperatures? Now, NASA has the answers, and Johanna Wagstaffe has the details.

There may be fewer pairs of supermassive black holes orbiting each other at the cores of giant galaxies than previously thought, according to a new study. When two massive galaxies harbouring supermassive black holes collide, their black holes ultimately combine — a process that could be the strongest source of elusive gravitational waves, still yet to be directly detected.

Geologists said Thursday they are bewildered by images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft baring unseen landscapes on Pluto with unexpected “snakeskin” textures, colorful chasms routing through ancient landforms, and vivid new views of apparent glacial flows. One close-up of a set of aligned ridges near Pluto’s day-night terminator, which was at sunset when New Horizons encountered Pluto, has scientists puzzled.

Yes, they don't seem to realise that ordinary people aren't as excited about the things that drive scientists wild. What's major news to a geologist might be a bit "meh" to Joe public, especially after the media have hyped something big happening.

I think the most likely news tomorrow will be about water on Mars. Either more than first realised or it exists in liquid form.

Yes, perhaps it's a dried up saline lake bed or perhaps it's some organic molecules but whatever it is my money's on it not being earth shattering.

The Guardian reckons it could be water related http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...er-speculation

The rest of the media seems to be convinced it's Martians

I am completely underwhelmed by this un-new news: http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/28/94...iscovery-proof

It's been pretty darn obvious from the Mariner 9 orbiter images (1972) onwards that liquid water has flowed at some point in Mars' history as we can see here: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wa...w=1024&bih=659

In particular, the pictures here http://pages.uoregon.edu/jimbrau/Bra...gure_10_09.jpg show channels and semi-lemniscate (that's tear-shaped in English) islands that can only have been created by fluid water and not winds or the ghosts of a long departed Martian civilisation. Here's a relevant paper: http://link.springer.com/referencewo...9_547-1#page-1 (click on Look Inside on the right hand side)

If NASA keep on hyping stories like this, when they do have something exciting no one will be paying attention.

Exactly.

Fly through a nebula instead.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150...of-a-dead-star

Last week's best space photos from NG.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...tures-science/

You seem to have missed the point. This is about water flowing on Mars NOW.