Nothing in the universe has a happy ending though, not even the universe itself. It's not going to live happily ever after and neither is anything within it.

True, but at least like Duracell bunny batteries, K and M class stars go on and on and on for billions and billions of years.

No update would be complete without mention of Planet Nine:

Almost as interesting as Planet 9's present location is how this behemoth wound up cooling its heels ten times further from the Sun than Pluto. Several new modeling efforts led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are now attempting to answer that question. There are essentially three competing hypotheses.

Meanwhile, much closer to homeworld:

Moon caves could provide shelter for astronauts exploring Earth's nearest neighbor, researchers say. A new analysis of data gathered by NASA's twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft, which mapped the moon's gravitational field in unprecedented detail, turned up a number of new candidates for lava tubes — cave-like structures that could be large enough to house supplies and astronauts.

Don't know whether this has been mentioned in this thread, if so sorry. But there is a transit of Mercury tomorrow visible from the UK, starting approximately at 12.42pm.
Ian.

I think it starts at 12:12.

Yep! 12:12 - until 7:42pm

A bunch of us from my local astronomical society are doing a bit of public outreach at a 'farm-shop' cafe in Weardale - on the field beside the car-park.
Some of us will be imaging it, others have sunspot/transit filtered telescopes, plus a few h-alpha 'scopes.
We have the co-operation of the cafe owners - they're gonna supply us with drinks and we're putting cards on the cafe tables, inviting people to come over and have a look.

Sounds nice. I hope the sun shines through like it is in London.

I may pop up Blackheath and Greenwich later to see if anybody's there.

The remarkable geological activity of saturn's moon Enceladus, and a beautiful new global digital-elevation model (DEM) of Mercury.

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-encelad...starlight.html

http://www.livescience.com/54691-new...-and-lows.html

Are we all alone in the universe?

http://www.livescience.com/54734-sea...-we-alone.html

The highest ever spacial resolution view of Mercury's recent transit of the Sun.

http://www.livescience.com/54747-sha...iew-video.html

http://www.space.com/32869-mercury-t...ory-video.html

Recent research on two of the most interesting objects in the Solar System.

How the bizarre mountains of Io may have formed and the chemical composition of Europa's mysterious ocean (which may well contain life).

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-mountai...n-io.html#nRlv

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-europa-...-chemical.html

A shitload of new astronomy articles.

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-photoni...-universe.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-beautif...mentation.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-cometar...net-hints.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-stellar...own-dwarf.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-superno...tank-clue.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-jupiter...acts-year.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-stellar...y-deepens.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-evidenc...-sun-like.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-horizon...ost-pluto.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-asassn-...rluminous.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-faintes...se-galaxy.html

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-galacti...-elements.html

...and now for the artistic and aspirational side of things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annota...&v=YH3c1QZzRK4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u886CmxlY4

It's Red Planet update time:

Scientists think they see evidence of two huge tsunamis having once swept across the surface of Mars. They point to satellite data suggesting a major redistribution of sediments over a large region at the edge of the Red Planet's northern lowlands.

Bright, frosty polar caps, and clouds above a vivid, rust-colored landscape reveal Mars as a dynamic seasonal planet in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope view taken on May 12, 2016, when Mars was 50 million miles from Earth. The Hubble image reveals details as small as 20 to 30 miles across.

That article headline is an example of the worst form of anthropocentrism. It is just the same sort of braindead and backward thinking that placed Earth at the centre of the entire universe hundreds of years ago.

Matthew Stanley was right to point out in that article that Earth's current exoplanet detection capabilities are biased towards Jupiters and Saturns but with improvements in Earth and space-based telescopes it should become easier to identify Earth-mass planets.

Life (albeit mostly microbial) is probably widespread and abundant within this galaxy, let alone the rest of the universe, and within the next few decades it will become possible to identify Earth-like planets where microbes have altered the planetary atmospheres and the composition of those far away planetary atmospheres will be able to be determined by spectroscopic analyses.

Similarly, if within this solar system, life is found to have independently evolved on places like Europa and Enceladus then the implications are profound because that would clearly indicate that wherever there are clement conditions then there is a very high probability that life will appear and evolve.

I totally agree - in the next few decades those mysterious moons Enceladus and Europa should be the focus of NASA's attention, Mars has more than it's fair share atm.

While Mars is like a spectacular geological national park on a planetary scale, it has so far given every impression of being completely lifeless.

There is a debate going on about whether Mars in its earliest Noachian era had a warm, wet past, a cold, wet past (like today's Arctic Ocean) or an intermittent and alternating wet and dry periods with the bursts of warmer, wet periods being produced by episodic vulcanism and periodic large meteorite impacts.

If it's that last option in particular then the chances of life ever having developed on that planet are remote. Ultimately, these questions will only probably be answered in full when there are a number of crewed scientific research bases are on Mars just like today's Antarctica.

Which reminds me, it is possible that some Earth life forms, such as endoliths, could survive on Mars in its current state. It would also be theoretically possible to genetically engineer more microorganisms to survive on Mars and to make the conditions more clement on that planet, i.e. a slow terraforming process.

Link: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest...vive-mars.html

SpaceX launch window tonight from 10:40pm BST for 2 hours. The payload is Thaicom 8, a commercial communications satellite, heading for geostationary transfer orbit. The first stage will attempt a sea landing. The local time is 5:50pm, so there should be enough light to see it coming.

http://www.spacex.com/webcast

^^ postponed until same time tonight.

THAICOM 8 Technical Webcast

T minus 6 minutes...

The race to see the supermassive black hole hole at the centre of our galaxy and exploring the moons of the Solar system's five dwarf planets.

http://www.seeker.com/the-race-to-se...823325808.html

http://www.seeker.com/explore-the-dw...825394525.html

WOW! SpaceX first stage landing from onboard camera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEz03Z8azc

^^ albeit sped up. I'd like to see a real-time version.

The last one I saw was pretty quick in real time, certainly faster than I expected.

Update - the new blow up side room on the International Space Station has now been inflated:

NASA slowly inflated a new experimental room at the International Space Station on Saturday, with better luck than the first try two days earlier. Astronaut Jeffrey Williams opened a valve and introduced 22 seconds' worth of air into the compartment, then several more seconds in brief bursts. Mission Control reported noticeable growth in the structure, the first of its kind for space fliers.

Two updates today:

NASA reveals new close-up images of Pluto. Released both as a high-res still and in the form of a video, the new images form a mosaic spanning part of the hemisphere of Pluto that the New Horizons spacecraft flew over back on July 14, 2015.

At 10:29pm BST (21:29 UT) on Monday, 30 May 2016, Earth and Mars will be 46,777,480 miles (75,281,050 kilometres) apart — the closest that the pair have been since 30 October 2005.

Look due south towards the horizon to see Mars. Interestingly, Mars will be close to the star Antares and that star's name means "rival of Mars" due to its red colour.