Welcome to the Carnival of Space, where we bring together the newest and most interesting space news for your weekly consumption.  If you’ve been wondering when last week’s carnival was going to land, well we’re doing something a little different today!  Pam Hoffman from Everyday Spacer and I have worked together for a double-release, meaning that you get not one but two carnivals!  The first you can read here, on this page, and the second is over at Everyday Spacer.

So let’s get to it!

First up, Brown Spaceman takes a look at the coldest region in the universe: The Boomerang Nebula (Bow Tie Nebula).  Located 5000 light years away in the constellation Centaurus, it has a temperature of only 1º above absolute zero.

Then three items from Universe Today.  First, new research by Australian geologists has found that a 30 km Wide Asteroid Impacted Australia 3.4 Billion Years Ago.  This is the second oldest asteroid strike that we now know of, and would have been one of the most violent explosions in the planets history.

Next, news that NASA’s Orion EM-1 Crew Module Passes Critical Pressure Tests at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. The Orion crew module is intended to be at the heart of crewed deep space missions, and will be the part of the spacecraft where astronauts will live and work.

And then an article about the New Horizons spacecraft, which as just sent us the First Science On Distant Kuiper Belt Object.  This object is 145 kilometers across, and orbits the Sun at a distance of five billion kilometers!

Our last entry comes from Peter Edmonds, and is a review of Colouring the Universe, a book by Travis Rector, Kim Arcand and Megan Watzke.  The book is about astronomical imagery, and looks at both aesthetic and scientific principles while attempting to respond to some of the criticism levelled at famous astronomical images by both the artistic and scientific community.

And that’s all from my half of this week’s Carnival of Space!  For the rest, head on over to Everyday Spacer right now!