Carnival of Space #338
Welcome to the 338th Carnival of Space! Every week space science and astronomy bloggers from around the world submit their best work to the Carnival of Space curator, whose job it is to collect their articles into one easy-to-parse summary of what’s new and relevant in the field. This week’s carnival curator is me, and you will find the submissions below:First up is Nancy Atkinson from Universe Today, with exciting news from the Herschell orbital observatory about the discovery of water vapour spewing out from the minor planet Ceres. The Meridiani Journal offers a second point of view on the recent discovery of water vapour emanating from Ceres, which is either the largest asteroid in the Solar System, or an average Dwarf Planet. Universe Today makes a second contribution with Bob King writing about the sudden appearance of supernova SN2014J in the galaxy M82.
Still on the topic of the supernova, AstroSwanny of Aartscope Blog give a little detail on the discovery of the supernova, and offers some advice on how best to see it. Then comes Ray Sanders of Dear Astronomer, writing about a Moon Infographic that he was asked to endorse, and ended up error-correcting. Incidentally, Ray also has a Lego kit of the Curiosity rover on Mars which he is giving away to whoever can build up with the best model of Curiosity from their own jumbled Lego collections.
The carnival of space continues with Next Big Future‘s an article about Earth’s Minimoons (not to be confused with the recently coined term for the smallest full moon of the year). These are small asteroids which get captured by Earth’s gravity and hang around for a few months in chaotic orbits before finally being flung out into space again. These minimoons could be a conveniently nearby and self-renewing source of minerals for space mining.
Speaking of Minimoons, the word has recently become popular in another meaning: The opposite of a Supermoon, or the smallest full moon of the year. Ian Musgrave’s Astroblog presents images of the most recent Minimoon which happened just a few weeks ago. And finally, the Chandra Xray Observatory blog makes the final contribution to the Carnival with news of Chandra’s recent discovery of the most powerful blackhole ever seen. This black hole’s influence extends so far out into space that it has prevented the formation of trillions of stars throughout its galaxy.
And that’s the end of this week’s Carnival of Space. Tune in next week for a link to the 339th Carnival, which will be hosted by The Venus Transit!