NASA's New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced-color view of Charon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red, and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Click image for more on Charon at Astronomy Magazine.
The Bad Astronomer occasionally veers away from pure science and weighs in on politics. His read of the GOP clown-car vs. science looks spot on to me,
you decide:
It’s time to not only face facts, but to call them out, too: This cohort of Republican presidential candidates isn’t exactly a brain trust. Every time I see an article about something one of the GOP contenders has said, I’m stunned at just how much lower they can sink. It’s as if they’re scrambling on purpose to brag about the dumbest possible thing they can come up with. Think I’m exaggerating? Here are some choice examples of ideas that have come out of the mouth holes of the remaining viable candidates ...
- When really big things happen it's often the result of two or more factors converging. At least that's the idea behind the double-whammy theory of non-avian dino extinction 65 million years ago:
Many scientists have long blamed a single culprit in the sudden and violent mass extinction that took out the dinosaurs: an asteroid that came screaming out of the skies some 66 million years ago. But it turns out that this asteroid may have had an accomplice. Researchers studying ancient lava flows in present-day India have also implicated the volcanic eruptions that they say turned massively deadly around the same time that the asteroid hit ...
- Spaceweather posted some of the best images of last week's super-moon eclipse.
- Botanists in spaaaace ....
- New Horizons delivers again and it will keep delivering for months to come. Here's the latest from the Kuiper Belt on Charon, Pluto's over-sized supermoon:
At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they’re finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations, and more.