APOD 3.5

The Messenger space craft is now orbiting the sun at the same distance as Mercury. From its location, we can see the solar system from it's vantage point in this image: Solar system from Messenger


All of the planets out to Saturn are visible in the image, and the zoomed shots can even see Earth's moon and all four Galilean Satellites. Quite the impressive telescope mounted on that craft. By the looks of the image, if the cloud in the same piece of the image as Neptune's location is the Milky Way, the ecliptic is very heavily inclined to the rest of the galaxy. Almost perpendicular.

APOD 3.4

Geronimo! That's quite a long drop.
 
This is quite a bit different from the mostly liquid water...observatories? Doesn't seem like the correct term. The idea is the same: Neutrinos that have been sent from space, namely the sun, will pass right through most surfaces, but the few that ricochet off the ice can be measured by large light detectors that are strung together in that cable. These holes in the ground are in Antarctica, hardly the most hospitable place, but at least the ice isn't going anywhere until global warming kicks in.
     although on that note, fun fact: the ice caps melting lets the freshwater into the sea, messes with currents, and somewhere along the way, supposedly, this alter the weather to actually start cooling everything. Invest in a company that makes Parkas.

APOD 3.3

Oh boy! Exoplanets! When I had done my exoplanet quarter project, I had found many worlds that I declared "poor real estate." Never did I find a group like the 6 worlds around Kepler-11 where they are all closer to their star than Mercury is to ours. All terrestrial and found with the transits system to boot. We're not going to find another Gliese-581G that close to a sun-like star, though, but with the Keplar telescope having found 1200 planets in a portion of only 1/400th of the sky, we should be able to find another habitable world someday. Getting there is another story. See ya then, Vulcans.