June 2 Recap

Another succesful summer addition of the astronomy journal club. Jesse Rogerson hosted, here are a list of the various talking points.

First off, if you've ever been interested in seeing a full video of the inside of the ISS, check out this youtube video.

Marshall also provided video of one entire night time-lapse video of the sky above the volcano Cotopaxi, it's quite impressive.

During the years of the moon landings, President Nixon provided each of the 50 states with a commerative chunk of moon rock (approx the size of a golf ball) attached to a plaque. Unfortunately the governors of the states at the time seem to have found these trinkets unimportant as many of them have been lost. Just recently, Colorado both lost and found there little piece of moon history. Check out the story here.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has seen first light! Jupiter never looked so good in IR.

With NASA seemingly out of the race, other countries seem to be stepping up to aim for the moon. JAXA has a plan to have a moon base operational 2020...for robots.

A small chunk of space something went whizzing by Earth recently, although it seems to be manmade.

Herchel has released an image probing to z~5. This galaxy-studded image is impressive to say the least.

The blackhole at the centre of M87 seems to be slightly off-centre (to the tune of 0.1"). A number of reasons have been hypothesized for this difference, though we're not sure why.

Andromeda's black hole seems to be accreting as we speak, over the past 10 years adromeda has brightened over 100 times.

Gemini has observed one of the most massive galaxies in the local universe!

Ever wondered why the martian polar ice caps look the way they do? have no fear, katabatic winds are the reason!

Thanks for coming everyone, see you next week!