compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

-NASA

Saturn’s spectacular rings are ‘very young’
The end phases of the Cassini mission should yield new information about Saturn’s interior.
We’re looking at Saturn at a very special time in the history of the Solar System, according to scientists. They’ve confirmed the planet’s iconic rings are very young – no more than 100 million years old…more

China Moon probe-CLEP

Chang’e-4: China Moon probes take snaps of each other
A Chinese rover and lander have taken images of each other on the Moon’s surface. Also released are new panoramic images of the landing site, along with video of the vehicles touching down. The Chang’e-4 mission is the first to explore the Moon’s far side from the surface…more

-Griffith Observatory

During the Lunar Eclipse, Something Slammed Into the Moon
A white dot in the bottom left corner of the moon captured by livestreams during this week’s lunar eclipse was a flash from a collision with the lunar surface likely caused by a tiny, fast-moving meteoroid left behind by a comet. Anthony Cook, an astronomical observer at Los Angeles’ Griffith Observatory which streamed the eclipse…more

-NYT

What Happened to Earth’s Ancient Craters?
Where have Earth’s craters gone? Certainly we have the striking Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, and Chicxulub, which lies beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, the 100-mile-wide scar of the meteor that likely killed off the dinosaurs. The pace of space rocks pummeling Earth and the moon was relatively infrequent, but then doubled or tripled for unknown reasons, a new study finds…more

-Jamie Cooper

‘Super blood wolf moon’ meteoroid strike photographed
A photographer has said capturing the rarely seen sight of a meteoroid crashing into the Moon was “just beautiful”. The odds of it happening in an area of darkness were “astronomical”…more

-NASA

Nasa’s New Horizons
Best image yet of ‘space snowman’ Ultima Thule The New Horizons probe has sent back its best picture yet of the small, icy object Ultima Thule, which it flew past on New Year’s Day…more

Before we explored outer space, we tried to paint it
In 1939, artist Charles Bittinger imagined worlds we hadn’t traveled to yet—sometimes with impressive accuracy…more