Solscape

Mars may get most of the news, but don’t forget there’s a spacecraft orbiting Venus too. New images released from ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft show new details about our twin planet’s atmosphere. These night-side infrared images reveal thermal radiation emanating from beneath the planet’s thick obscuring cloud deck. The clouds themselves are stretched out because of high-speed winds in the atmosphere.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM65OV74TE_index_0.html

Although Ceres is the largest main-belt asteroid and was the first to be discovered (by G. Piazzi in 1801), its physical properties are still not well understood. While it is expected to have retained a large amount of primordial water ice in its interior, many questions about the composition of its surface and sub-surface layers, the properties of its regolith and its degree of differentiation, remain unanswered. A team of astronomers led by Benoit Carry of the Paris-Meudon Observatory used state-of-the-art adaptive optics instrumentation available at the Keck observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to image the surface of Ceres with a spatial resolution of about 30 km.
Article and Images @ Keck Observatory

A team of researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University of Massachusetts studied core samples from part of the continental shelf that was exposed during the last Ice Age. The scientists think that the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia was flooded 1.000 years earlier than previously thought.
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=750

The delicate lady bug in your garden could be frighteningly large if only there was a greater concentration of oxygen in the air, a new study concludes. The study adds support to the theory that some insects were much larger during the late Paleozoic period because they had a much richer oxygen supply.

Oxygen Concentration In The Air Limits Beetle’s Size

New Hubble images have provided a dramatic glimpse of a large massive galaxy under assembly as smaller galaxies merge. Hubble observations of the galaxy MRC 1138-262, nicknamed the “Spiderweb Galaxy”, have shown dozens of star-forming satellite galaxies in the actual process of merging.
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0614.html

The Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed that a Jupiter-like gas giant planet circling very close to its sun is always as hot as fire on one side, and potentially as cold as ice on the other.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/spitzer-20061012.html

The DPS conference in Pasadena is now in full swing. News and press releases are slowly trickling out of that conference, from New Scientist which reported on an Enceladus theory relating cosmic rays and Enceladus’ jets to public releases at the Cassini website and NASA’s Planetary Photojournal.
Here are some Cassini news from this conference:
Saturn’s Rings Show Evidence Of A Modern-day Collision

Cassini Finds More Rings Highlighted By Telltale Small Particles

PIA08329: In Saturn’s Shadow

PIA01941: String of Pearls

Bizarre “string of pearls” adorns Saturn

Cosmic rays could power icy moon’s plumes

One of the biggest mysteries in the solar system is why Venus has no moon. A new model suggests that our sister planet may have in fact had a moon, but that it was destroyed.
Article @ Scientific American

The surface of the solar system’s largest asteroid, Ceres, has been mapped in infrared light in fine detail for the first time. The feat will pave the way for a better determination of the surface composition of Ceres, whose interior is believed to be 25% water ice. The 950-kilometre-wide space rock lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is massive enough for its gravity to make it a sphere, a quality that nearly earned it planetary status in August 2006. The Hubble Space Telescope took visible light images of Ceres in 2003 and 2004 and also mapped the asteroid in ultraviolet light in 2001. These images show bright and dark patches on the asteroid, but astronomers still do not know exactly what the patches represent. Now astronomers led by Benoit Carry of the Paris-Meuden Observatory in France have taken a step towards solving the mystery by obtaining the first high-resolution images of Ceres in infrared light, which is better than visible or UV light at distinguishing chemicals. They used the Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii to obtain the images, which show features as small as 30 kilometres across. The infrared images show bright and dark patches that closely match what Hubble saw in visible light.
Source:
Surface mapping of asteroid Ceres with the Keck AO system
Carry, B., Dumas, C., Fulchignoni, M., Merline, W.
Presented at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences in Pasadena, California, October 8-13, 2006.
Images of Dwarf Planet Ceres

The Hubble Space Telescope turned its gaze towards a relatively nearby Jupiter-sized world recently. The planet orbits the Sun-like star Epsilon Eridani, which is located only 10,5 light-years away. This makes the planet so close that it could be directly observable by Hubble and large ground-based observatories. The best opportunity will come in 2007, when the planet makes its closest approach to its parent star, and the reflected light should make it observable with our best instruments.
Hubble Observations Confirm that Planets Form from Disks Around Stars