LordFerret

That's your own fault - for being on Facebook. lol

I think were it a Red Dwarf, we'd have found it already ... especially if it's supposedly in our neighborhood. I still have my doubts about a Brown Dwarf scenario. We've detected them elsewhere, over 1800 of them so far, and they're all much farther away than our own 'local group' here. The closest one to us found to date is WISE J085510.83-071442.5 ... http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/786/2/L18

That's an interesting feature. Too bad we can't shed a little more light on it. Do you think they got a better shot of it better illuminated?

Of course the answer to that is 'no'. However, it's been studied and 'mapped' well enough that we count on it (TDB - Barycentric Dynamical Time) for space exploration and body ephemeris.

I would think if a brown dwarf was involved, our sun's orbit about its barycenter would show otherwise ... which it doesn't.

That being the case (kicking off WW3), I don't think you'd get far in from that monitored boundary before being encountered... you'd not make it 'to the coast'.

My understanding, being the sub is just outside the USA's claimed territorial limits (200 miles), a coastal target (like NYC, or Philly, or DC) would be under 7 minutes. How true that is? I don't know, and don't care to test it. - - - Updated - - - ...actually, I think that's based on the 'rocket' being a cruise missle.

No, in Blender it's a little different, especially depending on whether you want to rotate the object itself or the point of view.

Oh, great.

It's not 'Squid', it's Skuad.

I just recently started using this mod ... it's excellent, it totally solved the frustrations of return from EVA to capsule for me. I totally recommend it. +1

The pervasive rippling of structures throughout the landscape is really something. Need to get closer. Nice! Who put this together? Mindlessly, instinctively, I immediately found myself trying to rotate the image for viewing - doh! There are a few Celestia folks who are already working on replacement texture maps. Edit- Ooooo... I see a nice place to land. lol

If that's true?... they should be flogged, raked across the coals, and then drawn and quartered!!! Cannot argue with Linux! You forgot MSNBC, which punts as often as Windows does. That top image is fantastic! Top left quadrant - dunes?!? Friggin awesome!

Notice they work with Macs. Eat your heart out Winblows.

I tend to agree with this. The object in question is thought to be twice the size of Earth, which supposedly would provide mass enough to fit some of the speculation about TNOs... but not quite. However, I more tend to believe a scenario of passing/colliding neighbor star and/or capture, as such is believed with Sedna. This speculation about Sedna is a bit more sound, which actually fits the picture better. This was recently discussed in the Pluto New Horizons thread. I'll share the link here again ... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03105v1.pdf You can add to this another discovery from last year, which also fits this picture ... http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/446/4/3788.short

You caught that too, eh? I actually took my little screen duster brush to it first before I realized. lol - - - Updated - - - Downloading and looking at it, it's an image artifact. There's another 'up' and to the 'right' of it.

Complete with 8-bit ringtones? https://youtu.be/KJ87nU9kGe0

Pong.

Easy to find, although you won't see both stars because the companion is too small - Sirius and Sirius b. There's a whole group of stars associated in Sirius, a few I recall being binaries, and all pretty much hot young blue stars. Alpha Centauri also, A & B, but that's actually a trinary system as there's a little red dwarf (Proxima Centauri) involved with A & B's barycenter. Beta-Cygni is a trinary system also, but I'm not sure how clear that will work for you with binoculars. Maybe take a peek at Castor in Gemini... there are six stars in that system! You should try a few searches on Google (or your browser of choice) for visible star group lists. That would help you find attainable goals for the equipment you're stuck using.

Being the coloration comes from the color filters on Ralph, this tells me they've got preliminary spectral data (which I believe they said was the priority 1 data to be sent). I'm a little disappointed they're not stating (or even speculating) what the colored regions represent ... other than the obvious we've all heard about before and have been discussing... it's poorly defined in the image text.

I had to go fire up my old version of Celestia (v1.6) and take a look at Pluto. My how things have changed.

I don't think it's a crater per-say, not in the sense it's been mentioned. My eye sees flows into?/out-of? the 'crater'... but I'll not really admit that right now, I'll wait until the good hires stuff comes down.

Again, an IQ test is a measure of 'capacity for learning'. And, if you're the smartest man in the world but can't read?... you're not the smartest man in the world - you may merely have to potential to be ... and 'potential' does not make "is".

An IQ test is not a measure of your 'intelligence'... it is a measure of your 'potential for learning'. For those of you who think such tests are bunk, I'll suggest you sit down and read "Bias In Mental Testing" by Arthur R. Jensen ... you'll find the meat in chapter 4. I'll point out to you that Jensen set out to prove there was bias in such testing, but his research proved otherwise. Many books have been written since contesting Jensen's findings ... but NONE OF THEM include any empirical data, none of them bothered to retest Jensen's metrics, and they're all based on "opinion" and "feelings".

It doesn't look very well maintained. :/