Hi! I've been out of town on vacation for a few weeks which explains the crickets chirping on my blog. I've got a couple substantive posts brewing, but in the meantime enjoy this new release from NASA concerning the creepiest planet yet discovered:

"Planet TrES-2b reflects back less than one percent of the light it receives, making it darker than any known planet or moon, darker even than coal. Jupiter-sized TrES-2b orbits extremely close to a sun-like star 750 light years away, and was discovered producing slight eclipses in 2006 using the modest 10-cm telescopes of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES). The alien world's strange darkness, however, was only uncovered recently by observations indicating its slight reflective glow by the Earth-orbiting Kepler satellite. An artist's drawing of planet is below, complete with unsubstantiated speculation on possible moons. Reasons for TrES-2b's darkness remain unknown and are an active topic of research."

Here's an image taken by Cassini in August 2010 from the night side of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The long white band at the bottom of the picture is the crest of Saturn where you can see different layers of Saturn's atmosphere.

The most remarkable aspect of this photo are the huge water plumes spewing up from the surface of Enceladus. These plumes are ejected from long fissures on the planet's icy surface. They demonstrate that there is a massive abundance of liquid water near the surface of Enceladus. Wow!!

By the way... I'm sorry posting has been slow over the past few weeks. I've been unusually busy at work and home. I've been gaming a lot and have a number of substantive posts I am aiming to write up when I  get a chance. I probably won't get to updating the blog rankings for a week or two - sorry about that.

On January 20 NASA's new NanoSail-D unfurled it's solar sails. This craft is literally propelled by pressure from sunlight. NanoSail-D will re-enter the atmosphere in April or May, but until then it will occasionally be visible to the naked eye. I love you, NASA.

Obviously I haven't been posting much lately. A glass of water got spilled on my computer at home, so I was out of action for a while. On top of that I've been unusually busy with work. I may not be posting much until after the holidays.

Credit: K. Reardon (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, INAF) IBIS, DST, NSO Explanation: Imagine a pipe as wide as a state and as long as the Earth. Now imagine that this pipe is filled with hot gas moving 50,000 kilometers per hour. Further imagine that this pipe is not made of metal but a transparent magnetic field. You are envisioning just one of thousands of young spicules on the active Sun. Pictured above is one of the highest resolution image yet of these enigmatic solar flux tubes. Spicules line the above frame of solar active region 11092 that crossed the Sun last month, but are particularly evident converging on the sunspot on the lower left. Time-sequenced images have recently shown that spicules last about five minutes, starting out as tall tubes of rapidly rising gas but eventually fading as the gas peaks and falls back down to the Sun. What determines the creation and dynamics of spicules remains a topic of active research.

Enjoy these new photos from the European Space Agency's Venus Express. They depict a great gas vortex tunnel at Venus' south pole. These creepy photos are highly inspirational for my Labyrinth Lord Penelion Campaign (currently on baby hiatus), where the PCs were last seen dangling from a rope in a haunted cloud mine...

Speaking of flares, look at this amazing SDO video of the flare in the upper left corner of the above image: