Random exciting astronomy stuff

 

First of all, nifty article from Bad Astronomy on the Moon's youngest known natural crater. This was not present in Apollo 15 images from 1971, but was present in images from the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter dating to 2009. So that is very new! The actual object responsible would have been tiny, and harmless to Earth thanks to our atmosphere, but still. Isn't it cool that things still change in the solar system? Not even our moon is static.

Second of all, I don't know anything about them but these planned ESA missions sound like they could provide us with a lot of exciting information once they get underway. Particularly the LISA precursor - I'd had the impression that LISA, which might get us our first direct detection of the gravity waves predicted by general relativity, had been canned.

Finally, here is a pretty video of the sun: