Astronomy

It is good to have multiple theories. If there is only one, I tend to assume it has been validated before much evidence is available. At least they aren't saying it is dark matter that is modifying the orbits of the Kuiper Belt objects.

This dragon-like salamander has a life of up to 100 years. Live in the caves of Postonja in Slovenia. Recently found the first egg of this species.

EarthSky has a nice article on the potential of moons to influence habitability on the planets moons often circulate around.

It's interesting that the Moon stabilizes the seasons by keeping the Earth't tilt stable. But no known exomoons to date.

Most exmoons, like in our sun (star), will be too far away for us to identify them. How far away is the nearest star? Do we know if any planets orbit it? And even harder, how many moons orbit its planets, how large they are? We still know next to nothing about our galaxy, let alone the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

We didn't even know that Pluto had moons until recently.

One of the things that puzzles me the most about astronomy is I don't know the margin of error around what we think is correct.

This post on Phobos is interesting: http://www.space.com/32152-mars-myst...ekly_2016-3-07. Its the closest moon to any planet so far discovered. And it is gradually spiralling into Mars. Strains in Phobos structure are beginning to show, as well.

It is interesting that the moons of Mars were unknown prior to 1877 and in the 1950's it was conjectured that Phobos may be artificial because of its low orbit. This conjecture was later rejected. This comes from a link in the link you cited: http://www.space.com/20346-phobos-moon.html

See this interesting post in NeuroLogica Blog: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/i...moons-of-mars/. Not a bad guess by Jonathan Swift.

It looks like Swift was satirizing scientists. I suspect he got the idea of Mars having two moons from Kepler.

Must have done. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Mars

Two comets making close flybys of Earth in late March:

http://earthsky.org/space/twin-comet...osely-in-march

I'll see if I can find that comet this evening.

More on Pluto. We are beginning to learn a lot about our own solar system. An exciting time in astronomy: http://www.space.com/32301-pluto-sur...-horizons.html

I didn't expect Pluto to be still active. It is a good reminder that models and reality are not likely the same thing. Look closer and the models start falling apart. Of course one of the reasons to emphasize the new, model-shaking information that New Horizons has provided is to get an extended mission which requires funding. Since New Horizons is already out there, we might as well look.