Goodbye Dippy the dinosaur

'Save Dippy', they screamed from the rooftops.

If you've never visited the London Natural History Museum then you probably have no idea who Dippy is (I must admit, I didn't know he/she had a name). But it seems that there is a secret underground following for this plaster cast model of a Diplodocus skeleton. After the museum announced today that it would be switching the model skeleton in 2017 with the real skeleton of Whaley (yes, I just made up that nickname, shut up), the 25m skeleton of a whale that was beached in Ireland in the late 1800's.

Petitions and fake twitter accounts have been set up to bring attention to this travesty of museum exhibitions and to convince the museum to reverse it's decision. Sure, it's always sad to see a friend packed in to a storage box in the back of a museum (not from personal experience), but Dippy has had a 35 year long life in the front hall of the museum, which is pretty incredible for a skeleton that isn't even real!

And that's the main argument from the museum for changing the exhibits. Whilst the dinosaur is a paper cast model of a relatively unknown dinosaur, Whaley (this nicknames going to stick, I swear) is a real skeleton of a whale whos life and death are relatively well known. It's also an incredible example of a whale skeleton, with every bone present. Sure dinosaurs have a certain romance to them (if you're in to giant lizards), but at the end of the day it's essentially a papier-mache model. Surely it's better to flaunt off the incredible real life skeletons instead?

But if you're still not convinced by the museums arguments, then go ahead and sign the petition and spam social media with your love for Dippy. But personally, I'm looking forward to welcoming Whaley, to the front hall of a museum I will probably not visit for many years again, in 2017.

That's no Moon! Oh, wait...

All the worlds doomsayers have been on high alert for the last week as the asteroid 2004 BL86 passed close to the Earth. Of course, when we say close we mean in space scale, which was 1.2 million kilometres, or around 3 times the separation of the Moon and the Earth. The asteroid unsurprisingly passed safely past, as expected (there are many organisations that focus on predicting the paths of asteroids, to watch out for any dangerous ones).

After the panic period, many people were able to spot the asteroid in the night sky last night, which was relatively bright. Such bright asteroids are a rather rare sight, so its always a treat to be able to spot one. But whilst many of us were trying to spot the asteroid with our eyes or binoculars, the team at NASA's Deep Space Network antennae was taking some incredible radio images of the asteroid. Radio waves are reflected off the asteroid which can be seen by the antennae, allowing scientists to see the asteroid even if it isn't illuminated by visible light form the Sun.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/asteroid/20150126/2004BL86-640.gif

The radio images have allowed scientists to measure the size of the asteroid and study some of the details of its surface. But it was one unique feature that they didn't expect to see. The asteroid has a moon! Just as the Earth has a large body orbiting around it, our very own Moon, the asteroid 2004 BL86 also has a piece of rock orbiting around it. It's had to think of a body 1/40th the diameter of the Earth having enough gravity to have its own visible moon. You can see a time lapse of the asteroid above, where its moon can be seen as the bright spot moving down from the top of the image.

But whilst it was a surprise to the scientists that this particular asteroid has a moon, it's not overall a surprise, as many moons have been found orbiting around asteroids in our Solar System already. Still, it's not something we get to see very often, let alone around an asteroid that we can see clearly in the sky. 

Dwarf planet Ceres shows off its beauty

The NASA spacecraft Dawn, which launched 8 years ago, is finally approaching its final destination, the dwarf planet Ceres. The hard working little satellite has already spent over a year studying the asteroid Vesta, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and now is on its way through the asteroid belt to Ceres.

As Dawn has been getting closer to Ceres, it's taken some amazing pictures, one of which can be seen above. This picture was taken around 400,000 kilometres from Ceres, but is getting closer and closer and will eventually take the best images we've ever seen of the mysterious little dwarf planet. But even now we can already start seeing some interesting features on the dwarf planets surface. One of which is the bright spot that can be seen on the planets surface (seen below). We don't know yet what causes this, though it is likely a very reflective area on the surface, reflecting back sun light, but we need a bit more time to find out what it is exactly.

The asteroid belt is the remains of planet formation around our sun, that created the Earth and all the other planets billions of years ago. Leftover material formed the ring of rock, dust and ice that forms the asteroid belt, which in turn likely formed Ceres and Vesta. Whilst Ceres is not a proper planet, instead taking the same dwarf classification as Pluto, it was formed in the same way as planets like Jupiter and the Earth, but failed to sweep up all the remaining material in the belt.

With the NASA New Horizons probe reaching Pluto in the near future, this year seems to be the year of dwarf planets. Hopefully we will be able to get some incredible views of these unexplored worlds and better understand how the solar system formed, all those years ago!