InSight (The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and most of its scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. As of 3 December 2022, InSight has been active on Mars for 1429 sols (1468 days; 4 years, 7 days). InSight's objectives are to place a seismometer, called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate 3D models of the planet's interior; and measure internal heat transfer using a heat probe called HP3 to study Mars' early geological evolution. This could bring a new understanding of how the Solar System's terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars – and Earth's Moon form and evolve. The lander was originally planned for launch in March 2016. An instrument problem delayed the launch beyond the 2016 launch window. NASA officials rescheduled the InSight launch to May 2018 and during the wait the instrument was repaired. This increased the total cost from US$675 million to US$830 million. NASA stated that due to excessive dust on its solar panels preventing it from recharging, they plan to put InSight in low-power mode for detecting seismic events in July 2022 and continue monitoring the lander through the operational period ending in December 2022)

Off to work................................

Jodrell Bank Observatory  in Cheshire, England, hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astronomer at the university, to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in the Second World War. It has since played an important role in the research of meteoroids, quasars, pulsars, masers and gravitational lenses, and was heavily involved with the tracking of space probes at the start of the Space Age.

The main telescope at the observatory is the Lovell Telescope. Its diameter of 250 ft (76 m) makes it the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world. There are three other active telescopes at the observatory; the Mark II, and 42 ft (13 m) and 7 m diameter radio telescopes. Jodrell Bank Observatory is the base of the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN), a National Facility run by the University of Manchester on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

The Kelly Brothers (Mark Edward Kelly (born February 21, 1964) is an American politician, former astronaut, and United States Navy captain who has served as the junior United States senator from Arizona since 2020. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected in the special election held following the death of Senator John McCain, defeating incumbent Republican Martha McSally. Kelly flew combat missions during the Gulf War as a naval aviator before being selected as a NASA Space Shuttle pilot in 1996. He flew his first space mission in 2001 as pilot of STS-108, piloted STS-121 in 2006, and commanded STS-124 in 2008 and STS-134 in 2011, the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour. His identical twin, Scott Kelly, is also a retired astronaut; they are the only siblings to have both traveled into orbit. Kelly's wife, then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt on January 8, 2011. Six people died in the Tucson shooting. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting the following year, Giffords and Kelly founded the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Solutions, later renamed Giffords, which campaigns for gun control measures like universal background checks and red flag laws. Kelly announced his candidacy for Arizona's Class 3 U.S. Senate seat in the 2020 special election on February 12, 2019. He won the Democratic primary on August 4, 2020, and defeated incumbent Republican Martha McSally in the November 3, 2020, general election, becoming the first Democrat to win this seat since 1962. Kelly was sworn in on December 2, 2020. In 2022, he was elected to a full term in office, defeating Republican challenger Blake Masters. Scott Joseph Kelly (born February 21, 1964) is an American engineer, retired astronaut, and naval aviator. A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on Expeditions 26, 45, and 46. Kelly's first spaceflight was as pilot of Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-103 in December 1999. This was the third servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, and lasted for just under eight days. Kelly's second spaceflight was as mission commander of STS-118, a 12-day Space Shuttle mission to the ISS in August 2007. Kelly's third spaceflight was as a crewmember on Expedition 25/26 on the ISS. He arrived at the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-01M on October 9, 2010, and served as a flight engineer until he took over command of the station on November 25, 2010, at the start of Expedition 26. Expedition 26 ended on March 16, 2011, with the departure of Soyuz TMA-01M. In November 2012, Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko were selected for a year-long mission to the ISS. Their year in space began with the launch of Soyuz TMA-16M on March 27, 2015, and they remained on the station for Expeditions 43, 44, 45, and 46. The mission ended on March 1, 2016, with the departure of Soyuz TMA-18M from the station. Kelly retired from NASA on April 1, 2016)

Off to work.........................................

The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five uncrewed lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moon's surface, they provided the first photographs from lunar orbit and photographed both the Moon and Earth.

All five missions were successful, and 99 percent of the lunar surface was mapped from photographs taken with a resolution of 60 meters (200 ft) or better. The first three missions were dedicated to imaging 20 potential crewed lunar landing sites, selected based on Earth-based observations. These were flown at low-inclination orbits. The fourth and fifth missions were devoted to broader scientific objectives and were flown in high-altitude polar orbits. Lunar Orbiter 4 photographed the entire nearside and nine percent of the far side, and Lunar Orbiter 5 completed the far side coverage and acquired medium (20 m (66 ft)) and high (2 m (6 ft 7 in)) resolution images of 36 preselected areas. All of the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were launched by Atlas-Agena-D launch vehicles.

The Lunar Orbiters had an ingenious imaging system, which consisted of a dual-lens camera, a film processing unit, a readout scanner, and a film handling apparatus. Both lenses, a 610 mm (24 in) narrow angle high resolution (HR) lens and an 80 mm (3.1 in) wide angle medium resolution (MR) lens, placed their frame exposures on a single roll of 70 mm film. The axes of the two cameras were coincident so the area imaged in the HR frames were centered within the MR frame areas. The film was moved during exposure to compensate for the spacecraft velocity, which was estimated by an electro-optical sensor. The film was then processed, scanned, and the images transmitted back to Earth.

During the Lunar Orbiter missions, the first pictures of Earth as a whole were taken, beginning with Earth-rise over the lunar surface by Lunar Orbiter 1 in August, 1966. The first full picture of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 8 August 1967. A second photo of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 10 November 1967.

Magellanic Clouds (are two irregular dwarf galaxies in the southern celestial hemisphere. Orbiting the Milky Way galaxy, these satellite galaxies are members of the Local Group. Because both show signs of a bar structure, they are often reclassified as Magellanic spiral galaxies. The two galaxies are: Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), approximately 163,000 light-years away Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), approximately 206,000 light years away. Magellanic clouds are visible to the unaided eye in the Southern Hemisphere but they cannot be observed from the most northern latitudes)

Off to work.............................................

North America Nebula, is a emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus .

North America Nebula is magnitude 4 and is 120' x 100' in size. For reference, the full moon is 30' (arc minutes) or 0.5° in size.

The Orville - is an American science fiction comedy-drama television series created by Seth MacFarlane, who also stars as series protagonist Ed Mercer, an officer in the Planetary Union's line of exploratory space vessels in the 25th century. The show is inspired primarily by the original Star Trek and its Next Generation successor, both of which it heavily parodies and pays homage to. It follows the crew of the starship USS Orville on their episodic adventures in the first two seasons, and a serialized adventure in the third season. Produced by Fuzzy Door Productions and 20th Television, The Orville premiered on September 10, 2017, and ran for two seasons on Fox (and became available on streaming service Hulu the following day). While season one received generally negative reviews, seasons two and three received critical acclaim. The show had relatively successful ratings on Fox, becoming the broadcaster's highest-rated Thursday show as well as Fox's "most-viewed debut drama" since 2015. A third season began on Hulu (Disney+ internationally) on June 2, 2022, titled The Orville: New Horizons.

Comment: I really liked this show; however, the pandemic caused it to end on FOX. I don't do any of the streaming services, so I was out of luck. What I liked about it was the comedic aspect. Seth McFarland's character, Captain Ed Mercer is assigned as captain of the spaceship Orville and discovers the first officer will be his ex-wife Commander Kelly Grayson, played by Adrianne Palicki. (Palicki was Tyra in the TV show Friday Night Lights.) Of course, this was played up on the show and was hilarious. Most of the characters had some aspect that made them funny.

YouTube

The Orville | official trailer (2017)

official trailer for The OrvilleThe universe has a crew loose. From Seth MacFarlane and Director John Favreau comes the all-new FOX series, THE ORVILLE.From ...

Pencil Nebula also known as NGC 2736 is a small part of the Vela Supernova Remnant, located near the Vela Pulsar in the constellation Vela. The nebula's linear appearance triggered its popular name. It resides about 815 light-years (250 parsecs) away from the Solar System. It is thought to be formed from part of the shock wave of the larger Vela Supernova Remnant. The Pencil Nebula is moving at roughly 644,000 kilometers per hour (400,000 miles per hour)

Quadrans Muralis (was a constellation created by the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 1795. It depicted a wall-mounted quadrant with which he and his nephew Michel Lefrançois de Lalande had charted the celestial sphere, and was named Le Mural in the French atlas. It was between the constellations of Boötes and Draco, near the tail of Ursa Major,[ containing stars between β Bootis (Nekkar) and η Ursae Majoris (Alkaid).Johann Elert Bode converted its name to Latin as Quadrans Muralis and shrank the constellation a little in his 1801 Uranographia star atlas, to avoid it clashing with neighboring constellations. In 1922, Quadrans Muralis was omitted when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formalised its list of officially recognized constellations. The Quadrantid meteor shower is still named after the obsolete constellation)

Calling it a night..................................

The Red Spider Nebula (also catalogued as NGC 6537) is a planetary nebula located near the heart of the Milky Way, in the northwest of  the constellation Sagittarius. The nebula has a prominent two-lobed shape, possibly due to a binary companion or magnetic fields and has an S-shaped symmetry of the lobes – the lobes opposite each other appear similar. This is believed to be due to the presence of a companion to the central white dwarf. However, the gas walls of the two lobed structures are not at all smooth, but rather are rippled in a complex way.

The central white dwarf, the remaining compact core of the original star, produces a powerful and hot (≈10,000 K) wind blowing with a speed of 300 kilometers per second, which has generated waves 100 billion kilometres high. The waves are generated by supersonic shocks formed when the local gas is compressed and heated in front of the rapidly expanding lobes. Atoms caught in the shocks radiate a visible light. These winds are what give this nebula its unique 'spider' shape and also contribute to the expansion of the nebula.

The star at the center of the Red Spider Nebula is surrounded by a dust shell making its exact properties hard to determine. Its surface temperature is probably 150,000–250,000 K,  although a temperature of 340,000 K or even 500,000 K is not ruled out, making it among the hottest white dwarf stars known.

The Red Spider Nebula lies near the constellation of Sagittarius. Its distance has been variously estimated as 1,900 light-year or, more likely, 3,000–8,000 light-years