Artist’s concept of NASA New Horizons probe zooming through the Pluto system in July 2015.
Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research institute

A NASA spacecraft speeding toward Pluto is casting a wary eye on the dwarf planet system, looking for anything that could trip it up in the homestretch of its historic mission. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which is set to perform the first-ever flyby of Pluto on July 14, has begun hunting for possible rings and undiscovered moons, in an effort to identify potential hazards near the dwarf planet. The campaign began Monday (May 11) and involves roughly weekly observations with the spacecraft’s long-range camera through July 1, mission team members said. “You know how Curiosity had its ‘seven minutes of terror?'” said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, referring to the NASA Mars rover’s harrowing “sky crane” landing in August 2012. “Well, we call this ‘seven weeks of suspense.”

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High resolution photo map of the moon’s far side imaged by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA

As of 2015, there are 146 official moons in the Solar System, and then another 27 provisional moons, who are still waiting on the status of their application. All official moons have names after gods or Shakespeare characters. Names like Callisto, Titan, or Prometheus. But there’s one moon in the Solar System with a super boring name… the one you’re most familiar with: Moon.

But come on, that’s such a boring name. Clearly that’s just its common name. So what’s the Moon’s real name? Its scientific name. The neato cool name. Like Krelon, Krona, Avron or Mua’Dib.

via What is the Moon’s Real Name?.

The disk of the Milky Way Galaxy disk may actually be rippled.
Credit: Heidi Newberg

Two ringlike structures of stars wrapping around the Milky Way’s outer disk now appear to belong to the disk itself.

The results, outlined in a new study, show that the disk is about 60 percent larger than previously thought. Not only do the results extend the size of the Milky Way, they also reveal a rippling pattern, which raises intriguing questions about what sent wavelike fluctuations rippling through the disk.

The researchers said the likely culprit was a dwarf galaxy. It might have plunged through the Milky Way’s center long ago, sparking the rippling patterns astronomers have now detected for the first time. [When Galaxies Collide: Photos of Great Galactic Crashes]

via Size of the Milky Way Upgraded, Solving Galaxy Puzzle.