A tad chilly

It looks like something a fraction of its size smashed into Charon to create that planet spanning canyon.

It does remind me of a hard-boiled egg with half its shell peeled off, and then left to sit in the fridge for too long.

It looks to me like there's a difference in crater density on the two sides of the ridge/canyon-- the north side is likely considerably younger. That plus the greater elevation on the north could reflect tectonic activity, which on these planets could be with compounds we'd encounter as gases.

Assuming we're not seeing any sort of exaggerated vertical scaling, and I don't think we would in this sort of photo, that ridge has a monstrous elevation change. Recall that Charon has a diameter of 750 miles, and it looks like those relief changes must be several miles, at slopes rivaling the steepest continental margin slopes in our oceans.

NASA just put up 8,400 high-res images from the Apollo missions.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/

Thanks sleepingcat! Just a suggestion to others, if you go to that page make sure you click on the "albums" link to get to the mission categories-- it's a little less daunting than a string of 8400 pics in a single photostream.

      This might be old stick to you Cystem, but it was an eye opening to me.               http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/19/entertainment/matt-damon-mars-nasa-feat/index.html        NASA has a planned manned mission to Mars in 2030. Was it just a coincidence the announcing of water, during the same week that Matt Damon's movie was being releast?

Minor rain here today, but the main feature is that it's breezy-- winds in the low 20s with gusts to the low 30s. Hardly significant, but what a visual change it's brought about! The leaves are coming down in droves, and there had been very little leaf fall prior to this past weekend. At this rate there could be skeletal trees by the end of the week.

You know it's October in Minnesota when people start talking about the blizzard of '91.

  Metal that is 99.99% air.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/boeing-lightest-metal-ever-99-99-air-must-030032588.html

 May bring a whole new meaning to "flying on air".   

  Nakamura dang sure wasn't playing games when he went to Vegas to kick butt and take home the grand prize of a $100,000!  I wonder if Carlsen will try to get in on the action next year.    

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  So much for the Soo's statistical first day of snow (Oct. 21).    

There were two evenings of flurries last week, but in both instances there wasn't a measureable amount at the official site. The recorded amount was "trace", which still leaves the measured snowfall at zero. There have been quite a few nights below freezing, down to mid- or upper twenties F.

Hurricane Patricia was at 879 millibars a little less than an hour ago, which makes it the strongest hurricane ever recorded by the National Hurricane Center. Susutained winds near 200 mph with higher gusts. Landfall should be in the next few hours.

We saw flurries down this way last week.  Last night, though, was the first hard frost.

Patricia from space:

During the Michigan State-Indiana football game today at East Lansing the MSU campus received 0.23 inches of rain in 10 minutes.

2.0 inches of snow recorded at the Soo during October.

Last year there wasn't any snow recorded until November 8th, but things got crazy fast. By the time rifle season opened a week later (November 15) there had been 28.9 inches and by Thanksgiving there had been 64.8 inches.