Image credit: © Solarseven

Welcome to the 544th Carnival of Space! The Carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. So now, on to this week’s stories!

First up, a roundup of stories from Matt Williams over at Universe Today.

Matt first warns us of the Chinese Tiangong-1 space station’s “uncontrolled reentry” which will likely happen in Mid-March.

Then Matt discusses how the Gaia Mission could moonlight as a gravitational wave detector.

Matt also discusses how the Chinese Moon Lander will carry insects and plants to the surface of the moon.

Finally, Matt saddens us all with the news that Alien Megastructures are ruled out as a cause of the dimming of Tabby’s Star – it’s actually dust.

Now, over to Brown Spaceman! Zain Husain shows us the beautiful Final Phase of Stellar Life Results in Beautiful Cassiopeia A. Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a prime example of beauty paired with absolute destruction.

Next, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory tells us how Using data from several telescopes including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have caught a supermassive black hole snacking on gas and then “burping” Then, in a guest post from Dr. Chris Russell, we learn about A Scuba Dive, a (Failed) Ziploc Bag, and a Trip to the Center of the Galaxy.

Then we come back here to CosmoQuest, where we had a bundle of poster presentations on Citizen Science at this past week’s AAS conference in Washington, DC. First, learn about Making the public your students and collaborators! Second, learn how we create these projects in A Glance at Citizen Science Building. Third, we discuss how to Measure Audience Needs to Obtain Better Science.

Finally, one of our CosmoQuest team members Toshi Komatsu invites all folks in the Bay Area of California to Watch the “We Are Astronomers” digital planetarium show, and hear De Anza College Astronomy Instructor Marek Cichanski, astronomy instructor at De Anza College, present an accompanying talk. This event is scheduled for Jan 20 from 7:00-8:30 pm at the Fujitsu Planetarium at De Anza College, Cupertino, CA. Please attend if you’re in the area!

Thank you for all of your stories – we’ll see you next week!

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to susie@wshcrew.space, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.