The Dawn spacecraft is on its way to the asteroid belt. It took off this morning about 7:30 Eastern Time (4:30 Pacific).

Meanwhile, MSNBC relates that astronomers have found something odd:

A new and intense type of radio burst has been discovered in archived views of the cosmos, astronomers revealed today.

The single, short-lived blast of radio waves likely occurred some 3 billion light-years from Earth, and it may signal a cosmic car crash of two neutron stars, the death throes of a black hole — or something else.

As a Star Trek fan I like to imagine it's a starship going to warp. But I know it's probably something more mundane (as if coliding neutron stars or a dying black hole isn't actually something quite weird in its own right).