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The name made me remember some childhood anime antagonists.

sigh i miss those times.

That show you're referring to is still going, currently going through some filler episodes but it should be back to canon in the new year. The next generation has just started as well.
Akatsuki means "red moon" so it probably appeared in many animes before THAT one.
暁 is not 赤月

As /u/ZenoArrow pointed out, it means "dawn" or in some contexts, "in the event... (of)"

It's used as the title for Akatsuki no Yona (Yona of the Dawn) but is otherwise only really known for being a certain group of characters from a certain anime which was implicated.

There are also a few characters who share the name, such as Akatsuki Ousawa. But that would refer to an individual and not a group.

The manga is over though. I couldn't wait to see what happens and finished it.
Yeah, that particular series has ended in the manga, I'm aware of a few key upcoming events but tried to avoid reading the manga so I can keep some of it a surprise. Did you start reading the manga for the next series too (or watch the film)? Has it got off to a good start (in your opinion)?
How long has it been since we last had new close-up photos of Venus? I know there's been nothing from the surface since the Russian landers, but was Magellan the last fly-by?
Magellan was in orbit from 1990 to 1994 collecting radar images of topography.

There are several clever missions to Venus proposed in the decadanel planning. But Mars and outer moons have priority.

ESA's Venus Express orbited Venus from 2006 until January 2015 when, its fuel spent, it burned up in the atmosphere as planned.
Magellan was the last Venus orbiter from NASA, yes. The latest we have is from Venus Express, Venus orbiter from ESA.
Does anyone know if the probe lost five years of expected lifetime due to its five-year delay (original orbital insertion expected back in 2010) or whether it was able to effectively "hibernate" or otherwise conserve its fuel and energy since then?
From the wiki[0]:

> This required placing the probe into "hibernation" or safe mode to prolong its life beyond the original 4.5-year design. JAXA expressed some confidence in keeping the probe operational, pointing to reduced battery wear, since the probe was then orbiting the Sun instead of its intended Venusian orbit

>At a press conference on 10 December, officials reported that Akatsuki's engines fired for less than three minutes, far short of what was required to enter into Venus orbit

>Three peri-Venus orbital maneuvers were executed on 1 November,[11] 10 and 21 November 2011 using the RCS thrusters. A total delta-V of 243.8 m/s was imparted to the spacecraft. Because the RCS thrusters' specific impulse is low compared to the specific impulse of the OME, the previously planned insertion into low Venusian orbit became impossible. Instead, the new plan was to place the probe in a highly elliptical orbit with an apoapsis of a hundred thousand kilometers and a periapsis of a few thousand kilometers from Venus.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akatsuki_(spacecraft)#Orbit_in...

It's worth emphasising that the OME (the main engine) and the RCS (the attitude thrusters) both run on hydrazine fuel, but the OME also has a separate tank of oxidant. So, the OME is a bipropellant engine, while the RCS is a monopropellant engine, which is why the OME is more efficient.

(Aside: that's actually a really neat trick, and this is the first I've heard of it being used.)

After the OME engine nozzle broke off and the engine became useless, the tank of oxidant became useless mass. (65kg.) So they dumped it overboard, simply venting it out the broken rocket nozzle. (Yes, the did point the vehicle in the right direction so that they could get some momentum change out of it.)

Making that decision, to dump irreplaceable fuel overboard because of a conclusion you've reached by looking at some telemetry graphs, is one that I am very glad I wasn't the one to have to make.

Can anyone comment on why this image from the article has a perfectly straight white line in it? Seems suspicious. It appears to be just a smidge above the belt line.

http://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2015/12/09/bccd7491-ac30...

Looks like two pictures that have been pasted together?
A sensor artifact most probably. Should have been cleaned up before publishing.
It also should have been in focus.
Seems to me the image is a composite of two different picures and not of the same scale either.

Look how the cloud (or whatever it is) on the right is broken. The halves don't line up.

Suspicious like "an artifact or defect in the camera" or "poorly spliced images" or suspicious like "they're faking the mission"? Just want to know how much tinfoil to bring to the discussion.
Although the surface is very unpleasant indeed - it is hypothesised that there are habitable bands in the atmosphere.
habitable*

*survivable in terms of temperature. It still has a 96% carbon dioxide, oxygen free atmosphere, so not directly habitable. The temperature is about room temperature at an altitude of 55km with atmospheric pressure (and T=75C) at about 50km. Earth atmosphere would float in the more dense carbon dioxide atmosphere of venus. You could conceivably have an airship full of earth atmosphere where the cabin is within the balloon.

Could plants survive at 55km altitude?
Good question. Seems like they could -- although co2 might be toxic at given levels like o2 would be at 3-4x concentration for us. I don't know about what else they would need -- surely some other nutrients that aren't just floating around. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could just throw some single celled lighter-than-co2 algae in there that could float and produce oxygen and nitrogen. Wait 10,000/100,000/1,000,000? years and just fly around the newly atmosformed atmosphere.
Those machines send out information from millions of km away, yet sometimes I can't get a decent mobile connection. o_o