Starship Asterisk*

Nature: Martian weather kicks into high gear at night http://www.nature.com/news/martian-weather-kicks-into-high-gear-at-night-1.22476 Sundown sparks blustery snowstorms in the Red Planet’s lower atmosphere. When night arrives on Mars, plunging temperatures can lead to weather much worse than resea...

More "breaking rumours" than breaking news, but... http://www.nature.com/news/rumours-swell-over-new-kind-of-gravitational-wave-sighting-1.22482 Rumours swell over new kind of gravitational-wave sighting Gossip over potential detection of colliding neutron stars has astronomers in a tizzy ...

NASA https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/studying-the-sun-s-atmosphere-with-the-total-solar-eclipse-of-2017 https://youtube.com/watch?v=z9b7h47vBbg Though we study the corona from space with instruments called coronagraphs – which create artificial eclipses by using a metal disk to block out ...

Huh, I had no idea that's what Neptune looked like from Keck. That's rather incredible. Yes, I was pretty impressed. It is astounding what can now be achieved by terrestrial telescopes with adaptive optics. The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth. ...

New Storm Makes Surprise Appearance on Neptune http://www.keckobservatory.org/recent/entry/new_storm_makes_surprise_appearance_on_neptune Extremely large, bright storm system caught on camera at W. M. Keck Observatory http://www.keckobservatory.org/images/site/Neptunestorm7502.jpg Maunakea, Hawaii ...

Sky & Telescope article Four Exoplanets Might Orbit Sun-like Star By: Monica Young | August 15, 2017 Astronomers have used an innovative technique to discover four super-Earth-size exoplanet candidates orbiting Tau Ceti, a Sun-like star 12 light-years away. http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astrono...

This info might help, Ann. • It is known that metallicity affects the colour of stars, with low metallicity stars being bluer. • The alpha Centauri system has high metallicity. • Dr Kaler notes that tau Ceti has low metallicity. (As does the Wikipedia article on tau Ceti) Here are some links. https:...

Feeding means active (and vs-a-versa) I don't agree that they are exact equivalents in this context. For example, the SMBH in the centre of the Milky Way is not considered to be an AGN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A* The comparatively small mass of this black hole, along with the low l...

geckzilla wrote:I have to say I find this particular galaxy type to be quite interesting and attractive.

One of my favourite episodes of Hubblecast dealt with ram pressure stripping in Abell 3627.

This puzzled me Six out of the seven jellyfish galaxies in the study were found to host a supermassive black hole at the centre, feeding on the surrounding gas [3]. This fraction is unexpectedly high — among galaxies in general the fraction is less than one in ten. ... Obviously, what is meant is an...

Two potentially habitable planets detected orbiting the nearest Sun-like star https://www.herts.ac.uk/about-us/news/2017/august/two-potentially-habitable-planets-detected-orbiting-the-nearest-sun-like-star A new study by an international team of astronomers, led by the University of Hertfordshire, ...

Tracking a Solar Eruption through the Solar System http://esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Tracking_a_solar_eruption_through_the_Solar_System http://esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2017/08/in_the_firing_line/17111406-1-eng-GB/In_the_firing_line_article_mob.jpg Ten spacecraf...

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v10/93 Focus: The Coolest Molecular Ion Beams Two research teams have created the coldest molecular ion beams ever, putting molecules in their ground states of rotation and providing improved experimental stand-ins for interstellar gas clouds. Cooling a beam of mole...

neufer wrote:[...] the image & I are just good friends.

@ Ann

@ Neufer - also (And I've looked at how you embedded the image)

There's a map of the local group here, showing IC 10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Group#Map

I'd embed it, but I've forgotten how to do it on this board.

Very interesting! IC 10 is an intriguing galaxy, the only starburst galaxy of the Local Group. However... [...] IC 10 is about 2.2 million light-years away. Ann Thanks for catching that error, Ann! Would it be a good idea for you to notify NASA/Chandra in the comment box on the press release page? ...

That is an absolutely fascinating idea, Margarita! It is radical, too, so we may have to wait for some additional support of it. Nevertheless, it is indeed fascinating! Ann It is fascinating isn't it? I hesitated about posting it, but thought that it might be of interest. That it was the subject of...

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v10/89 Viewpoint: Neutron-Star Implosions as Heavy-Element Sources Hans-Thomas Janka, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, D-85748 Garching, Germany August 7, 2017• Physics 10, 89 A dramatic scenario in which a compact black hole eats a ...

I don't think this has been posted. It's recent ESA Hubble photo release with what I found to be interesting info about NGC 1512 and its dwarf neighbour NGC 1510 http://spacetelescope.org/news/heic1712/ heic1712 — Photo Release Galactic David and Goliath 27 July 2017 The gravitational dance between ...

PS. I've just discovered that this review article in Nature Astronomy by Jay Pasachoff, "Heliophysics at total solar eclipses", seems to be open access! (But I've made a PDF copy of it in case the access is only temporary. I've experienced that with Nature occasionally.) https://www.nature...

This article in Nature isn't about making videos, but about using the upcoming eclipse as a science outreach opportunity. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0203 Scientists, funding bodies, educators and the media alike need to carry this momentum forward. We live in a particular historic mo...

Nature Cosmic map reveals a not-so-lumpy Universe http://www.nature.com/news/cosmic-map-reveals-a-not-so-lumpy-universe-1.22413 Cosmologists have produced the biggest map yet of the Universe’s structure and they find it less lumpy than previous surveys have suggested. The new results, part of the o...

There's something rather satisfying about a gravitational wave detector being in the province of Pisa, where Galileo "is said to have" done his experiment about gravity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo ... experiment

VIRGO's own press release
http://public.virgo-gw.eu/virgo-joins-l ... ng-period/

This is a useful looking web page with news updates about the LIGO-VIRGO collaboration.
http://www.virgo-gw.eu/#news