We Finally Know What Made the Huge Heart on Pluto
http://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-what-made-the-huge-heart-on-pluto-1786802522
We already knew what was in Pluto’s heart; it’s formed primarily by huge glaciers, and made mostly of nitrogen ice.
But, where these materials came from remained a mystery. Now, a new paper out in Nature has an answer for us.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature19337.html

Pan may be small as satellites go, but like many of Saturn's ring moons, it has a has a very visible effect on the rings.

Pan (17 miles or 28 kilometers across, left of center) holds open the Encke gap and shapes the ever-changing ringlets within the gap.
In addition to raising waves in the A and B rings, other moons help shape the F ring, the outer edge of the A ring and open the Keeler gap.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 8 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with
the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 2, 2016. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 840 000 miles (1.4 million
km) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 128 degrees. Image scale is 5 miles (8 km) per pixel. Pan has been
brightened by a factor of two to enhance its visibility.

Recap: September 11-16 2016
This was the first week of the last year of the Cassini mission. Here's what happened:
Cassini: Mission to Saturn: Recap: September 11-16 2016
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2938/recap-september-11-16-2016/

A raw colour image of the latest drill / sample hole on Mars at a location called 'Quela'. For scale the diameter of the hole is 16 millimeters.
Unlike many of the rocks that Curiosity has drilled this one has a reddy / brown colour. This combined with the results of the mineral / chemical
content identified by the rovers on-board instrument suite will provide many clues to its origin. The image was acquired with the MAHLI camera which
is located on the turret at the end of the rover's 2-meter long robotic arm which was extended and placed above the hole to capture this image.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The warps in space that make Einstein's perfect cosmic accident | New Scientist
https://www.newscientist.com/...6168-the-warps-in-space-that-make-einsteins-perfect-cosmic-accident/

Picture a glimmering arc of light, the artefact of a lens made of warped space-time instead of glass. Einstein thought there was “no hope” of observing
these bizarre cosmic illusions, predicted by his theory of general relativity – but we’ve been collecting so-called “Einstein rings” since 1987.

An Einstein ring is not a place to visit but a trick of perspective. Two distant galaxies have to line up just so, or we won’t see it. At its most perfect,
it’s a big, unbroken circle: beautiful and scientifically valuable in equal measure.

A complete Einstein ring is one of the universe’s most accurate bathroom scales – the circle it draws around a galaxy lets us add up the mass of everything
inside. This means they can help solve mysteries as diverse as dark matter and the ancient universe.

We know of only a few dozen arcs that approach a full circle, though. So it seems fair to ask: of the Einstein rings we’ve found hidden in the sky so far,
is there one that rules them all?

Hvězdná laboratoř ve Střelci | ESO Česko
http://www.eso.org/public/czechrepublic/news/eso1628/?lang

Malý shluk jasných modrých hvězd v levém horním rohu tohoto snímku, jehož mamutí originální verze má rozlišení 615 megapixelů, je pro vědce dokonalou kosmickou laboratoří,
ve které mohou zkoumat život a smrt různých typů hvězd. Hvězdokupa známá pod označením M18 (Messier 18) je složena ze stálic, které vznikly společně, ze stejného mohutného
oblaku plynu a prachu. Záběr, který zachycuje rovněž červeně zářící oblaky vodíku a temné prachové filamenty, byl pořízen pomocí dalekohledu VST (VLT Survey Telescope) na
observatoři ESO/Paranal v Chile.