Unusual martian region leaves clues to planet's past
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-unusual-martian-region-clues-planet.html
Researcher Don Hood from LSU and colleagues at collaborating universities studied an unusual region on Mars—an area with high elevation
called Thaumasia Planum. They analyzed the geography and mineralogy of this area they termed Greater Thaumasia, which is about the size
of North America. They also studied the chemistry of this area based on Gamma Ray Spectrometer data collected by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter,
which was launched in 2001. What they found was the mountain ridge that outlines Greater Thaumasia was most likely created by a chain of
volcanoes. The results were published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

How did Greater Thaumasia, an oddly high elevation region of Mars, form? Don Hood talks Martian geology.
https://vimeo.com/184017977

Rhys Taylor: More fun with all-sky HI data. The radial distance here is velocity, not real distance, hence the weird-looking structures.
Colour is scaled based on the flux range in each velocity channel, so you see a lot more structure than in the earlier versions.
Might try another attempt at converting this to true distance, but my spare time is pretty close to zero for the next couple of weeks.

Scientists investigate unidentified radio sources
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-scientists-unidentified-radio-sources.html

A team of researchers led by Andrea Maselli of the Institute of Space Astrophysics and Cosmic Physics of Palermo, Italy, has conducted
an observational campaign of a group of unassociated radio sources with NASA's Swift space observatory. The observations were aimed at
revealing the true nature of these so far unidentified sources. The results were published Sept. 23 in a paper on arXiv.org.

The Swift spacecraft, scanning the universe in the gamma-ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical wavebands, is an invaluable tool when it
comes to studying gamma-ray bursts and other electromagnetic events. It has already proved its scientific importance in many ways, for
example by performing the first sensitive hard X-ray survey of the sky.

Recently, Maselli and his team employed Swift to observe 21 bright radio sources included in the revised Third Cambridge Catalogue (3CR)
of radio sources. The catalog contains celestial radio sources detected at 178 MHz that could advance our knowledge about the nature and
evolution of powerful radio galaxies and quasars.

Research resolves a debate over 'killer electrons' in space
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-debate-killer-electrons-space.html

New findings by a UCLA-led international team of researchers answer a fundamental question about our space environment
and will help scientists develop methods to protect valuable telecommunication and navigation satellites. The research
is published today in the journal Nature Communications.

Using measurements from the first U.S. satellite that traveled to space, Explorer 1 physicist James Van Allen discovered
in 1958 that space is radioactive. The Earth is surrounded by two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particle
radiation—an inner ring of high-energy electrons and positive ions and an outer ring of high-energy electrons—that are
now known as Van Allen Radiation Belts. Flying close to the speed of light, the high-energy particles that populate
the belts create a harsh environment for satellites and humans in space.

Science ‘til the very end | Rosetta - ESA's comet chaser
http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/09/28/science-til-the-very-end/

Imagine alien signals are detected. Here's what happens next | Aeon Videos
https://aeon.co/videos/imagine-alien-signals-are-detected-here-s-what-happens-next

Kepler watched a Cepheid star boil
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-kepler-cepheid-star.html

After four years of continuous monitoring, astronomers detected clear signs of convective cells
in a giant pulsating star for the first time using the Kepler space telescope.

The original field-of-view of the Kepler space telescope contained a single Cepheid star named V1154 Cyg that was the target of intense scrutiny.
After the original mission of Kepler ended, a team of Hungarian astronomers from the Gothard and Konkoly Observatories analysed the entire data set,
which spanned 1460 days and contained more than 52 thousand measurements. The data led to multiple discoveries. The team found that the star
experiences regular, long-term variations: The strength and length of the 4.9-day pulsation changes very slightly over a period of 159 days.

How to follow Rosetta’s grand finale / Rosetta / Space Science / Our Activities / ESA
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/How_to_follow_Rosetta_s_grand_finale

Rosetta is set to complete its historic mission in a controlled descent to the surface of its comet
on 30 September, with the end of mission confirmation predicted to be within 20 minutes of 11:20 GMT (13:20 CEST).

Details of how, when and where to follow the key moments online, starting with a review of the mission’s
impressive haul of science highlights on 29 September, can be found below:

29 September 12:30–15:30 GMT / 14:30–17:30 CEST, science highlights
Tune in to the livestream viewer at rosetta.esa.int or via https://livestream.com/ESA/rosettagrandfinale or
ESA's Facebook page on 29 September for dedicated talks celebrating the scientific highlights of the mission.

Visualising Rosetta's descent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO3oMtm9jBs

Aurora Borealis video from Norwegian plane (nordlys)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFOaofUCY78

Pluto’s Frozen Heart. Space News.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfJSeR_TA4

New low-mass objects could help refine planetary evolution | Carnegie Institution for Science
https://carnegiescience.edu/node/2101

When a star is young, it is often still surrounded by a primordial rotating disk of gas and dust from which planets can form.
Astronomers like to find such disks because they might be able to catch the star partway through the planet-formation process,
but it’s highly unusual to find such disks around brown dwarfs or stars with very low masses. New work from a team led by Anne
Boucher of Université de Montréal, and including Carnegie’s Jonathan Gagné and Jacqueline Faherty, has discovered four new
low-mass objects surrounded by disks. The results will be published by The Astrophysical Journal.

Three of the four objects discovered by these researchers are quite small, somewhere between only 13 and 18 times the mass of
Jupiter. The fourth has about 120 times Jupiter’s mass. (For comparison the Sun is just over 1,000 times more massive than Jupiter.)

Pulsar discovered in an ultraluminous X-ray source
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-pulsar-ultraluminous-x-ray-source.html

A team of European astronomers has discovered a new pulsar in a variable ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) known as NGC 7793 P13.
The newly found object is the third ultraluminous X-ray pulsar detected so far, and also the fastest-spinning one. The findings
are detailed in a paper published Sept. 21 in the arXiv pre-print server.

ULXs are point sources in the sky that are so bright in X-rays that each emits more radiation than a million suns emit at all
wavelengths. Although they are less luminous than active galactic nuclei, they are more consistently luminous than any known
stellar process.

NGC 7793 P13 (also known as XMMU J235751.1–323725) is located in the spiral galaxy NGC 7793 in the Sculptor constellation, about
12.7 million light years from the Earth. According to a new study, which was conducted by a team of researchers led by Gianluca
Israel of the Astronomical Observatory of Roma, Italy, this ULX hosts a 0.42-second pulsar.

"Here, we report on the discovery of coherent pulsations at a period of 0.42 s in the EPIC pn lightcurves of XMMU J235751.1–323725,"
the team wrote in the paper.

Astronomers image newly discovered comet
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-astronomers-image-newly-comet.html
Earlier this week, Slooh member Bernd Lütkenhöner and Slooh astronomer Paul Cox were able to image the newly discovered
Comet C/2016 R3 (Borisov) under extraordinary conditions. The comet had been close to the Sun since its discovery on
September 11, 2016, by Gennady Borisov, making it extremely difficult to observe.