Astronomers using observations from NASA's Kepler and Swift missions have discovered a group of rapidly spinning stars
that produce X-rays at more than 100 times the peak levels ever seen from the sun. The stars, which spin so fast they've
been squashed into pumpkin-like shapes, are thought to be the result of close binary systems where two sun-like stars merge.

The 18 stars rotate in just a few days, on average, compared to the sun's nearly one month rotation. Their rapid rotation greatly
amplifies the same kind of activity we see on the sun, such as sunspots and solar flares, resulting in enhanced X-ray output.

NASA's Kepler, Swift Missions Harvest ‘Pumpkin’ Stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kimszroryKs

VIRGO:

ExoMars Lander's Impact Site Revealed In Better Resolution | Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrk67LSPgOc&feature=youtu.be

[1610.08043] On the stability of a space vehicle riding on an intense laser beam
https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.08043

Slow cometary fireball spotted over Southern Spain on October 26, 2016
Slow cometary fireball on Oct. 26 (at 23:57 UT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryhUd9krCqg

The oldest star cluster in Tarantula Nebula even older than previously thought, study finds
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-oldest-star-cluster-tarantula-nebula.html

The Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project (HTTP) survey has revealed new insights on the star formation history
of the oldest star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus), designated Hodge 301. According to a study published
Oct. 19 on arXiv.org, this star cluster could be even several million years older than previously estimated.

Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System: Study: Planet orbiting nearest star could be habitable
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1395/study-planet-orbiting-nearest-star-could-be-habitable/

A rocky extrasolar planet with a mass similar to Earth’s was recently detected around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun. This planet,
called Proxima b, is in an orbit that would allow it to have liquid water on its surface, thus raising the question of its habitability. In a study
to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, an international team led by researchers at the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory (CNRS/Aix-
Marseille Université) has determined the planet’s dimensions and properties of its surface, which actually favor its habitability.

Den 3:
Hearing Update 10/25 - Maunakea & TMT
http://www.maunakeaandtmt.org/hearing-update-1025/

The third day of the contested case hearings in Hilo had a new expert witness take the stand today on behalf of the University of Hawaii.
James Hayes of Planning Solutions, Inc. discussed how he helped prepare the TMT project’s Environmental Impact Statement and why the specific
location was selected to minimize the telescope’s visual impacts.

Hayes noted that the planned Thirty Meter Telescope will not be built at the top of Maunakea along with the other observatories, but located
on a lava plain below the summit to minimize its visual impact. TMT will be only visible from 14 percent of Hawaii Island and by only 15 percent
of the island’s population, mostly around the Waimea area.

Gratulace!
A picture for the 10th birthday of the Virtual Telescope Project: comet C/2006 M4 Swan
http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/...he-10th-birthday-of-the-virtual-telescope-project-comet-c-2006-m4/

This year the Virtual Telescope Project celebrates its 10th Birthday: ten years where it made history both in science and public outreach. While we
will properly celebrate this amazing goal, meantime we want to share with you this image of comet C/2006 M4 Swan, captured exactly ten years ago.

This image was grabbed exactly 10 years ago and it is a great to share it on the occasion of the 10th Birthday of the Virtual Telescope Project!

Archean meteorite impact evidence from the Fig Tree Group in Barite Valley, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa - Mountain Beltway - AGU Blogosphere
http://blogs.agu.org/mountainbeltway/2016/10/26/archean-meteorite-impacts-in-barberton/

During the Archean eon of geologic time, the Earth was young, and had characteristics that were both similar to what we find in the modern planet,
and also seemed to have some striking differences. Examples of the former: gravity, oceans, and metamorphism. Examples of the latter: a different
atmospheric mix of gases, an absence of plate tectonics, and a much hotter internal temperature (of which the komatiites are one signature).

Something else that was apparently quite different was regular bombardment by large extraterrrestrial impactors – the early, messy solar system was
still in the process of cleaning itself up by gravitationally merging previously isolated bodies. Large meteorite impacts would of course create
a crater at the site of the impact, but continual resurfacing on the planet due to the rock cycle makes it less likely to preserve their large region-
scale forms. We’ll have better luck if we consider the sedimentary record of those impacts. What sedimentary signatures would a really big impact have
on its neighboring or more distant regions?

A powerful radio telescope captures an image of our amazing technicolor universe.
Here’s What Our Galaxy Would Look Like With Superhuman Vision
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...milky-way-galaxy-radio-pictures-gleam-astronomy-space-science/

A new image of the Milky Way shows our galaxy bursting with a dazzling array of colors unlike anything we’ve seen before.

That’s because our eyes perceive the universe around us by comparing brightness in three primary colors: red, green, and blue.
But the Murchison Widefield Array, located in the outback of Western Australia, shows us what the cosmos would look like if we
could see radio waves—enabling us to view the sky in 20 primary colors.

“That's much better than we humans can manage, and it even beats the very best in the animal kingdom, the mantis shrimp, which can
see 12 different primary colors,” astronomer Natasha Hurley-Walker of Australia’s Curtin University says in a press statement.

Front Row Seats
https://vimeo.com/188915337

Astronomers use observations of a gravitationally lensed galaxy to measure the properties of the early universe
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-astronomers-gravitationally-lensed-galaxy-properties.html

Although the universe started out with a bang it quickly evolved to a relatively cool, dark place.
After a few hundred thousand years the lights came back on and scientists are still trying to figure out why.
Astronomers know that reionization made the universe transparent by allowing light from distant galaxies to travel almost freely through the cosmos to reach us.
However, astronomers don't fully understand the escape rate of ionizing photons from early galaxies. That escape rate is a crucial, but still a poorly constrained
value, meaning there are a wide range of upper and lower limits in the models developed by astronomers.
That limitation is in part due to the fact that astronomers have been limited to indirect methods of observation of ionizing photons, meaning they may only see
a few pixels of the object and then make assumptions about unseen aspects. Direct detection, or directly observing an object such as a galaxy with a telescope,
would provide a much better estimate of their escape rate.
In a just-published paper, a team of researchers, led by a University of California, Riverside graduate student, used a direct detection method and found
the previously used constraints have been overestimated by five times.

Galaxies Old and New Share a Common Thread | Gemini Observatory
http://www.gemini.edu/node/12582

A team using the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS) with the Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI) have,
for the first time, measured the stellar masses relative to the physical sizes of several galaxies in a cluster at a lookback time
of about 5 billion years. The data suggest that the relationship between stellar mass and size has a constant slope over time.
This leads to the conclusion that the most likely evolutionary course for the larger (more expansive) galaxies we see in
the nearby Universe is either from the combination of smaller galaxies and/or outflows from black holes at galactic cores.

VIRGO:
VIRGO:

Berkeley SETI Live Chat from Green Bank about Tabby's Star observations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijyn0kAMTL8