ANU helps find supercluster of galaxies near Milky Way | ANU
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-helps-find-supercluster-of-galaxies-near-milky-way

ANU Professor Matthew Colless is part of an international team of astronomers that found one of the Universe's biggest superclusters of galaxies near the Milky Way.

Professor Colless said the Vela supercluster, which had previously gone undetected as it was hidden by stars and dust in the Milky Way, was a huge mass that influenced
the motion of our Galaxy. "This is one of the biggest concentrations of galaxies in the Universe - possibly the biggest in the neighbourhood of our Galaxy, but that
will need to be confirmed by further study," said Professor Colless from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "The gravity of the Vela supercluster
may explain the difference between the measured motion of the Milky Way through space and the motion predicted from the distribution of previously mapped galaxies."

High-redshift quasar discovered by Pan-STARRS
http://phys.org/news/2016-12-high-redshift-quasar-pan-starrs.html

A new luminous high-redshift quasar has been detected by one of the telescopes of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System
(Pan-STARRS). The newly discovered quasi-stellar object received designation PSO J006.1240+39.2219 and is the seventh highest redshift quasar
known to date. The findings are presented in a paper published Dec. 19 on arXiv.org.

Hematite-Rich Deposits in Capri Chasma - Astrobiology Magazine
http://www.astrobio.net/also-in-news/hematite-rich-deposits-capri-chasma/

Capri Chasma is located in the eastern portion of the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars, the largest known canyon system in the Solar System.
Deeply incised canyons such as this are excellent targets for studying the Martian crust, as the walls may reveal many distinct types of bedrock.

This section of the canyon was targeted by HiRISE based on a previous spectral detection of hematite-rich deposits in the area. Hematite, a common
iron-oxide mineral, was first identified here by the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES). In this TES image, red pixels
indicate higher abundances of hematite, while the blue and green pixels represent different types of volcanic rocks (e.g., basalt).
TES:

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL): Facts & Information
http://www.space.com/16952-nasa-jet-propulsion-laboratory.html
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was building spacecraft before NASA even existed,
and today it's the space agency's go-to center for the robotic exploration of worlds beyond Earth.

YaleNews | Searching a sea of ‘noise’ to find exoplanets — using only data as a guide
http://news.yale.edu/2016/12/20/searching-sea-noise-find-exoplanets-using-only-data-guide

Yale researchers have found a data-driven way to detect distant planets and refine the search for worlds similar to Earth.

The new approach, outlined in a study published Dec. 20 in The Astronomical Journal, relies on mathematical methods that have their
foundations in physics research. Rather than trying to filter out the signal “noise” from stars around which exoplanets are orbiting,
Yale scientists studied all of the signal information together to understand the intricacies within its structure.

“It requires nothing but the data itself, which is a game changer,” said senior author John Wettlaufer, the A.M. Bateman Professor
of Geophysics, Mathematics and Physics at Yale. “Moreover, it allows us to compare our findings with other, traditional approaches
and improve whatever modeling assumptions they use.”

2016 year in particle physics | symmetry magazine
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/2016-year-in-particle-physics

Scientists furthered studies of the Higgs boson, neutrinos, dark matter, dark energy and
cosmic inflation and continued the search for undiscovered particles, forces and principles.

Jill Tarter and Neil deGrasse Tyson Intelligent Life in the Universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06rIWC7r968

VLA, ALMA Team Up to Give First Look at Birthplaces of Most Current Stars - NRAO: Revealing the Hidden Universe
https://public.nrao.edu/news/pressreleases/deep-galaxy-images

Astronomers have gotten their first look at exactly where most of today's stars were born. To do so, they used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky
Very Large Array (VLA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to look at distant galaxies seen as they were some 10 billion years ago.

At that time, the Universe was experiencing its peak rate of star formation. Most stars in the present Universe were born then.

"We knew that galaxies in that era were forming stars prolifically, but we didn't know what those galaxies looked like, because they are shrouded in so much dust
that almost no visible light escapes them," said Wiphu Rujopakam, of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of
Tokyo and Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, who was lead author on the research paper.

Radio waves, unlike visible light, can get through the dust. However, in order to reveal the details of such distant -- and faint -- galaxies, the astronomers
had to make the most sensitive images ever made with the VLA.

China's space science centre unveils new missions after a breakthrough year | gbtimes.com
http://gbtimes.com/china/chinas-space-science-centre-unveils-new-missions-after-breakthrough-year

Operating in the new field of transient astronomy, the Einstein Probe will survey large portions
of the universe for exotic space phenomena using very sensitive X-ray cameras.

EP will also aim to locate the electromagnetic wave counterparts of gravitational wave events,
and survey the skies for phenomena including supernovae, neutron stars and transient activity
in galactic centres.

4 asteroids are set to make a 'close approach' to Earth on Wednesday - and one is twice the size of the London Eye
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...oids-set-make-close-approach-Earth-Wednesday-one-size-London-Eye.html
The closest will miss Earth by around 2.4 million kilometres. Experts say they do not consider the asteroids an immediate risk to our planet