VIRGO: myslis, ze je to realne ?

Astronomers observe rise and fall of the dust shell of nova V339 Delphini
http://phys.org/news/2016-12-astronomers-fall-shell-nova-v339.html

A team of astronomers led by Aneurin Evans of the Keele University, U.K., has observed the classical nova V339 Delphini (V339 Del for short)
and spotted some peculiar changes in its dust shell. These observations could improve our knowledge about dust formation around stellar remnants.
The results of the observational campaign are presented in a paper published Dec. 19 on the arXiv pre-print repository.

Discovered in August 2013, V339 Delphini is a bright nova in the constellation Delphinus. It is the first nova that has been observed to synthesize
lithium, providing the first direct evidence of the supply of lithium to the interstellar medium by an astronomical object. Interestingly, follow-up
observations after the discovery of V339 Delphini showed that one month after its detection, dust formation commenced in this nova.

To better understand the dust formation process in V339 Delphini, Evans and his colleagues have analyzed sets of data provided by the Stratospheric
Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the Mt. Abu Infrared Observatory in India, the O'Brien Observatory in Marine on St Croix, Minnesota,
NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), Hawaii, and the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT), located on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona.

The data collected from over two years of observations allowed the researchers to distinguish an apparent rise and decline of the mass and radius of
dust grains around this stellar remnant. The team noted that the rapid dust formation occurs around 34th day of observations and afterward, the
infrared emission became dominated by the dust. They also found that the dust is graphitic and its condensation temperature was 1 480 K at that moment.

NASA | The Search for New Worlds is Here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsPStvGgNuk

AR Sco — The First White Dwarf Pulsar | astrobites
https://astrobites.org/2016/12/23/ar-sco-the-first-white-dwarf-pulsar/
Polarimetric evidence of a white dwarf pulsar in the binary system AR Scorpii

AR Scorpii, or AR Sco, is a binary system containing a white dwarf and a main sequence star. Earlier this year, it was discovered to
pulsate incredibly strongly — its brightness can increase or decrease by as much as a factor of four in as little as thirty seconds!

These pulsations are seen across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio all the way up to ultraviolet. There are three time periods
we see in the pulsations. Two are the orbital period of the system (3.5 hours) and the rotation period of the white dwarf (2 minutes,
which is much faster than a white dwarf normally spins). The third period we see, which is also around 2 minutes long, is a so-called
‘beat’ period that comes from interference between the orbital and rotation periods.

The beat period implies some interaction between the white dwarf itself and the main sequence star, such as pulses from the white dwarf
reflecting from the other star’s surface. Strangely, this beat period is the most pronounced period in the data. If it is indeed a reflection
effect, we see more of the reflected light than we see light from the white dwarf itself, a state of affairs which is hard to explain.

Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak, the future home of the ambitious DESI Survey. Over the coming years,
this telescope is going to observe 35 million galaxies to make the best 3D map of our universe ever.
Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Energy_Spectroscopic_Instrument

Two interesting amateur SETI projects use visualization to explain key concepts
Citizen SETI
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36802

Solar System's Next Close Encounter Will Be With Gliese 710, Say Astronomers
http://www.forbes.com/...-next-close-encounter-will-be-with-gliese-710-say-astronomers/#4840c2224b99

New data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission has given astronomers unprecedented accuracy in predicting that Gliese 710, a K-spectral
type star a little more than half the size of our Sun, will cross into our solar system’s Oort Cloud of comets some 1.35 million years from now.

According to a paper recently published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Gliese 710 will swipe through a swath of the Oort Cloud’s estimated
few trillion comets, which in turn circle our solar system at distances of up to a light year.

The co-authors, Filip Berski and Piotr Dybczński, write that their calculations indicate that Gliese 710, currently estimated to be some 64 light years
away in the constellation of Serpens, will have the strongest influence on the Oort Cloud objects in the next ten million years. They note that their
calculations also indicate that Gliese 710 will pass 13,365 astronomical units (or Earth-Sun distances) from the Sun.

At its minimum distance, the paper’s co-authors note that of objects formed outside the solar system, Gliese 710 will appear as the brightest and the
fastest object on the night sky. The resulting Gliese 710 flyby, they write, will generate a large flux of new long-period Oort Cloud comets , many
of which will be able to reach the inner part of the solar system.

The K2 Campaign 10 data set includes a large number of galaxies
(north galactic pole) and the well-known quasar 3C 273.
https://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/k2-campaign-10-data-available.html



A tradičně hned po Novém roce přichází další informační kruto-nářez!!
229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society | American Astronomical Society
https://aas.org/meetings/aas229

TESS Mission and K2 Mission joint splinter meeting at AAS 229!

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.