Starbirth with a chance of winds? | ESA/Hubble
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1704a/

The lesser-known constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), is home to a variety of deep-sky objects — including this beautiful galaxy,
known as NGC 4861. Astronomers are still debating on how to classify it: While its physical properties — such as mass, size and rotational velocity —
indicate it to be a spiral galaxy, its appearance looks more like a comet with its dense, luminous “head” and dimmer “tail” trailing behind. Features
more fitting with a dwarf irregular galaxy.

Dwarf galaxies shed light on dark matter
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-dwarf-galaxies-dark.html

The first sighting of clustered dwarf galaxies bolsters a leading theory about how big galaxies such as our Milky Way are formed,
and how dark matter binds them, researchers said Monday. Theorised but never seen, the bundled galaxies were discovered using the
largest optical survey of the night sky ever compiled, they reported in the journal Nature Astronomy. Seven clusters of three-to-
five galaxies are each 10 to 1,000 times smaller than the Milky Way.

A Too-Hot Pulsar Speeding Through the Galaxy
http://aasnova.org/2017/01/17/a-too-hot-pulsar-speeding-through-the-galaxy/
Hubble Space Telescope detection of the millisecond pulsar J2124–3358 and its far-ultraviolet bow shock nebula

Pulsars — the rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars that beam radiation from their magnetic axes — are as mysterious as they are exotic.
They’re most often observed at radio frequencies using single-dish telescopes, and they’re sometimes glimpsed in X-ray and gamma-ray bands. Far
rarer are pulsar observations at “in-between” frequencies, such as ultraviolet (UV), optical, and infrared (IR) (collectively, UVOIR); in fact, only about
a dozen pulsars have been detected this way. However, their study in this frequency range has proved enlightening, as we will see in today’s post.

A pulsar too hot to handle
While one would expect a neutron star to cool with age if an internal heating mechanism does not operate throughout its lifetime, observations of
the millisecond pulsar J0437–4715 (an interesting object in its own right) yielded surprising results. In a 2016 study, far-UV observations revealed
the 7-billion-year-old pulsar to have a surface temperature of about 2 × 105 K — about 35 times the temperature of the Sun’s photosphere. This finding
inspired Rangelov et al. to observe another millisecond pulsar, J2124–3358 (a 3.8-billion-year-old pulsar with a spin period of 4.93 ms), in the far-UV
and optical bands using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

First big-picture look at meteorites from before giant space collision 466 million years ago
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-big-picture-meteorites-giant-space-collision.html

Four hundred and sixty-six million years ago, there was a giant collision in outer space. Something hit an asteroid and broke it apart,
sending chunks of rock falling to Earth as meteorites since before the time of the dinosaurs. But what kinds of meteorites were making
their way to Earth before that collision? In a new study in Nature Astronomy, scientists have tackled that question by creating the first
reconstruction of the distribution of meteorite types before the collision. They discovered that most of the meteorites we see today are,
in the grand scheme of things, rare, while many meteorites that are rare today were common before the collision.

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias - IAC - Educational Outreach
http://www.iac.es/divulgacion.php?op1=16&id=1153&lang=en
Its discovery, at 11.4 billion light-years, was possible thanks to the increase of the galaxy apparent brightness produced
by the zoom effect of another galaxy located between the former and the Earth that acts like a gravitational lens.

Beautiful and mysterious: but was Lake Cheko formed from the exploding Tunguska meteorite?
http://siberiantimes.com/...terious-but-was-lake-cheko-formed-from-the-exploding-tunguska-meteorite/
Russian scientists deny theory of respected Italian team by 'proving' that the remote blue lake is older than the famous 1908.

As of January 17, 2017, there are 15 564 known near-Earth objects. On January 1, 2000, this number was only 935.
Ten years before that, on January 1, 1990, we knew only for 180 near-Earth objects.

The following chart shows the current total number of known near-Earth asteroids (as of January 21, 2017) grouped
according to their estimated sizes. The first size bin represents NEAs smaller than ~30 m (98 feet) in diameter.
The last bin represents NEAs with diameters larger than ~1km (0.62 miles).

Work Begins in Palo Alto on NASA's Dark Energy Hunter - Jan 19, 2017
http://news.lockheedmartin.com/2017-01-19-Work-Begins-in-Palo-Alto-on-NASAs-Dark-Energy-Hunter

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is helping NASA begin the hunt for dark energy, a mysterious force powering the universe's accelerating expansion.
An instrument assembly the company is developing, if selected by NASA for production, will be the core of the primary scientific instrument
aboard the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), whose mission aims to uncover hundreds of millions more galaxies and reveal
the physics that shapes them.

Clouds Made of Rubies | Hannah Wakeford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuemglXuqCI

Every minute, 400 pounds of hydrogen and almost 7 pounds of helium escape from Earth's atmosphere into outer space.
Astrophysicist Anjali Tripathi studies the phenomenon of atmospheric escape, and in this fascinating and accessible
talk, she considers how this process might one day (a few billion years from now) turn our blue planet red.

Why Earth may someday look like Mars | Anjali Tripathi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMppKiqMpAk

How we explore unanswered questions in physics | James Beacham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQj2Z_GPsY8

Breaking limits in science and life » Scienceline
http://scienceline.org/2017/01/breaking-limits-science-life/
A woman astronomer’s 20-year quest to find 100 Earth-like planets is within reach

JAYME: to jo teda.. :)

systemic » Planet Nine — A One Year Update
http://oklo.org/2017/01/21/planet-nine-a-one-year-update/

Arecibo Puts Limits on Gravitational Wave Models | Smart
http://websites.suagm.edu/ao/?q=nano-grav

The expected gravitational wave spectrum at nanohertz frequencies from various supermassive black-hole merger models (color) along with upper limits of the spectrum
measured from the NANOGrav nine-year data set (black). The black-dashed line represents the experimental upper limit of the gravitational wave strength when assuming
that the signal is entirely due to super massive black hole binary mergers (i.e., power-law); the solid line represents the upper limit when allowing for the derived
spectrum to have any shape. The colored areas correspond predictions of three different models. At large frequencies, the free-shape spectrum is dominated by white-
noise (i.e. non-astrophysical) signals due to pulsars with small data sets.

Until this year, astronomers have only been able to indirectly determine the presence of gravitational waves -- tiny, wave-like shifts of space and time -- through
the measurements of decaying orbits of neutron stars. In January 2016, the LIGO collaboration announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves from a system
of black holes orbiting and colliding together. The discovery by LIGO has ushered in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy, showing that direct measurements of
spacetime ripples are possible.