New delta Scuti: Rare pulsating star 7,000 light years away is 1 of only 7 in Milky Way – SMU Research
http://blog.smu.edu/...-scuti-rare-pulsating-star-7000-light-years-away-is-1-of-only-7-in-milky-way/

A star — as big as or bigger than our sun — in the Pegasus constellation is expanding and contracting in three different directions
simultaneously on a scale of once every 2.5 hours, the result of heating and cooling of hydrogen fuel burning 28 million degrees
Fahrenheit at its core Astronomers are reporting a rare star as big — or bigger — than the Earth’s sun that is expanding and
contracting in a unique pattern in three different directions.

Comet breaking up on flight by Earth caught by Slooh members
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-comet-flight-earth-caught-slooh.html

Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann has experienced a breakup on its journey past the Earth on its way toward the Sun.
On the night of February 12th, Slooh members using the company's telescopes in Chile were able to view the comet
as it broke into two pieces. This seems to be the continuation of a process that was first witnessed in 1995,
then again in 2006.

Slooh members were among the first to confirm that the nucleus of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann had split into
at least two large pieces. "They immediately pointed Slooh's telescopes to capture the event," says Slooh Astronomer,
Paul Cox. "Members will continue to monitor the comet live over the coming weeks—assuming the comet survives that long."

In the coming months—and years—the comet will face its two greatest challenges to survival. First, the Sun. 73P will
reach Perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, on March 16th.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2017/osiris-rex-observes-jupiter

This magnified, cropped image showing Jupiter and three of its moons was taken by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s MapCam instrument during optical navigation
testing for the mission’s Earth-Trojan Asteroid Search. The image shows Jupiter in the center, the moon Callisto to the left and the moons Io and Europa to
the right. Ganymede, Jupiter’s fourth Galilean moon, is also present in the image, but is not visible as it is crossing in front of the planet.

The image was taken at 3:38 a.m. EST on Feb. 9, 2017, when the spacecraft was 120 million kilometers from Earth and 675 million kilometers from Jupiter.
With an exposure time of two seconds, the image renders Jupiter overexposed, but allows for enhanced detection of stars in the background.

VIRGO: nechapem ako ta vec pristava. Kde je tretie koleso podvozku?

Self-made stars | MIT News
http://news.mit.edu/2017/black-hole-cold-star-making-fuel-plasma-jets-bubbles-0214
Astronomers observe black hole producing cold, star-making fuel from hot plasma jets and bubbles.

The Phoenix cluster is an enormous accumulation of about 1,000 galaxies, located 5.7 billion light years from Earth. At its center lies a massive galaxy,
which appears to be spitting out stars at a rate of about 1,000 per year. Most other galaxies in the universe are far less productive, squeaking out just
a few stars each year, and scientists have wondered what has fueled the Phoenix cluster’s extreme stellar output.

Now scientists from MIT, the University of Cambridge, and elsewhere may have an answer. In a paper published today in the Astrophysical Journal, the team
reports observing jets of hot, 10-million-degree gas blasting out from the central galaxy’s black hole and blowing large bubbles out into the surrounding
plasma.

These jets normally act to quench star formation by blowing away cold gas — the main fuel that a galaxy consumes to generate stars. However, the researchers
found that the hot jets and bubbles emanating from the center of the Phoenix cluster may also have the opposite effect of producing cold gas, that in turn
rains back onto the galaxy, fueling further starbursts. This suggests that the black hole has found a way to recycle some of its hot gas as cold, star-making
fuel.

No close partner for young, massive stars in Omega Nebula
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-partner-young-massive-stars-omega.html

Astronomers from Leuven (Belgium) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) have discovered that massive stars in the star-forming region
M17 (the Omega Nebula) are—against expectations—not part of a close binary. They have started their lives alone or with a distant
partner star. The researchers base their findings on data from the X-shooter spectrograph on ESO's Very Large Telescope in northern
Chile. The study will be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.

Researchers determine that planetary collision can form a moon large enough for Kepler to detect
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-planetary-collision-moon-large-kepler.html

The Kepler spacecraft has been prolific in its search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, discovering thousands
since its launch in 2009. But the hunt for moons orbiting these exoplanets, or exomoons, is vastly more challenging. While no exomoons
have been found to date, a new study shows that the search is not futile.

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible for a planetary collision to form a moon large enough for Kepler
to detect. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist Megan Bruk Syal and Amy Barr of the Planetary Science Institute conducted
a series of around 30 simulations to explore how various factors affect moon creation. In the end, they were able to narrow in on a set
of conditions that would create satellites much larger than the Earth's moon. The study – "Formation of massive rocky exomoons by giant
impact" – will appear in the May issue of the Royal Astronomical Society's Monthly Notices.

The heart of a far-off star beats for its planet | MIT News
http://news.mit.edu/2017/star-stellar-pulsations-planet-0214

For the first time, astronomers from MIT and elsewhere have observed a star pulsing in response to its orbiting planet.

The star, which goes by the name HAT-P-2, is about 400 light years from Earth and is circled by a gas giant measuring eight times the mass of Jupiter —
one of the most massive exoplanets known today. The planet, named HAT-P-2b, tracks its star in a highly eccentric orbit, flying extremely close to and
around the star, then hurtling far out before eventually circling back around.

The researchers analyzed more than 350 hours of observations of HAT-P-2 taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and found that the star’s brightness
appears to oscillate ever so slightly every 87 minutes. In particular, the star seems to vibrate at exact harmonics, or multiples of the planet’s orbital
frequency — the rate at which the planet circles its star.

The precisely timed pulsations have lead the researchers to believe that, contrary to most theoretical model-based predictions of exoplanetary behavior,
HAT-P-2b may be massive enough to periodically distort its star, making the star’s molten surface flare, or pulse, in response.

http://neliota.astro.noa.gr/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
NELIOTA is a new European Space Agency (ESA) activity launched at the National Observatory of Athens in February, 2015. It aims
to determine the distribution and frequency of small near-earth objects (NEOs) via lunar monitoring for impacts of NEO objects.

First suspected lunar impact detected by NELIOTA on 1 February, lasted for 1 frame in 0.023 sec exposure, 17:13:58 UT long. -25.7 lat -3.4.

VIRGO: Začínají
Asteroid Day Press Conference LIVE from Luxembourg | February 14 | starts at 2.30PM CET
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQKDZoXYgtc

Uá, MPC stránky konečně funkční po více jak 24 hodinách. To byl teda hustocrash... :O

The Deep Space Network (1989)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFxDUjmQxBg

Dnes: Asteroid Day Press Conference 2017
Asteroid Day Press Conference 2017 - Blog - Asteroid Day
https://blog.asteroidday.org/2017/02/07/asteroid-day-press-conference-2017/

Tightening the Parameters for Centauri A and B
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=37114

When it comes to the nearest stars, our focus of late has been on Proxima Centauri and its intriguing planet. But of course the work on Centauri A and B
continues at a good clip. The prospects in this system are enticing — a G-class star like our own, a K-class dwarf likewise capable of hosting planets,
and the red dwarf Proxima a scant 15000 AU away. Project Blue examines how we might image planets here as our radial velocity studies proceed.

But we have much to learn, and not just about possible planets. A new paper by Pierre Kervella (Observatoire de Paris), working with Lionel Bigot and
Fréderic Thévenin (both at the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur), reminds us of the importance of firming up our stellar data.

We need to learn as much as possible about Centauri A and B not just because we’d like to find planets there but also because the work has implications
for space missions, including the ESA’s Gaia, which will tighten our distance measurements to many stars. The Alpha Centauri stars are important benchmarks
for Gaia, putting the emphasis on an accurate calibration of the basic stellar parameters in this system.

Kervella and team have used new observations of Centauri A and B with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer equipped with the PIONIER (Precision Integrated
Optics Near-infrared Imaging ExpeRiment) beam combiner to operate in the near infrared. Their paper reports on improved measurements of both stars’ angular
diameters in relation to the phenomenon known as limb darkening. The latter results point to the need to improve our models as we study the photospheres of
stars including our own Sun.

Limb darkening refers to the gradual decrease in brightness that we see as we look away from the center of a star toward its outer edge, or limb. Have a look
at the image below to see the effect, which is easily visible in photographs of the Sun. When we look at the center of the Sun’s disk, we see the greatest
light emission because we are viewing the deepest, and hottest layers, while at the limb, we are seeing only cooler layers that produce less light.

The phenomenon is important because we can use it to study how a star’s atmosphere is structured, but it turns up as a factor in everything from eclipsing binary
stars to gravitational microlensing. Moreover, limb darkening will affect the shape of the transit curve produced by a planet moving in front of its star. The planet
blocks a smaller part of the star’s light when it is near the limb, and a greater fraction as it moves toward the center of the star. The center of a transit, in other
words, is always going to be deeper than the edges, something that would not happen if a star had a uniform brightness (there the transit ‘curve’ would appear flat).