NASA's Kepler Provides Another Peek At Ultra-cool Neighbor
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/nasas-kepler-provides-another-peek-at-ultra-cool-neighbor

On Feb. 22, astronomers announced that the ultra-cool dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1, hosts a total of seven Earth-size planets that are likely rocky,
a discovery made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in combination with ground-based telescopes. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope also
has been observing this star since December 2016. Today these additional data about TRAPPIST-1 from Kepler are available to the scientific community.

Inside NASA’s daring $8 billion plan to finally find extraterrestrial life | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/...inside-nasas-daring-8-billion-plan-to-finally-find-extraterrestrial-life/
A congressman, a billionaire movie director, and an unparalleled mission of discovery.

The Earth Has Oceans And Continents: How Weird Is That? : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR
http://www.npr.org/...3.7/2017/03/07/518949218/the-earth-has-oceans-and-continents-how-weird-is-that
Seen from space, our planet has often been called a "blue marble."

It's not, however, just the swirly white clouds that give Earth its marbled appearance. The continents: They are
what complete the metaphor. All that land, sticking up above sea level, gives our world its distinctive look.

But now that we know the universe is awash in planets, just how distinct is our world? Is an almost equal mix of land and sea common — or will most planets
be either entirely desert or entirely ocean? Most importantly, how does the dry-land vs. open-water mix influence the evolution of intelligent life?

The relationship between land, water and the presence of intelligent observers (like us) is the topic of a provocative paper by Fergus Simpson, a researcher
at the University of Barcelona. One of the best things about Simpson's study is it reminds us of a simple fact about life on Earth: You can't take any of it
for granted.

Here is the thing: It is kind of weird that we live on a planet that has almost equal amounts of open ocean and dry land. Every planet will have some degree
of bumps on its surface — highland and lowlands. The more water the planet has, the more the lowlands get filled in. But if a planet doesn't have much in
the way of a water inventory, that world should be quasi-desert with nothing more than a bunch of disconnected lakes. This is exactly what is seen on Titan,
the giant moon of Saturn, which is the only other solar system body that shows liquid on its surface (of course Titan is so distant and cold that the lakes
are actually made of liquid methane at minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit).

But with enough water, sea levels will be above the highest point on the planet. In that case, what you have is an ocean world (astronomers prefer the term
water-world, sorry Kevin Costner). Getting the mix that Earth has, however, seems tricky. If our planet had just three times more water than it does now,
even Mt. Everest would be submerged.

Six Laser Hits on Mars
An animation showing six laser strikes on an outcrop target. The animation was assembled from two remote micro images acquired 'before and after'
the laser strikes during mission sol 1629. If you look closely you can also see that some of the sand grains close to the laser hits have been relocated,
this is caused by a small shock-waves created when the surface of the target is ablated by the laser strikes. I have roughly aligned the target area in
the animation for easy viewing. The remote micro imager is part of Curiosity' chemistry camera suite of instruments (RMI-ChemCam)

Discovery of Earth's Oldest Fossils Could Spur the Search for Life on Other Planets
http://www.space.com/35953-earths-oldest-fossils-spur-search-for-life-other-planets.html

Researchers this week announced the discovery of fossilized remnants that may be the oldest sign of life on Earth,
a finding that has implications in the search for life on other planets as well.

Analysis of rock fragments from a rare, primitive piece of Earth's oceanic crust revealed micrometer-sized tubes and filaments believed to be the remains
of iron-eating bacteria that lived between 3.8 billion and 4.3 billion years ago. The bacteria are thought to have lived in hydrothermal vents on the ocean
floor, since the fossilized structures resemble those produced by iron-oxidizing bacteria near hydrothermal vents today.

The find, reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature, pushes back the record of life on Earth to within a few hundred thousand years of the planet's
formation. At that time, Earth likely wasn't the only planet in solar system that could have supported some form of life.

Scientists have amassed strong evidence that Mars also once had pools of water — perhaps even extensive oceans —
as well as a thicker atmosphere and all of the chemical ingredients that are necessary for the development of microbial life.

Fjůůůů...

Z důvodu konfliktu se startem BepiColombo probíhá studie na využití nosné rakety Delta pro vypuštění JWST.

ALMA: The World's Highest Observatory - Simple Discoveries
http://simplediscoveries.com/alma-worlds-highest-observatory/

Cryovolcanism on dwarf planet Ceres
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-cryovolcanism-dwarf-planet-ceres.html

Among the most striking features on the surface of Ceres are the bright spots in the center of Occator crater which stood out already
as NASA's space probe Dawn approached the dwarf planet. Scientists under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System
Research (MPS) have now for the first time determined the age of this bright material, which consists mainly of deposits of special
mineral salts. With about four million years only, these deposits are about 30 million years younger than the crater itself. This, as
well as the distribution and nature of the bright material within the crater, suggests that Occator crater has been the scene of
eruptive outbursts of subsurface brine over a long period and until almost recently. Ceres is thus the body closest to the Sun
that shows cryovolcanic activity.

On this day in 1973: Comet Kohoutek, formally designated C/1973 E1, 1973 XII, and 1973f, was first sighted on March 7, 1973 by
Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek. (M. J. Hendrie, gives the "discovery" as March 18, while observing plates taken on March 7th and 9th.)
IAU Minor Planet Center
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=C/1973%20E1



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Gennady Borisov has discovered a new long period comet! Comet C/2017 E1 (Borisov)
IAU Minor Planet Center
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=C/2017%20E1

CBET nr. 4369, issued on 2017, March 04, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~17) by Gennadii Vladimirovich Borisov
on three unfiltered 120-s exposures obtained on Mar. 1.10 UT with a 0.4-m f/2.3 astrograph at the "Mobil Astronomical Robotics
Genon" Observatory (MARGO) near Nauchnij. The new comet has been designated C/2017 E1 (Borisov).

I performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 20 unfiltered exposures, 30 seconds each,
obtained remotely on 2017, March 1.5 from H06 (iTelescope network) through a 0.43-m f/6.8 reflector + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer, shows
that this object is a comet with a diffuse coma nearly 30 arcsec in diameter.

Remanzacco Observatory - Comets & Neo: New Comet: C/2017 E1 (Borisov)
http://remanzacco.blogspot.cz/2017/03/new-comet-c2017-e1-borisov.html

https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/45084
Researchers at UC Riverside and Caltech team up on Astrophysical Journal paper

The scaffolding that holds the large-scale structure of the universe constitutes galaxies, dark matter and gas (from which stars are forming),
organized in complex networks known as the cosmic web. This network comprises dense regions known as galaxy clusters and groups that are woven
together through thread-like structures known as filaments. These filaments form the backbone of the cosmic web and host a large fraction of
the mass in the universe, as well as sites of star formation activity.

While there is ample evidence that environments shape and direct the evolution of galaxies, it is not clear how galaxies behave in the larger,
global cosmic web and in particular in the more extended environment of filaments. In a joint collaboration between the California Institute of
Technology and the University of California, Riverside, astronomers have performed an extensive study of the properties of galaxies within
filaments formed at different times during the age of the universe.

In a just-published paper, astronomers used a sample of 40,000 galaxies in the COSMOS field, a large and contiguous patch of sky with deep enough
data to look at galaxies very far away, and with accurate distance measurements to individual galaxies. The large area covered by COSMOS allowed
sampling volumes of different densities within the cosmic web.

Using techniques developed to identify the large-scale structures, they cataloged the cosmic web to its components: clusters, filaments, and
sparse regions devoid of any object, extending into the universe as it was 8 billion years ago. The galaxies were then divided into those that
are central to their local environment (the center of gravity) and those that roam around in their host environments (satellites).

“What makes this study unique is the observation of thousands of galaxies in different filaments spanning a significant fraction of the age of
the Universe” said Behnam Darvish a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who is the lead author on the paper. “When we consider the distant universe,
we look back in time to when the cosmic web and filaments were younger and had not yet fully evolved and therefore, could study the joint evolution
of the large scale structures and galaxies associated with them.”

Model shows ejection of gasses around black holes due to magnetism
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-ejection-gasses-black-holes-due.html

An international team of researchers has created a model to explain the force that causes gases to be blown away from a black hole
and have found the force to be magnetism. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the team describes the factors
that went into their model and the degree of confidence they have in it.

Scientists have suspected that magnetic fields were responsible for pushing gases away from a black hole since the 1970s, but there was not a consensus—others suggested it
might have been due to the heat of the gas. In this new effort, the researchers built on a prior model that had found magnetism to be the force pushing gas away from a giant
black hole—this time, they based their model on small black holes and found the same result. This, the team suggests, means that it is likely the case for all black holes.

The gases in question come from a companion star—the black hole strips the star's gas and as it does so, creates a spiral with an accretion disk. As the spiral turns, an
electric current is generated in the accretion disk, which forms a vortex pulling in more and more matter. But, the model showed, some of the magnetism serves to push gas
from the outer edges of the spiral out into space, where it escapes and can be observed by X-ray telescopes on Earth.

Earth is bombarded at random | ETH Zurich
https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2017/03/earth-is-bombarded-at-random.html

Asteroids don’t hit our planet at regular intervals, as was previously thought. Earth scientists from ETH Zurich and Lund University in Sweden
have reached this conclusion after analysing impact craters formed in the last 500 million years, concentrating on precisely dated events.

Do mass extinctions, like the fall of the dinosaurs, and the formation of large impact craters on Earth occur together at regular intervals?
“This question has been under discussion for more than thirty years now,” says Matthias Meier from ETH Zurich’s Institute of Geochemistry and
Petrology. As late as 2015, US researchers indicated that impact craters were formed on Earth around every 26 million years. “We have determined,
however, that asteroids don’t hit the Earth at periodic intervals,” says Meier, refuting the popular hypothesis.

In the past, researchers have even postulated the existence of a companion star to the Sun. This supposed dim dwarf star, named Nemesis after
the Greek goddess of revenge, was believed to draw near to the Sun every 26 million years and cause asteroids to bombard Earth. This would
next occur in around 10 million years. Nemesis, however, has never been found.

How we're already seeking life on TRAPPIST-1's rocky planets | New Scientist
https://www.newscientist.com/...31155-100-how-were-already-seeking-life-on-trappist1s-rocky-planets/

WE ARE already taking the first steps toward learning if there could be life on TRAPPIST-1’s newly discovered planets – and what that life might look like.

Last week, a team led by Michaël Gillon at Belgium’s University of Liege announced that TRAPPIST-1, a small, faint star some 40 light years away, has four
more rocky planets to join the three we already knew about.

All are less than 20 per cent bigger than Earth, and all orbit well within the distance at which Mercury circles our sun. Despite this closeness, the planets
may be candidates to search for life. That’s because TRAPPIST-1 is much smaller and dimmer than the sun, so three of the planets may be cool enough to host
liquid water on the surface, putting them in the habitable zone.

VIRGO: ...ovšem začít se musí tím, že se Marsu pořídí magnetosféra:
NASA proposes a magnetic shield to protect Mars' atmosphere
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html

Astronomický ústav AV ČR - Novinky
http://www.asu.cas.cz/...s/1184/19/evropska-jizni-observator-si-v-praze-pripomene-10-let-clenstvi-cr

Ve dnech 7. - 8. března 2017 zasedne v Praze Rada Evropské jižní observatoře (ESO Council). Tento vrcholný orgán ESO
zasedá čtyřikrát ročně a jeho pražské zasedání se koná při příležitosti 10 let členství České republiky v ESO. Evropská
jižní observatoř provozuje nejvýkonnější astronomické přístroje na světě a čeští astronomové se na tom podílejí.