Mechanism Underlying Size-Sorting of Rubble on Asteroid Itokawa Revealed | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST
https://www.oist.jp/...s-releases/mechanism-underlying-size-sorting-rubble-asteroid-itokawa-revealed

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), Japan, in collaboration with researchers at Rutgers University,
USA, have used a combination of experiments, simulations and analyses to propose a mechanism underlying the lateral size-sorting of particles on Itokawa:
small pebbles hitting the surface of Itokawa rebound from boulders but sink into pebble-rich regions.

The First Known Depiction of the Cosmos Adorns a 3,600-Year-Old Disk
http://hyperallergic.com/361145/nebra-sky-disk/
Discovered in 1999 in Germany, the 3,600-year-old Nebra Sky Disk
is recognized as the oldest known depiction of cosmic phenomena.

Could Fast Radio Bursts Be Powering Alien Probes?2017-09 | www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-09

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has looked for many different signs of alien life, from radio broadcasts to laser flashes,
without success. However, newly published research suggests that mysterious phenomena called fast radio bursts could be evidence of advanced
alien technology. Specifically, these bursts might be leakage from planet-sized transmitters powering interstellar probes in distant galaxies.

"Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural
source with any confidence," said theorist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "An artificial origin is worth contemplating
and checking."

As the name implies, fast radio bursts are millisecond-long flashes of radio emission. First discovered in 2007, fewer than two dozen have been
detected by gigantic radio telescopes like the Parkes Observatory in Australia or the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. They are inferred to
originate from distant galaxies, billions of light-years away.

Loeb and his co-author Manasvi Lingam (Harvard University) examined the feasibility of creating a radio transmitter strong enough for it to be
detectable across such immense distances. They found that, if the transmitter were solar powered, the sunlight falling on an area of a planet twice
the size of the Earth would be enough to generate the needed energy. Such a vast construction project is well beyond our technology, but within
the realm of possibility according to the laws of physics.

Lingam and Loeb also considered whether such a transmitter would be viable from an engineering perspective, or whether the tremendous energies
involved would melt any underlying structure. Again, they found that a water-cooled device twice the size of Earth could withstand the heat.

Baby Galaxies Blowing Bubbles | astrobites
https://astrobites.org/2017/03/07/baby-galaxies-blowing-bubbles/

About four hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, the universe settled into a pretty dull period in its history. There were no stars or galaxies,
just one massive expanse of neutral hydrogen, sitting in the dark. This period in the universe’s history, known appropriately as the Dark Ages, came
abruptly to an end when the first stars were born and began to shine, dumping loads of high energy photons into their surroundings. These photons created
‘bubbles’ of ionised hydrogen around the stars, which slowly grew as more photons were pumped out by the stars. The bubbles surrounding the first stars
were pretty small, but later, as stars began to group together into the first galaxies, these bubbles were blown much bigger by the combined photons from
all the stars in the galaxy. Over time the bubbles from neighbouring galaxies began to overlap, until eventually all of the hydrogen in the universe was
ionised (see Figure 1). This process is known as reionisation (Astrobites has written plenty about reionisation in the past – for more background,
go check out some of these articles), and it’s a key period in the universe’s history.

[1703.02056] Transiting Planets with LSST III: Detection Rate per Year of Operation
https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.02056

Studying Magnetic Space Explosions with NASA Missions
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/studying-magnetic-space-explosions-with-nasa-missions

Every day, invisible magnetic explosions are happening around Earth, on the surface of the sun and across the universe. These explosions,
known as magnetic reconnection, occur when magnetic field lines cross, releasing stored magnetic energy. Such explosions are a key way that
clouds of charged particles — plasmas — are accelerated throughout the universe. In Earth’s magnetosphere — the giant magnetic bubble
surrounding our planet — these magnetic reconnections can fling charged particles toward Earth, triggering auroras.

Raw data for K2 Campaign 12 and TRAPPIST-1 now available - Kepler & K2
https://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/raw-data-for-k2-campaign-12-and-trappist-1-now-available.html

The raw, uncalibrated data files for K2 Campaign 12 are now available for download from the data archive at MAST.

What can K2 tell us about the TRAPPIST1 planetary system? | Astrobio
http://astrob.io/2017/03/07/trappist1/

NASA’s K2 Mission observed TRAPPIST1 during an ~80 day campaign from December 15, 2016 – March 4, 2017 at short (1 minute) cadence.
On March 8 the raw data will be released and made publicly available on the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space
Telescope Science Institute in Maryland. Because the data will be in a raw format (normally this type of data would be released weeks
or months after internal teams have had time to process it) members of the K2 Mission Guest Observers Office and the MAST team are
preparing to help support users. On the MAST website (http://archive.stsci.edu/k2/trappist1/) you can access the data and in the comments
section (shown below, Scott Fleming represents the MAST support and Geert Barentsen is from the K2 Mission) users are encouraged to share
their tools and results. It should be a fun day!

Two new tidal disruption events discovered
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-tidal-disruption-events.html

In two recently published scientific papers, an international team of astronomers has presented the detection
of two new tidal disruption events (TDEs). Using the Palomar Observatory located near San Diego, California,
the researchers discovered flares of radiation which turned out to be TDEs. Their findings were described in
papers published online March 2 and 3 on the arXiv pre-print server.

TDEs are astronomical phenomena which occur when a star passes close enough to a supermassive black hole
and is pulled apart by the black hole's tidal forces, causing the process of disruption. Such tidally disrupted
stellar debris starts raining down on the black hole and radiation emerges from the innermost region of
accreting debris, which is an indicator of the presence of a TDE.

For astronomers and astrophysicists, TDEs are potentially important probes of strong gravity and accretion
physics, providing answers about the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes.

Rev263-264 (Preview of Cassini Spacecraft Activities Around Saturn)
http://ciclops.org/view/8495/Rev263-264?js=1

Cassini continues its exploration of the Saturn system with the 7.2-day Rev 263, which begins on February 25 at its farthest distance from the planet.
This is also called the orbit’s apoapse. At this point, Cassini is 1.22 million kilometers (0.76 million miles) from Saturn’s cloud tops. Rev 263 is
the 13th of 20 F-ring orbits that will take place between November 2016 and April 2017 where Cassini will approach Saturn just outside the main ring
system. Ten ISS observations are planned for Rev 261 with the majority focused on Saturn’s atmosphere and rings.

What Are Fast Radio Bursts? - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-fast-radio-bursts/
What are fast radio bursts? Why are astronomers so excited about them?

Since 2007, astronomers have added 17 more bursts to the list of known FRBs. However, their origins are still a bit of a mystery
because their defining characteristics, the very reasons they are so interesting, also make them challenging to study.