Near-Earth asteroid 2017 FJ very close encounter: an image (20 Mar. 2017) - The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0
http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/...-earth-asteroid-2017-fj-very-close-encounter-an-image-20-mar-2017/

The near-Earth asteroid 2017 FJ was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona (USA) on 17 March 2017.
Tomorrow it will have a very close, but safe encounter with the Earth (about 800.000 km).

Hot Jupiter KELT-16b offers unique opportunity for research
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-hot-jupiter-kelt-16b-unique-opportunity.html

A large international team of researchers has found that a hot Jupiter called KELT-16b is likely to offer a unique opportunity for research
for many years to come. In their paper published in The Astronomical Journal, the team describes known characteristics of the exoplanet
and why they believe it offers an opportunity to learn more about several aspects of exoplanet characteristics and development.

A Visualization of the Closest Star Systems that Contain Planets in the Habitable Zone, and Their Distances from Earth [OC] : space
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/60o8ob/a_visualization_of_the_closest_star_systems_that/

News | Mars Volcano, Earth's Dinosaurs Went Extinct About the Same Time
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-076

New NASA research reveals that the giant Martian volcano Arsia Mons produced one new lava flow at its summit every 1 to 3 million years
during the final peak of activity. The last volcanic activity there ceased about 50 million years ago - around the time of Earth's
Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, when large numbers of our planet's plant and animal species (including dinosaurs) went extinct.

Located just south of Mars' equator, Arsia Mons is the southernmost member of a trio of broad, gently sloping shield volcanoes collectively
known as Tharsis Montes. Arsia Mons was built up over billions of years, though the details of its lifecycle are still being worked out.
The most recent volcanic activity is thought to have taken place in the caldera-the bowl-shaped depression at the top - where 29 volcanic
vents have been identified. Until now, it's been difficult to make a precise estimate of when this volcanic field was active.

The Real Expanse - Scientific American Blog Network
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-real-expanse/

A Journey to Alpha Centauri - Christian Marois (SETI Talks 2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5rInKFFdUs

Telescope Sets Sights on Universe's First Stars - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/telescope-sets-sights-on-universes-first-stars/
New funding will help the HERA observatory to peer deeper into the cosmic past than ever before

A newly announced $5.8 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation will allow the HERA team to increase the number of antennas
in the array from 240 to 350, boosting the telescope's collecting area by almost 50 percent, according to a statement from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), home to scientists in the HERA collaboration. A $9.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation
in 2016 helped the HERA team increase the number of antennas from 19 to 240.

NASA's Swift Mission Maps a Star's 'Death Spiral' into a Black Hole
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/swift-maps-a-stars-death-spiral-into-a-black-hole

Some 290 million years ago, a star much like the sun wandered too close to the central black hole of its galaxy.
Intense tides tore the star apart, which produced an eruption of optical, ultraviolet and X-ray light that first
reached Earth in 2014. Now, a team of scientists using observations from NASA's Swift satellite have mapped out
how and where these different wavelengths were produced in the event, named ASASSN-14li, as the shattered
star's debris circled the black hole.

Swift Charts a Star's 'Death Spiral' into Black Hole
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rZv9ylWqK8

New Detector Could Soon Narrow Down Gravitational Wave Sources - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ew-detector-could-soon-narrow-down-gravitational-wave-sources/
Two U.S. detectors will soon be joined by an instrument in Italy that could help solve the mystery of where gravitational waves originate

This spring physicists are gearing up to turn back on a third gravitational-wave detector, called Virgo, near the Italian city of Pisa.
Virgo was offline and undergoing upgrades when LIGO received its two signals in September 2015. With a trio of these giant instruments running,
scientists hope to significantly improve efforts to determine the sources of gravitational waves. A speedy response to a “triple hit”—the same
waves deforming all three detectors—could enable ground-based telescopes to focus on a triangulated area of sky constrained by the detectors
and possibly spot the collisions from which the waves emanate.

Mysterious water-like streaks on Mars might be sand flows instead | New Scientist
https://www.newscientist.com/...5-mysterious-water-like-streaks-on-mars-might-be-sand-flows-instead/

The mysterious dark flows on Mars may not be water after all. Instead, they could be rivulets of sand,
set in motion by sunlight on the Martian surface.

The dark streaks form on Mars’s slopes during warm seasons, and are known as recurring slope lineae. While there is no direct evidence
of water near these areas, the leading theory is that they are caused by briny water streaming down the sides of craters and hills.

“These effects happen at the hottest times in the hottest locations, so there’s part of your brain that immediately tells you that it
should be ice melting,” says Sylvain Piqueux at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. “The problem is, it’s really hard
to melt ice on Mars.” It’s easier for the ice to turn directly into water vapour, he says.

Some models suggest that recurring slope lineae could be made of water condensing out of the atmosphere,
but Mars’s atmosphere isn’t humid enough to account for what we see.

Astronomers investigate a mysterious isolated star cluster complex
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-astronomers-mysterious-isolated-star-cluster.html

Astronomers have inspected a mysterious isolated star cluster complex designated SH2 in the galaxy NGC 1316 (also known as Fornax A).
The results of their study, which were published Mar. 1 in a paper on arXiv.org, reveal important insights into the nature of this complex,
providing crucial information about its origin.

Located some 62 million years away in the constellation Fornax, NGC 1316 is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky, classified as
a lenticular radio galaxy. While the galaxy is dominated by old and intermediate-age stars, it shows signs of previous galaxy interactions.
However, the only indicator of current star formation in this galaxy is the HII region SH2.

This peculiar isolated star cluster complex is located in the southern outskirts of NGC 1316. With a ring-like morphology and an estimated
age of about 100 million years, SH2 contains approximately 100 young star clusters. Although this complex has been the subject of few studies
in the past, its origin still remains a mystery.

Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe One Day
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/does-mars-have-rings-not-right-now-but-maybe-one-day

As children, we learned about our solar system's planets by certain characteristics -- Jupiter is the largest, Saturn has rings, Mercury is
closest to the sun. Mars is red, but it's possible that one of our closest neighbors also had rings at one point and may have them again someday.

That's the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findings were published in the journal
Nature Geoscience. David Minton and Andrew Hesselbrock developed a model that suggests that debris that was pushed into space from an asteroid or
other body slamming into Mars around 4.3 billion years ago alternates between becoming a planetary ring and clumping together to form a moon.

One theory suggests that Mars' large North Polar Basin or Borealis Basin - which covers about 40 percent of the planet in its northern hemisphere -
was created by that impact, sending debris into space.