VIRGO: SLAPPY: Detail:

Wink of a Star
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y_qc8Ifhso

The Seven Wonders of TRAPPIST-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeGV2HbPjcg

VIRGO: wow!

Astronomers discover Earth-sized exoplanet with very short orbital period
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-astronomers-earth-sized-exoplanet-short-orbital.html

An international team of astronomers has detected a new Earth-sized exoplanet in an ultra-short period around its parent star.
The alien world, designated EPIC 228813918 b, circles its host every four hours and 20 minutes, which makes it the second-shortest
orbital period of a planet known to date. The finding was presented in a paper published July 14 on arXiv.org.

EPIC 228813918 b was identified by a group of researchers led by Alexis Smith of German Aerospace Center's (DLR) Institute
of Planetary Research in Berlin, Germany. The transit signal was detected using NASA's prolonged Kepler mission, known as K2,
during its Campaign 10, lasting from July 6 to September 20, 2016.

Asteroid 2012 TC4 to Safely Pass Earth This October
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news197.html

A small asteroid designated 2012 TC4 will pass very close to Earth on Oct. 12, and even though scientists cannot yet predict exactly
how close it will approach, they are certain that the asteroid will fly by at a safe distance from our planet. This asteroid has not
been seen since the week it was discovered in October 2012, when it sped past Earth at about one-fourth the distance from Earth to
the moon. Estimated to be only 30 to 100 feet (10 to 30 meters) in size, the asteroid has been too distant and too faint to be detected
over the last five years. As it starts to approach Earth this summer, large telescopes will be used to re-establish its precise trajectory.
The new observations are expected to help refine knowledge about its orbit, narrowing the uncertainty about how far it will be from Earth
at its closest approach in October.

From brightness measurements made during the week it was observed in 2012, the size of this asteroid is estimated to be in the range of 30
to 100 feet (10 meters to 30 meters). For comparison, the asteroid that hit Earth’s atmosphere near Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013
was roughly 70 feet (20 meters) across.

IAU Minor Planet Center
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=2012%20TC4

Gamma-ray telescopes reveal a high-energy trap in our galaxy's center
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-gamma-ray-telescopes-reveal-high-energy-galaxy.html

Max Tegmark: Effective altruism, existential risk & existential hope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f1lmNqbgrk

Česká věda, videokanál Akademie věd ČR
https://www.facebook.com/ceskaveda/?ft[tn]=k-R&ft[qid]=6443869469542395996

Five Years of Curiosity on Mars (public talk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqhK8dA7iO8


Nearly five years after its celebrated arrival at Mars, the Curiosity rover continues to reveal Mars as a once-habitable planet.
Early in the planet’s history, generations of streams and lakes created the landforms that Curiosity explores today. The rover
currently is climbing through the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mountain formed from sediment brought in by water and
wind. This talk will cover the latest findings from the mission, the challenges of exploration with an aging robot, and what lies
ahead.

Speakers:
James K. Erickson, Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager, JPL
Ashwin R. Vasavada, Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist, JPL

Data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory offer clues about sun's coronal irradiance
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-nasa-solar-dynamics-observatory-clues.html

A pair of researchers with Aberystwyth University in the U.K. has used data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory to learn more about how the sun's corona
behaves over differing stages of its 11-year cycle. In their paper published on the open access site Science Advances, Huw Morgan and Youra Taroyan describe
attributes of the sun they observed over time and what they discovered about the "quiet corona" and its possible impact on us back here on Earth.

As the researchers note, most research to date regarding the sun's corona has covered relatively small datasets, which provides only a limited view of what
happens with the sun over longer periods of time—specifically, over the course of an entire coronal cycle. But now, thanks to NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory,
the pair were able to look at data that covered the time between 2010 and 2017, which covers a large portion of one cycle.

On this day in 1994, Jupiter continues to be pummeled by Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 as four more comet fragments impact the planet.

Astronomers measure detailed chemical abundances of 158 stars in a nearby dwarf galaxy
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-astronomers-chemical-abundances-stars-nearby.html

An international team of astronomers has performed detailed measurements of the chemical composition of 158 red giant stars in the nearby Sagittarius dwarf
galaxy. The study, presented in a paper published July 11 on arXiv.org, is so far the largest and most chemically extensive high-resolution survey of this galaxy.

Discovered in 1994, Sagittarius is a nearby, massive, elliptical loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The dwarf is currently merging with our galaxy,
resulting in massive tidal tails that can be found in the Galactic halo. Therefore, detailed studies of Sagittarius could clarify the formation of Milky Way's halo.
Due to its proximity (about 88,000 light years away), the stars in the core of this dwarf galaxy are excellent targets for high-resolution spectroscopy observations
using ground-based telescopes.

So a team of researchers led by Sten Hasselquist of the New Mexico State University recently conducted detailed spectroscopic observations of Sagittarius as part of
the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, or APOGEE. The main goal of this survey is to study over 100,000 red giant stars across the full range of
the galactic bulge, bar, disk, and halo. APOGEE makes use of a high-resolution near-infrared spectrograph connected to the Sloan Foundation 2.5m Telescope at Apache
Point Observatory in New Mexico in order to penetrate the dust that obscures significant fractions of the disk and bulge of our galaxy.

Hasselquist and colleagues has used APOGEE's spectrograph to estimate chemical composition of a large group of stars in Sagittarius. They managed to measure chemical
abundances for the 16 elements, namely carbon (C), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), sodium (Na), magnesium (Mg), aluminium (Al), silicon (Si), phosphorus (P), potassium (K),
calcium (Ca), vanadium (V), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni).

"The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment provides the opportunity to measure elemental abundances for C, N, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, K, Ca, V, Cr, Mn,
Fe, Co, and Ni in vast numbers of stars. We analyze the chemical abundance patterns of these elements for 158 red giant stars belonging to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
(Sgr)," the researchers wrote in the paper.

Is Dark Matter Real?
https://www.livescience.com/59814-is-dark-matter-real.html

Many science-savvy people take it for granted that the universe is made not only of Carl Sagan's oft-quoted "billions and billions" of galaxies, but also a vast
amount of an invisible substance called dark matter. This odd matter is thought to be a new kind of subatomic particle that doesn't interact via electromagnetism,
nor the strong and weak nuclear forces. Dark matter is also supposed to be five times more prevalent in the universe than the ordinary matter of atoms.

However, the reality is that dark matter's existence has not yet been proved. Dark matter is still a hypothesis, albeit a rather well-supported one. Any scientific
theory has to make predictions, and if it's right, then the measurements you do should line up with the predictions. The same goes for dark matter. For instance,
dark matter theories make predictions for how fast galaxies are rotating. But, until now, measurements made of the detailed dark matter distribution at the center
of low mass galaxies didn't line up with those predictions.

A recent calculation has changed that. The calculation helps resolve the conundrum of the Tully-Fisher relation, which compares the visible, or ordinary, matter of a
galaxy to its rotational velocity. In very simplified terms, scientists have found that the more massive (and therefore brighter) a spiral galaxy is, the faster it spins.

Podcast: On July 10, researchers using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, will attempt to study
the environment around a distant Kuiper Belt Object, 2014 MU69, which is the next flyby target for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common/content/videos/podcasts/KBO%20podcast%203%20v2_640x360.mp4