Saturn Surprises As Cassini Continues its Grand Finale
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/saturn-surprises-as-cassini-continues-its-grand-finale

As NASA's Cassini spacecraft makes its unprecedented series of weekly dives between Saturn and its rings, scientists are finding - so far -
that the planet's magnetic field has no discernable tilt. This surprising observation, which means the true length of Saturn's day is still
unknown, is just one of several early insights from the final phase of Cassini's mission, known as the Grand Finale.

Other recent science highlights include promising hints about the structure and composition of the icy rings, along with high-resolution
images of the rings and Saturn's atmosphere.

Cassini is now in the 15th of 22 weekly orbits that pass through the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings. The spacecraft began
its finale on April 26 and will continue its dives until Sept. 15, when it will make a mission-ending plunge into Saturn's atmosphere.

Scientists find some of Mars' youngest volcanoes – and discover they could have supported life
https://theconversation.com/...-youngest-volcanoes-and-discover-they-could-have-supported-life-81345

It may seem that Mars was once a much more exciting planet. True, there are dust storms and possible water-seeps occurring today,
but billions of years ago it was a dramatic place with huge volcanoes, a giant canyon system and branching river valleys being formed.

But now planetary scientists have identified what looks like more recently formed volcanoes, in geological terms. Excitingly, they may
have once provided the perfect environment for microbial lifeforms to thrive.

Mars’ Olympus Mons is the solar system’s largest volcano – 22km high and more than 500km across its base. It began to grow over 3 billion
years ago, but some lava flows high on its flanks appear to be as young as 2m years, judging from the relative lack of overlapping impact
craters. Craters caused by asteroid impacts show how old a surface in the solar system is – the more craters the longer it has been around.
However, fresh lava from a volcano can bury former craters, resetting this clock.

Scientists spy new evidence of water in the Moon’s interior | News from Brown
http://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/07/moonwater

Using satellite data, Brown researchers have for the first time detected widespread water within ancient explosive
volcanic deposits on the Moon, suggesting that its interior contains substantial amounts of indigenous water.

Keeping an Eye on Ross 128
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38137

Any nearby stars are of interest from the standpoint of exoplanet investigations, though thus far we’ve yet to discover
any companions around Ross 128. An M4V dwarf, Ross 128 has about 15 percent of the Sun’s mass. More significantly, it is
an active flare star, capable of unpredictable changes in luminosity over short periods. Which leads me back to that unusual
reception. The SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak described it this way in a post:

What the Puerto Rican astronomers found when the data were analyzed was a wide-band radio signal. This signal not only
repeated with time, but also slid down the radio dial, somewhat like a trombone going from a higher note to a lower one.

And as Shostak goes on to say, “That was odd, indeed.”

---

Last night photo of Ross 128 (center) by Alberto Q Vodniza from the University of Nariño Observatory - Colombia

Scientists 'Teleport' a Particle Hundreds of Miles—But What Does That Mean?
http://gizmodo.com/scientists-teleport-a-particle-hundreds-of-miles-but-w-1796818859/amp

Humanity is advancing rapidly towards a place where the news sounds an awful lot like science fiction. In fact, yesterday, Chinese scientists
reported that they “teleported” a photon over hundreds of miles using a “quantum satellite.” But this isn’t Star Trek. It’s the real world.

This “quantum teleportation” doesn’t actually involve teleporting a real object—it’s not really teleportation at all. The scientists are actually
sending information about a particle of light in a way that can only be accessed by two observers. This could have major implications for the future
of computing—it would make for incredible data encryption. But encryption with this technology is still pretty far off.

Still, the researchers write in their new paper, “This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance
quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum internet.” Let’s walk through what that means.

Scientists Are Using the Universe as a "Cosmological Collider"2017-22 | www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-22

Physicists are capitalizing on a direct connection between the largest cosmic structures and
the smallest known objects to use the universe as a "cosmological collider" and investigate new physics.

The three-dimensional map of galaxies throughout the cosmos and the leftover radiation from the Big Bang –
called the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – are the largest structures in the universe that astrophysicists
observe using telescopes. Subatomic elementary particles, on the other hand, are the smallest known objects in
the universe that particle physicists study using particle colliders.

A team including Xingang Chen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Yi Wang from the Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Zhong-Zhi Xianyu from the Center for Mathematical Sciences
and Applications at Harvard University has used these extremes of size to probe fundamental physics in an
innovative way. They have shown how the properties of the elementary particles in the Standard Model of particle
physics may be inferred by studying the largest cosmic structures. This connection is made through a process
called cosmic inflation.

NASA’s Hubble Sees Martian Moon Orbiting the Red Planet
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/hubble-sees-martian-moon-orbiting-the-red-planet

The sharp eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the tiny moon Phobos during its orbital trek around Mars.
Because the moon is so small, it appears star-like in the Hubble pictures.

Over the course of 22 minutes, Hubble took 13 separate exposures, allowing astronomers to create a time-lapse video
showing the diminutive moon's orbital path. The Hubble observations were intended to photograph Mars, and the moon's
cameo appearance was a bonus.

Ground-based images of planets obtained by Pic-Net Pro-Am team
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-ground-based-images-planets-pic-net-pro-am.html

The first observing run of a collaboration between amateur and professional astronomers to monitor
our planetary neighbours has resulted in some of the best planetary images ever taken from the ground.

The 'Pic-Net' project (http://pic-net.org/) aims to use the one-metre diameter planetary telescope at the Pic du Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees
to monitor the meteorology of planets in our Solar System, measure global winds in their atmospheres, monitor impact of minor planet bodies producing giant
fireballs in planetary atmospheres, and provide observational support for various space missions. Last month, a small team of amateur astronomers carried
out a pilot observing run during a workshop funded by the Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure (RI). Superb-quality images of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus
and Jupiter's moon Ganymede were obtained during four nights of observations, as well as images of Uranus and Neptune.

http://www.seti.org/...release/seti-institute-unistellar-partnership-promises-revolutionize-amateur

The SETI Institute and French startup Unistellar, announced a partnership today to commercialize a new telescope that promises to deliver
an unparalleled view of the cosmos to amateur astronomers, and provide the opportunity to contribute directly to cutting-edge science.

Unistellar’s new eVscope™ leverages “Enhanced Vision” imaging technology and now provides three unique features never before offered in
a compact mass-market instrument thanks to this partnership.

"Our compact 4.5-inch telescope allows observers to see objects fainter than Pluto and achieve sensitivity equivalent to a one-meter telescope!”"