Equatorial jet in Venusian atmosphere discovered by climate orbiter Akatsuki
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-equatorial-jet-venusian-atmosphere-climate.html

Observations by Japan's Venus climate orbiter Akatsuki have revealed an equatorial jet in the lower to middle cloud
layer of the planet's atmosphere, a finding that could be pivotal to unraveling a phenomenon called superrotation.

Venus rotates westward with a very low angular speed; it takes 243 Earth days to rotate once. The planet's atmosphere rotates
in the same direction but at much higher angular speeds, which is called "superrotation." The planet is covered by thick clouds
that extend from an altitude of about 45 kilometers to 70 kilometers. The superrotation reaches its maximum near the top of this cloud,
where the rotational speed is about 60 times that of the planet itself. The cause of this phenomenon, however, is shrouded iVen mystery.

ESO's La Silla Observatory will host new planet hunter
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-eso-la-silla-observatory-host.html

Developed and built by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and the University of Montreal, NIRPS (Near Infra Red Planet Searcher) is an infrared spectrograph
designed to detect Earth-like rocky planets around the coolest stars. The formal agreement to add NIRPS to the suite of instruments on ESO telescopes was signed on June
7th, 2017 by ESO's Director General Tim de Zeeuw, Michel Oris, Vice-rector at the UNIGE .Marie-Josée Hébert, Vice-rector for Research, Discovery, Creation and Innovation
at the University of Montreal and by both co-directors of the project, Professor François Bouchy from UNIGE and Professor René Doyon from the University of Montreal.

Due to be installed on the 3.6 m telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, NIRPS will complement the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher)
instrument currently attached to the same telescope. HARPS is the world's most productive planet-hunting instrument using the radial velocity method, and it has
revolutionised our understanding of exoplanetary systems. NIRPS will become the "red arm" of HARPS, extending the telescope's capability into the infrared and
allowing astronomers to characterise planetary systems. ESO will allocate 725 observing nights over a 5-year-period to the NIRPS team.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/what-does-kepler-have-its-eye-on

Now in the fifteenth observing campaign of its K2 extended mission, the Kepler Space Telescope is studying more than 23,000 objects located in
the direction of the constellation Scorpius. The cartoon illustrates some of the objects of interest that Kepler is observing from Aug. 23 to Nov. 20.

In this swath of sky, called Field 15, Kepler will monitor a variety of astronomical sources of light, including faraway galaxies, star clusters,
planetary systems and brown dwarfs. Closer to home, comets traveling from the outer reaches of our solar system on their orbital dance with the sun,
and occupants of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, will captivate the gaze of the multipurpose planet-hunter.

Close-up of a Murray Formation Bedrock Target 'Bauneg Beg'

Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover's
2 meter-long robotic arm, on August 29, 2017, Sol 1800 of the rover's mission on Mars, at 12:52PM local time.

When this image was obtained, the focus motor count position was 13986. This number indicates the internal position of
the MAHLI lens at the time the image was acquired and has been used to create the 30 millimeters long scale bar.
The scale is only applicable to the in-focus portions of these MAHLI images. Via Paul Hammond.

Researchers Recover an Ancient Nova
https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/research-posts/researchers-recover-an-ancient-nova

On a cold March night in Seoul almost 600 years ago, Royal Imperial Astrologers spotted a bright new star in the tail of the constellation Scorpius.
It was seen for just 14 days before fading from view. From these ancient records, modern astronomers determined that what the ancient astronomers
saw in 1437 was a nova explosion, but they had been unable to find the binary star system that caused it—until now.

A new study published today by the journal Nature pinpoints the location of the old nova, which now undergoes smaller-scale “dwarf nova” eruptions.
The work supports that idea that novae go through a very long-term life cycle after erupting, fading to obscurity for thousands of years, then building
back up to become full-fledged novae once more.

“This is the first nova that’s ever been recovered with certainty based on the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese records of almost 2,500 years,”
said the study’s lead author Michael Shara, a curator in the Museum’s Department of Astrophysics.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/full/nature23644.html

Uff...Silný kafe takhle navečír. Pokud nejde o ojedinělý jev, pak by se v Galaxii mohlo vyskytovat
až kolem 1B terestrických planet podobných Zemi. Sladké sny! Ať žije Drakeova rovnice :))

System: YZ Ceti
Discovered by: European Southern Observatory
Found on: August 14, 2017
Key Facts: Three Earth-mass worlds found around a small red star only 12 light-years away.

NASA's perspective: YZ Ceti is the nearest multi-planet system found orbiting a red dwarf star or "M dwarf."
While the three planets are outside their star's habitable zone, they are all about the same mass as Earth.
YZ Ceti b, c, and d are the lowest mass planets found with the planet-hunting method radial velocity. NASA's
TESS and James Webb telescopes will study more exoplanets around nearby stars in 2018, in hopes of finding
another Earth.

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1451/discovery-alert-three-earth-mass-neighbors/

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.03336.pdf

House-sized near Earth objects rarer than we thought
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-house-sized-earth-rarer-thought.html

A survey for NEOs being carried out with DECam on the 4-m Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory has now estimated the number of objects
in near-Earth orbit that are similar in size to the Chelyabinsk impactor. Lori Allen, Director of the Kitt Peak National Observatory and the lead investigator on
the study, explained, "There are around 3.5 million NEOs larger than 10 meters, a population ten times smaller than inferred in previous studies. About 90% of
these NEOs are in the Chelyabinsk size range of 10-20 meters."

The study, to be published in the Astronomical Journal, is the first to derive, from a single observational data set with no external model assumptions, the size
distribution of NEOs from 1 kilometer down to 10 meters. A similar result was obtained in an independent study that analyzed multiple data sets (Tricarico 2017).

House-Sized Near Earth Objects Rarer Than We Thought
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgQghDjaZwE

Distant galaxy sends out 15 high-energy radio bursts | Berkeley News
http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/08/30/distant-galaxy-sends-out-15-high-energy-radio-bursts/

reakthrough Listen, an initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe, has detected 15 brief but
powerful radio pulses emanating from a mysterious and repeating source – FRB 121102 – far across the universe.

Fast radio bursts are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant but largely unknown sources, and FRB
121102 is the only one known to repeat: more than 150 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from the object,
which was identified last year as a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth.