Surprising Results from October's Triton Cover-Up - Sky & Telescope
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/surprising-results-from-octobers-triton-occultation/

By watching a star disappear behind Triton, one of Saturn's moons, astronomers learned about the state of its ultrathin atmosphere.

For those of us who keep track of where and when solar-system objects occult a background star, the brief cover-up of a dim star in
Aquarius by Neptune’s large moon Triton on October 5th was especially newsworthy.

The target, 12.6-magnitude star UCAC4 410-143659, was the brightest star occulted by Triton since 1997. It’s about a magnitude
brighter than Triton itself, and its location only 13 arcseconds from 8th-magnitude Neptune made observations relatively easy.

Dnešní NASA APOD se vyvedl :) https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171107.html

Can Organisms Sense via Radio Frequency? | Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/can-organisms-sense-radio-frequency

A new project by researchers at the University of California San Diego will investigate a biological mystery that has so far gone unsolved: can organisms use radio frequencies to sense surroundings?

Radio frequency waves (RF) are electromagnetic waves between the frequencies of 3 kilohertz to 300 gigahertz, used in radio, cellphones, wi-fi, radar, GPS, and many other systems. While humans have
used RF technology to communicate for over 100 years, no living organism has ever been observed using RF to communicate without technology.

But recently there have been clues that this may in fact occur.

VIRGO: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38679

Just how elaborate is the planetary system around the nearest star? It’s a question rendered more interesting this morning by the news that the ALMA
Observatory in Chile has now detected dust in the system in an area one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun.
Moreover, there are signs of what may be an outer dust belt, an indication that while we have already discovered Proxima Centauri b, we are looking
at a system in which cold particles and debris that could have formed other planets continue to accompany the star.

Chandra :: Photo Album :: Jupiter :: November 6, 2017
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2017/jupiter/

A Quick Look at Jupiter's Auroras
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48vGm0q4a4


New X-ray observations show the auroras — northern or southern lights — on Jupiter behave differently at each pole.

This makes Jupiter puzzling and unlike Saturn (no known auroras) or Earth (where north and south pole auroras mirror one another).

These latest X-ray findings are challenging the current theoretical models that explain the Jovian auroras.

Scientists hope to combine Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Juno data to learn more about the source of Jupiter's auroras.

Tracing the Fuel for Forming Stars
http://aasnova.org/2017/11/03/tracing-the-fuel-for-forming-stars/

Huge reservoirs of cold hydrogen gas — the raw fuel for star formation — lurk in galaxies throughout the universe.
A new study examines whether these reservoirs have always been similar, or whether those in distant galaxies are
very different from those in local galaxies today.

Heating ocean moon Enceladus for billions of years / Cassini-Huygens / Space Science / Our Activities / ESA
http://www.esa.int/...ace_Science/Cassini-Huygens/Heating_ocean_moon_Enceladus_for_billions_of_years

Enough heat to power hydrothermal activity inside Saturn’s ocean moon Enceladus for billions of years could be generated through tidal
friction if the moon has a highly porous core, a new study finds, working in favour of the moon as a potentially habitable world.

A paper published in Nature Astronomy today presents the first concept that explains the key characteristics of 500 km-diameter Enceladus
as observed by the international Cassini spacecraft over the course of its mission, which concluded in September.

This includes a global salty ocean below an ice shell with an average thickness of 20–25 km, thinning to just 1–5 km over the south polar
region. There, jets of water vapour and icy grains are launched through fissures in the ice. The composition of the ejected material measured
by Cassini included salts and silica dust, suggesting they form through hot water – at least 90ºC – interacting with rock in the porous core.

These observations require a huge source of heat, about 100 times more than is expected to be generated by the natural decay of radioactive
elements in rocks in its core, as well as a means of focusing activity at the south pole.

The tidal effect from Saturn is thought to be at the origin of the eruptions deforming the icy shell by push-pull motions as the moon follows
an elliptical path around the giant planet. But the energy produced by tidal friction in the ice, by itself, would be too weak to counterbalance
the heat loss seen from the ocean – the globe would freeze within 30 million years.