!!!
Project Lyra: Sending a Spacecraft to 1I/’Oumuamua (formerly A/2017 U1), the Interstellar Asteroid
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38728

Now that we have determined that the object now known as 1I/’Oumuamua is indeed interstellar in origin,
is there any way we could launch a mission to study it? The study below, written by key players in the
Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is), examines the possibilities. Andreas Hein is Executive as well
as Technical Director of i4is, while Nikolas Perakis, a graduate student at the Technical University of
Munich, serves as Deputy Technical director. Kelvin Long is president and co-founder of i4is; Adam Crowl,
a familiar figure to Centauri Dreams readers, is active in its technical programs. Physicist and radio
astronomer Marshall Eubanks is the founder of Asteroid Initiatives; systems engineer Robert Kennedy is
president of i4is-US and general chair of the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop. Propulsion scientist Richard
Osborne serves as i4is Director of Technology & Strategic Foresight. Their plan for 1I/’Oumuamua follows.

[1711.03155] Project Lyra: Sending a Spacecraft to 1I/'Oumuamua (former A/2017 U1), the Interstellar Asteroid
https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.03155

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21970/jupiter-s-stunning-southern-hemisphere

See Jupiter’s southern hemisphere in beautiful detail in this new image taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced view captures
one of the white ovals in the “String of Pearls,” one of eight massive rotating storms at 40 degrees south latitude on the gas giant planet.

The image was taken on Oct. 24, 2017 at 11:11 a.m. PDT (2:11 p.m. EDT), as Juno performed its ninth close flyby of Jupiter. At the time
the image was taken, the spacecraft was 20,577 miles (33,115 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of minus
52.96 degrees. The spatial scale in this image is 13.86 miles/pixel (22.3 kilometers/pixel).

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

‘Unlucky’ dinosaurs: no extinction if asteroid had hit almost any other part of Earth | Science | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/...aurs-no-extinction-if-asteroid-had-hit-almost-any-other-part-of-earth

Only 13% of the Earth’s surface harboured rich enough hydrocarbon deposits to cause a mass extinction following an impact, research reveals

The massive asteroid that slammed into Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs might never have triggered a mass extinction had it struck almost
any other part of the planet, scientists claim.

In work that reveals just how unlucky the prehistoric beasts were, researchers calculate that the odds of the enormous space rock wreaking
such havoc were low across 87% of the Earth’s surface.

Unfortunately for the dinosaurs, the 9km-wide asteroid thumped into the ground in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, where the concentration
of hydrocarbons in the rocks was so high that the soot and sulphate aerosols sent into the sky caused global cooling and drought. The impact crater
near the town of Chicxulub is 180km wide and 20km deep.


A glimpse of when Canada's badlands were a lush dinosaur forest by the sea
Read more
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, Kunio Kaiho and Naga Oshima at Tohoku University in Japan describe calculations that suggest only 13%
of the Earth’s surface harboured rich enough hydrocarbon deposits to cause a mass extinction in the event of such a devastating impact.

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.

Yasushi yede! October 26, 2017 @ Ishikawa, JAPAN

ALMA objevila chladný prach v okolí nejbližší hvězdy | ESO Česko
http://www.eso.org/public/czechrepublic/news/eso1735/?lang

Radioteleskop ALMA pro milimetrovou a submilimetrovou oblast elektromagnetického záření pracující v Chile detekoval prach v okolí nejbližší sousední hvězdy Proximy Centauri.
Nová pozorování odhalila, že záření chladných prachových částic vychází z oblasti, která by se ve Sluneční soustavě rozkládala od oběžné dráhy Země až téměř k Jupiteru.
Navíc se zdá, že v soustavě Proximy může být ještě jeden o něco chladnější vnější prachový pás. Tyto oblasti by mohly být známkou přítomnosti komplexního planetárního systému.
Jelikož se očekává, že částice v těchto oblastech jsou tvořeny horninami a ledem, jsou pozorované struktury nejspíše podobné mohutnějším pásům meziplanetární hmoty, jaké známe
ze Sluneční soustavy , kde se rovněž jedná o zbytky látky nespotřebované při vzniku a vývoji planet.

Artist’s impression of the dust belts around Proxima Centauri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrYvTBZ6j20

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/return-of-the-comet-96p-spotted-by-esa-nasa-satellites

The ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA mission SOHO — short for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory — got a visit from an old friend this week
when comet 96P entered its field of view on Oct. 25, 2017. The comet entered the lower right corner of SOHO’s view, and skirted up and around
the right edge before leaving on Oct. 30. SOHO also spotted comet 96P in 1996, 2002, 2007 and 2012, making it the spacecraft’s most frequent
cometary visitor.