The PI’s Perspective: Wrapping up 2017 En Route to Our Next Flyby – Pluto New Horizons
https://blogs.nasa.gov/...017/12/06/the-pis-perspective-wrapping-up-2017-en-route-to-our-next-flyby/

New Horizons is in good health and cruising closer each day to its next encounter: a flyby of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) 2014 MU69 (or “MU69” for short).
If you follow our mission, you likely know that flyby will occur on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day 2019, which is just barely over a year from now!

As I write this, New Horizons is wrapping up an active period that began when the spacecraft emerged from hibernation mode in September. But soon, on Dec. 21,
we’ll put the spacecraft back in hibernation, where it will remain until June 4, 2018. After June 4 the spacecraft will stay “awake” until late in 2020, long
after the MU69 flyby, when all of the data from that flyby have reached Earth.

But before we put New Horizons into hibernation this month, we have some important work ahead. We’ll observe five more KBOs with the onboard LORRI telescope/
imager to learn about their surface properties, satellite systems and rotation periods. This work is part of a larger set of observations of 25-35 Kuiper Belt
objects from 2016 to 2020 on this extended mission. Learning about these KBOs from close range and at angles that we cannot observe from Earth makes will give
us key context for the more detailed studies we’ll make of MU69 from a thousand times closer than we can study any other KBO. In addition to that LORRI imaging
of these objects, we’re continuing our nearly round-the-clock observations of the charged particle and dust environment of the Kuiper Belt—both before and while
New Horizons hibernates.

Also right ahead is a 2.5-minute engine burn planned for Dec. 9 (yes, a Saturday). This maneuver will both refine our course and optimize our flyby arrival time
at MU69, by setting closest approach to 5:33 Universal Time (12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time) on Jan. 1, 2019. Flying by at that time provides better visibility
by the antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network, which will attempt to reflect radar waves off the surface of MU69 for New Horizons to receive. If it succeeds, that
difficult experiment will help us determine the surface reflectivity and roughness of MU69 at radar wavelengths—something that has been successfully applied to
study asteroids, comets, planetary satellites and even some planets, including Pluto, which New Horizons observed the same way in 2015.

Jupí!! Roste do krásy.

https://twitter.com/mjuric/status/938445343078850560

Poetická Labuť za svítání
(Ne že bych musel pastovat každý nosič či modul, někdy je to ale skutečná nádhera.)

Discovery about rare nitrogen molecules offers clues to makeup of other life-supporting planets | UCLA
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/...trogen-molecules-offers-clues-to-makeup-of-other-life-supporting-planets

team of scientists using a state-of-the-art UCLA instrument reports the discovery of a planetary-scale “tug-of-war” of life,
deep Earth and the upper atmosphere that is expressed in atmospheric nitrogen.

The Earth’s atmosphere differs from the atmospheres of most other rocky planets and moons in our solar system in that it is rich
in nitrogen gas, or N2; the Earth’s atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen gas. Titan, the largest of Saturn’s more than 60 moons, is
the other body in our solar system with a nitrogen-rich atmosphere that resembles ours.

Compared with other key elements of life — such as oxygen, hydrogen and carbon — molecular nitrogen is very stable. Two nitrogen
atoms combine to form N2 molecules that stay in the atmosphere for millions of years.

The majority of nitrogen has an atomic mass of 14. Less than one percent of nitrogen has an extra neutron. While this heavy isotope,
nitrogen-15, is rare, N2 molecules that contain two nitrogen-15s — which chemists call 15N15N — are the rarest of all N2 molecules.

The team of scientists measured the amount of 15N15N in air and discovered that this rare form of nitrogen gas is far more abundant
than scientists had expected. The Earth’s atmosphere contains about two percent more 15N15N than can be accounted for by geochemical
processes occurring near the Earth’s surface.

“This excess was not known before because nobody could measure it,” said senior author Edward Young, a UCLA professor of geochemistry
and cosmochemistry. “Our one-of-a-kind Panorama mass spectrometer allows us to see this for the first time. We conducted experiments
showing that the only way for this excess of 15N15N to occur is by rare reactions in the upper atmosphere. Two percent is a huge excess.”

Young said the enrichment of 15N15N in Earth’s atmosphere is a signature that’s unique to our planet. “But it also gives us a clue about
what signatures of other planets might look like, especially if they are capable of supporting life as we know it.”

Scientists observe supermassive black hole in infant universe | MIT News
http://news.mit.edu/2017/scientists-observe-supermassive-black-hole-infant-universe-1206

A team of astronomers, including two from MIT, has detected the most distant supermassive black hole ever observed.
The black hole sits in the center of an ultrabright quasar, the light of which was emitted just 690 million years
after the Big Bang. That light has taken about 13 billion years to reach us — a span of time that is nearly equal
to the age of the universe.

The black hole is measured to be about 800 million times as massive as our sun — a Goliath by modern-day standards
and a relative anomaly in the early universe.

Why is Earth Magnetized and Venus Not? - Sky & Telescope
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/why-is-earth-magnetized-and-venus-not-magnetized/

A new analysis reveals that the gigantic impact that led to the Moon's formation might have also switched on Earth's magnetic field.

První světlo pro ESPRESSO – lovce exoplanet nové generace | ESO Česko
http://www.eso.org/public/czechrepublic/news/eso1739/?lang

Spektrograf ESPRESSO úspěšně provedl svá první pozorování. Nový přístroj instalovaný na dalekohledu ESO/VLT v Chile bude díky dosud nedosažitelné
přesnosti měření změn ve spektrech hvězd pátrat po jejich extrasolárních planetách. Zařízení bude navíc schopné získávat záření ze všech čtyř
hlavních dalekohledů systému VLT najednou a tímto způsobem sesbírá tolik světla, jako jeden teleskop se zrcadlem o průměru 16 m.

Přístrojem ESPRESSO (SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations), který byl nedávno instalován na dalekohled ESO/VLT
na observatoři Paranal v severním Chile [1], prošlo první světlo. Tento nový echelletový spektrograf třetí generace je nástupcem úspěšného zařízení
HARPS, které je stále v provozu na observatoři ESO/La Silla. Zatímco spektrograf HARPS je při měření rychlosti pomocí Dopplerova jevu schopen
dosáhnout přesnosti kolem 1 m/s, ESPRESSO by mělo – díky technologickému vývoji a využití na dalekohledu s mnohem větším zrcadlem –
provádět stejná měření s přesností v řádu několika centimetrů za sekundu.

ESOcast 141 Light: ESPRESSO — the Next Generation Planet Hunter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99lcMp2dv_4


ESPRESSO achieves First Light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaDzvQFgdec

What If the Big Bang Wasn't the Beginning? New Study Proposes Alternative
https://www.space.com/38982-no-big-bang-bouncing-cosmology-theory.html

..."The Big Bang as the initial singularity is only a speculation," Silva Neves told Space.com.
He said that "there are many observations in cosmology" that support the hypothesis that the
universe went through a period of rapid expansion, but that there is no direct evidence that
this expansion started with a singularity.

In a paper published Aug. 29 in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, Silva Neves,
a researcher at the Mathematics, Statistics & Scientific Computation Institute (IMECC-UNICAMP)
of the University of Campinas, in Brazil, proposes an alternative cosmological model that does
away with the necessity of this original singularity. His model includes a concept known as
bouncing cosmology.

https://www.swri.org/press-release/collisions-after-moon-formation-remodeled-early-earth

Southwest Research Institute scientists recently modeled the protracted period of bombardment following the Moon’s formation, when leftover planetesimals
pounded the Earth. Based on these simulations, scientists theorize that moon-sized objects delivered more mass to the Earth than previously thought.

Early in its evolution, Earth sustained an impact with another large object, and the Moon formed from the resulting debris ejected into an Earth-orbiting
disk. A long period of bombardment followed, the so-called “late accretion,” when large bodies impacted the Earth delivering materials that were accreted
or integrated into the young planet.

“We modeled the massive collisions and how metals and silicates were integrated into Earth during this ‘late accretion stage,’ which lasted for hundreds
of millions of years after the Moon formed,” said SwRI’s Dr. Simone Marchi, lead author of a Nature Geoscience paper outlining these results. “Based on
our simulations, the late accretion mass delivered to Earth may be significantly greater than previously thought, with important consequences for
the earliest evolution of our planet.”

Previously, scientists estimated that materials from planetesimals integrated during the final stage of terrestrial planet formation made up about half
a percent of the Earth’s present mass. This is based on the concentration of highly “siderophile” elements — metals such as gold, platinum and iridium,
which have an affinity for iron — in the Earth’s mantle. The relative abundance of these elements in the mantle points to late accretion, after Earth’s
core had formed. But the estimate assumes that all highly siderophile elements delivered by the later impacts were retained in the mantle.

Strejda Albert o5 bez ztráty kytičky
In a first, Galileo’s gravity experiment is re-created in space | Science News
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-galileo-gravity-experiment-re-created-space-einstein

Galileo’s most famous experiment has taken a trip to outer space. The result? Einstein was right yet again.
The experiment confirms a tenet of Einstein’s theory of gravity with greater precision than ever before.

According to science lore, Galileo dropped two balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that they fell at the same rate no matter their composition.
Although it seems unlikely that Galileo actually carried out this experiment, scientists have performed a similar, but much more sensitive experiment in
a satellite orbiting Earth. Two hollow cylinders within the satellite fell at the same rate over 120 orbits, or about eight days’ worth of free-fall time,
researchers with the MICROSCOPE experiment report Dec 4 in Physical Review Letters. The cylinders’ accelerations match within two-trillionths of a percent.

VLT’s SPHERE spies rocky worlds | ESO United Kingdom
http://www.eso.org/public/unitedkingdom/images/potw1749a/

These images were taken by ESO’s SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instrument, installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope
(VLT) at the Paranal Observatory, Chile. These strikingly-detailed views reveal four of the millions of rocky bodies in the main asteroid belt,
a ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter that separates the rocky inner planets of the Solar System from the gaseous and icy outer planets.

Astronomer’s map reveals location of mysterious fast-moving gas | University News : The University of Western Australia
http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/...rnational/astronomer-s-map-reveals-location-mysterious-fast-moving-gas

An Australian scientist has created the most detailed map ever of clouds of high-velocity gas in the Universe around us.

The map covers the entire sky and shows curious clouds of neutral hydrogen gas that are moving at a different speed to
the normal rotation of the Milky Way.

It was created by astronomer Dr Tobias Westmeier, from The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre
for Radio Astronomy Research, and published today in the leading journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Dr Westmeier said the map suggests that at least 13 per cent of the sky is covered by high-velocity clouds.

Metal asteroid Psyche is all set for an early visit from NASA
https://theconversation.com/metal-asteroid-psyche-is-all-set-for-an-early-visit-from-nasa-88044

Three times further away from the sun than the Earth lies an enormous lump of metal. Around 252km in diameter,
the metallic “M-class” asteroid 16 Psyche is the target of NASA’s next mission to the belt of giant rocks that
encircles the inner solar system. And the space agency now plans to visit it much sooner than originally planned.

Not only has the launch has been brought forward one year to the summer of 2022, but NASA’s scientists have also
found a way to get to Psyche (pronounced SYKe-ee) much faster by taking a more efficient trajectory. The new route
means the Psyche spacecraft won’t have to swing around the Earth to build up speed and won’t pass as close to the
sun, so it needs less heat protection. It is now due to arrive in 2026, four years earlier than the original timeline.