https://www.nasa.gov/...-feature/goddard/2018/hubble-weighs-in-on-mass-of-three-million-billion-suns

In 2014, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope found that this enormous galaxy cluster contains the mass of a staggering three million billion suns —
so it’s little wonder that it has earned the nickname of “El Gordo” (“the Fat One” in Spanish)! Known officially as ACT-CLJ0102-4915, it is the largest, hottest,
and brightest X-ray galaxy cluster ever discovered in the distant Universe.

This image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 as part of an observing program called RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster
Survey). RELICS imaged 41 massive galaxy clusters with the aim of finding the brightest distant galaxies for the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope to study.

Scientists have created a mini gamma-ray burst in the lab for the first time
http://www.sciencealert.com/...sts-have-created-a-mini-gamma-ray-burst-in-the-lab-for-the-first-time

Gamma ray bursts, intense explosions of light, are the brightest events ever observed in the Universe –
lasting no longer than seconds or minutes.

Now we have for the first time managed to recreate a mini version of a gamma ray burst in the laboratory –
opening up a whole new way to investigate their properties. Our research is published in Physical Review Letters.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 185002 (2017) - Experimental Observation of a Current-Driven Instability in a Neutral Electron-Positron Beam
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.185002

How To Keep Orbits Around The Triple Asteroid System 2001SN263? – Science Trends
https://sciencetrends.com/keep-orbits-around-triple-asteroid-system-2001sn263/

Many spacecraft have visited asteroids and brought meaningful information about those complex objects. However, no one has explored a triple system
of asteroids such as that one discovered in 2008 by scientists from the radio astronomy station of Arecibo, in Puerto Rico, and named 2001SN263. Such
system is composed of a central body (Alpha), with 1.25 km of radius, and two smaller bodies (Beta and Gamma), with a radius of 0.39 and 0.22 km,
respectively. Beta has an orbital period of 6.23 days while Gamma orbits Alpha with a period of 0.69 days. It is notorious that the investigation,
from close distances, of such systems can be of high scientific importance. In this sense, a partnership between Brazilian and Russian space institutes
has proposed the ASTER mission with the objective of exploring the asteroid 2001SN263.

ESA Science & Technology: JUICE ground control gets green light to start development of Jupiter operations
http://sci.esa.int/...ce-ground-control-gets-green-light-to-start-development-of-jupiter-operations/

ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer passed an important milestone, the ground segment requirements review, with flying colours, demonstrating
that the teams are on track in the preparation of the spacecraft operations needed to achieve the mission's ambitious science goals.

A new look at Venus with Akatsuki | The Planetary Society
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2018/0116-a-new-look-at-venus-with-akatsuki.html

Akatsuki (also known as PLANET-C and Venus Climate Orbiter) is a Japanese mission that launched almost eight years ago, in 2010. It missed its first attempt
to orbit Venus on December 7, 2010 due to the failure of its orbital insertion rocket. It was only on December 7, 2015, after several years of wandering around
the Sun, that Akatsuki succeeded in placing itself in orbit around the enigmatic planet. Even though the new orbit of Akatsuki is distant and highly elongated,
a large portion of the original science objectives may still be achieved.

In this view, individual layers of haze can be distinguished in the upper atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Titan’s atmosphere features a rich
and complex chemistry originating from methane and nitrogen and evolving into complex molecules, eventually forming the smog that surrounds the moon.

This natural color image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 31, 2005, at a distance of approximately 20,556 miles
(33,083 kilometers) from Titan. The view looks toward the north polar region on the moon’s night side. Part of Titan’s sunlit crescent is visible at right.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/hubble-yields-new-discoveries-at-the-winter-aas-meeting

Astronomers gathering at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society at National Harbor in Washington, D.C., will have a chance to learn
about groundbreaking new research with +Hubble Space Telescope. The new science discoveries with the Earth-orbiting observatory stretch from nearby
star-forming regions, to the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, to the horizon of the observable universe. All of these findings exploit the telescope’s
extraordinary resolution, sensitivity, and broad wavelength capabilities to gather information about the universe from space-based observations.

Flight Through Orion Nebula in Visible and Infrared Light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCFg5udYbAg

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/webb-telescope-s-houston-highlights

With NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s approximately nine-month stay in Texas coming to an end, now is a good time to reflect on the memories
it made in the Lone Star State. NASA has created a timelapse video that chronicles Webb’s time at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Webb Telescope's Houston Highlights Time Lapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLGDkhp28rI


Secondary Mirror Squeezing Below Top of Chamber A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDcpxocRcD8

ASU astronomers to build space telescope to explore nearby stars | ASU Now: Access, Excellence, Impact
https://asunow.asu.edu/...110-discoveries-asu-astronomers-build-space-telescope-explore-nearby-stars

In 2021, a spacecraft the size of a Cheerios box will carry a small telescope into Earth orbit on an unusual mission. Its task
is to monitor the flares and sunspots of small stars to assess how habitable the space environment is for planets orbiting them.

The spacecraft, known as the Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS for short, is a new NASA-funded space telescope.
The mission, including spacecraft design, integration and resulting science, is led by Arizona State University's School of Earth
and Space Exploration (SESE).

Swift Mission Catches a Comet Slowdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe-d9RxLLaM


NASA's Newly Renamed Swift Mission Spies a Comet Slowdown
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasas-newly-renamed-swift-mission-spies-a-comet-slowdown

Observations by NASA's Swift spacecraft, now renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after the mission’s late principal investigator, have
captured an unprecedented change in the rotation of a comet. Images taken in May 2017 reveal that comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák — 41P for short
— was spinning three times slower than it was in March, when it was observed by the Discovery Channel Telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona.

2x C/2016 R2 Panstarrs. Nádhera!



Taken by michael jäger on January 10, 2018 @ Hochbärneck Austria



Taken by Gerald Rhemann on January 9, 2018 @ Farm Tivoli, Namibia SW-Africa

Building a mirror for any giant telescope is no simple feat. But the recent castings of the 15-metric ton, off-axis mirrors
for the Giant Magellan Telescope forced engineers to push the design & manufacturing process beyond all previous limits.

Casting a $20 Million Mirror for the World’s Largest Telescope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2f4zepwcy8

The long and short of it: Iron-rich stars host shorter-period planets | SDSS | Press Releases
http://www.sdss.org/press-releases/long-short-iron/

Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have learned that the chemical composition of a star
can exert unexpected influence on its planetary system — a discovery made possible by an ongoing SDSS survey
of stars seen by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, and one that promises to expand our understanding of how extrasolar
planets form and evolve.

https://www.nasa.gov/.../new-sofia-observations-help-unravel-mysteries-of-the-birth-of-colossal-suns

Astronomers are observing star-forming regions in our galaxy with NASA’s flying telescope, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, to
understand the processes and environments required to create the largest known stars, which tip the scales at ten times the mass of our own Sun or more.

The research team, led by James M. De Buizer, SOFIA senior scientist and Jonathan Tan at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden and the University
of Virginia, has published observations of eight extremely massive and young stars located within our Milky Way Galaxy. SOFIA’s powerful camera, the Faint Object
infraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope, known as FORCAST, allowed the team to probe warm, dusty regions that are heated by light from luminous, massive stars that
are still forming. SOFIA’s airborne location, flying above more than 99 percent of Earth’s infrared-blocking water vapor coupled with its powerful instruments, make
it the only observatory that can study the stars at the wavelengths, sensitivity, and resolution necessary to see inside the dense dust clouds from which these
stars are born.