Cosmic 'Death Star' is destroying a planet
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-cosmic-death-star-planet.html

Astronomers announced today that they have spotted a large, rocky object disintegrating in its death spiral around a distant white dwarf star. The discovery also confirms a long-standing theory behind the source of white dwarf "pollution" by metals.

"This is something no human has seen before," says lead author Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "We're watching a solar system get destroyed."

The evidence for this unique system came from NASA's Kepler K2 mission, which monitors stars for a dip in brightness that occurs when an orbiting body crosses the star. The data revealed a regular dip every 4.5 hours, which places the object in an orbit about 520,000 miles from the white dwarf (about twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon). It is the first planetary object to be seen transiting a white dwarf.

Vanderburg and his colleagues made additional observations using a number of ground-based facilities: the 1.2-meter and MINERVA telescopes at Whipple Observatory, the MMT, MEarth-South, and Keck.

Combining all the data, they found signs of several additional chunks of material, all in orbits between 4.5 and 5 hours. The main transit was particularly prominent, dimming the star by 40 percent. The transit signal also showed a comet-like pattern. Both features suggest the presence of an extended cloud of dust surrounding the fragment. The total amount of material is estimated to be about the mass of Ceres, a Texas-sized object that is the largest main-belt asteroid in our solar system.

http://gds.astro.rub.de

Largest astronomical image of all time
RUB researchers compile Milky Way photo with 46 billion pixels
It is the largest astronomical image of all time: 46 billion pixels, 194 Gigabyte file size, and numerous stars.
The Milky Way photo contains data gathered in astronomical observations over a period of five years.
Largest astronomical image of all time - RUBIN Science Magazine - Ruhr-Universität-Bochum
http://rubin.rub.de/en/largest-astronomical-image-all-time

FAJL: však to není písek, je to posprejovaný

Věčné působení jemného marsovského prachu na plášti Curiosity. Po stranách fotomozaiky čísla solů.

JONAS3: Nějaké výtažky/shrnutí z původního článku na Slate, který mi přijde nejlepší - sice má nejvíce skeptické formulace, ale taky shrnuje nejzajímavější data a vysvětluje, proč žádné "normální" vysvětlení nefunguje
http://www.slate.com/...omy/2015/10/14/weird_star_strange_dips_in_brightness_are_a_bit_baffling.html

KIC 8462852: it’s clear something weird is happening there

The Kepler data for the star are pretty bizarre: There are dips in the light, but they aren’t periodic. They can be very deep; one dropped the amount of starlight by 15 percent, and another by a whopping 22 percent!
...
Straight away, we know we’re not dealing with a planet here. Even a Jupiter-sized planet only blocks roughly 1 percent of this kind of star’s light, and that’s about as big as a planet gets. It can’t be due to a star, either; we’d see it if it were. And the lack of a regular, repeating signal belies both of these as well. Whatever is blocking the star is big, though, up to half the width of the star itself!
...
The problem with that is that there’s no excess of infrared light from the star. Dust created in such impacts warms up and glows in the IR.
...
Comets are a good guess, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where they could completely block 22 percent of the light from a star; that’s a huge amount. Really huge.

Na odlehceni - nejake transkripty z mise apollo 11:)

NASA has new website that will show new pix of Earth
every day from DSCOVR at Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point.
http://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/

medzitym na Slovensku, skCube poleti Falconom

https://dennikn.sk/...rva-slovenska-druzica-vyleti-zrejme-buduci-rok-z-americkej-vojenskej-zakladne/

KOCOURMIKES: Trochu míň bombastická interpretace. Jako obvykle na novinkách si vzali jen tu mediálně nejpopulárnější možnost, i když je zmiňována jako poslední. O ostatních raději mlčí.
:: OSEL.CZ :: - Objevil teleskop Kepler megastrukturu mimozemské civilizace?
http://www.osel.cz/8485-objevil-teleskop-kepler-megastrukturu-mimozemske-civilizace.html