compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Planet KELT-9b

Planet is ‘hotter than most stars’
Scientists have found a hellish world where the “surface” of the planet is over 4,000C – almost as hot as our Sun. In part, that’s because KELT-9b’s host star is itself very hot, but also because this alien world resides so close to the furnace.
KELT-9b takes just two days to complete one orbit of the star…more

distribution of planet sizes- NYT

Earth-Size Planets Among Final Tally of NASA’s Kepler Telescope
Setting the stage for the next chapter in the quest to end cosmic loneliness, astronomers released a list on Monday of 4,034 objects they are 90 percent sure are planets orbiting other stars. The new list is the final and most reliable result of a four-year cosmic census of a tiny region of the Milky Way…more

A spectrograph of sun’s plasma jets -NYT

Solving the Scorching Mystery of the Sun’s Erupting Plasma Jets
Spiky bursts of plasma called spicules swirl around the surface of the sun. Millions erupt every moment, spurting solar material some 6,000 miles high at speeds of about 60 miles per second…more

-NYT

Greetings, E.T. (Please Don’t Murder Us.)
A new initiative to beam messages into space may be our best shot yet at learning whether we’re alone in the universe. There’s just one problem: What if we’re not?…more

The Vertex Locator detector -CERN

CERN Physicists Find a Particle With a Double Dose of Charm
Researchers reported on Thursday that in debris flying out from the collisions of protons at the CERN particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, they had spotted a particle that has long been predicted but not detected until now…more

Credit -Jason Major

Behold Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
An American space agency probe has returned the most detailed pictures ever of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The Juno spacecraft passed over the giant storm on Monday as it continued with its series of close passes of the gaseous world…more

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mirrors.

James Webb: Swallowing the biggest space telescope
The door has closed on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The successor to Hubble has been locked tight inside a giant chamber where it will undergo a series of tests to simulate conditions off Earth. Engineers must first pump out all the air, and then chill down the telescope to fantastically low temperatures…more

Noctilucent clouds -NatGeo

Eerie Clouds Glow at Night
In recent weeks, sky-watchers have been reporting nightly outbursts of eerie tendrils glowing in the twilight skies. The hypnotic displays signal the start of viewing season for noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds…more

The rocket carrying the Mayak satellite – Cosmo Mayak

Brightest ‘Star’ in the Sky May Soon Be This Russian Satellite
Soon, there may be a new human-made “star” gliding across the heavens that will be brighter than both the International Space Station and the planet Venus. Mayak, the Russian word for “beacon,” is a pyramid-shaped satellite that is the brainchild of a group of students…more