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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Senate Commerce Committee has voted 14-13 to advance Jim Bridenstine's nomination [spacenews.com] as NASA administrator to a full Senate vote.

NASA launched a sounding rocket [firstpost.com] equipped with ultraviolet optics on October 30th. The Dual-channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Experiment [nasa.gov] was launched on a suborbital rocket. It was intended to measure starlight from two hot stars in Canis Major in order to study the intergalactic medium. Unfortunately, data was not obtained due to an issue with the altitude control system. Here is a University of Colorado proposal [harvard.edu] from 2013 regarding the project.

Science Magazine has an in-depth article [sciencemag.org] on how astronomers are trying to detect life on Earth-sized exoplanets. Starshades are considered one of the best options for removing the light emitted by parent stars and obtaining a direct image of an exoplanet. Even images of only a few pixels can yield valuable information about exoplanets, particularly if change is tracked over time.

Scientists have studied x-ray auroras on Jupiter using data from XMM-Newton and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. They found that the planet's northern and southern auroras behave independently of each other [theverge.com]:

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Jupiter's orientation means that the X-ray auroras on its southern pole are difficult to see. But for about 12 hours each on May 24th, 2007 and June 1st, 2016, the Chandra X-ray Observatory [harvard.edu] and XMM-Newton [esa.int] space telescopes orbiting Earth were in precisely the right positions to observe both poles simultaneously.

The rare view revealed that auroras on both poles behave differently: one didn't always brighten when the other did. That's surprising, says Jonathan Nichols [le.ac.uk], an astrophysicist at the University of Leicester who was not involved in the study. Since magnetic field lines create a continuous arc between the poles, "You might imagine that what affects the auroras in the north would affect the auroras in the south," Nichols says. At least, that's generally what happens on Earth.

Even stranger, while the southern aurora pulsed rhythmically every nine to 12 minutes (it had previously been seen to pulse regularly every 40 to 45 minutes), the northern aurora was more erratic. Sometimes, it brightened every five to eight minutes, but other times it was more irregular. The brightness of the two auroras also differed, and varied from one pulse to the next.

It's not exactly clear why the auroras are behaving this way, but Dunn has some ideas about what could cause the rhythmic pulsing of the southern X-ray aurora. The solar winds could be creating waves along Jupiter's field lines, causing the charged particles surfing along those waves to reach the poles at intervals of, say, every 11 minutes, Dunn says.

The independent pulsations of Jupiter's northern and southern X-ray auroras [nature.com] (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0262-6) (DX [doi.org])

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