* Astronomy

Europe space ministers meet to decide Mars rover plan Europe's research ministers are meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, to decide whether or not to push ahead with plans to land a robot rover on Mars in 2021. The UK-assembled vehicle would search for life on the Red Planet by sampling soil drilled fro...

Search giant Google is offering a $30m prize pot to private firms that land a robot rover on the Moon. The competition to send a robot craft to the Moon is being run with the X-Prize Foundation. To claim the cash, any craft reaching the lunar surface must perform a series of tasks such as shoot video and ro...

Irish archaeoastronomer Paul Griffin has announced the confirmation of the world's oldest known solar eclipse recorded in stone, substantially older than the recordings made in 2800 BC by Chinese astronomers. This finding was made at the world's oldest lunar eclipse tracking multi cairn site a...

Barbados celebrates 50 years of independence The Caribbean island is 50 years old on 30 November - more to the point, it's 50 years since it gained independence from the UK. Read more

ATel 9806: Discovery of a Probable Nova in M81

On Saturday, April 26, 1986, a disaster occurred at Chernobyl reactor No. 4, which has been widely regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. As a result, reactor No. 4 was completely destroyed and has since been enclosed in a concrete and lead sarcophagus to prevent further esca...

Astronomers anticipate major announcement from Gravitational Wave Observatory Exactly 100 years after Einstein predicted that accelerating masses emit an invisible radiation that makes ripples in space-time, an international team led by US scientists are poised to make a major announcemen...

ATel 9812: ASASSN-16ns: Discovery of A Probable Supernova in GALEXASC J100418.99+432525.7

ATel 9811: Asiago spectroscopic classification of SN 2016hrv

ATel 9807: MAXI/GSC detection of a new X-ray outburst of 4U 1711-34

ATel 9804: ASASSN-16nv: Discovery of A Probable Supernova in 2MASX J05482726-2319189

Title: A magneto-electric quantum wheel Authors: Alexander Feigel Here we show that self-propulsion in quantum vacuum may be achieved by rotating or aggregating magneto-electric nano-particles. The back-action follows from changes in momentum of electro-magnetic zero-point fluctuation...

ATel 9803: NIR brightening of the source MASTER OTJ013135.43+555831.5

Other notable Messier objectsM57 This smallest planetary nebula in the Messier Catalogue is the famous Ring nebula in the constellation Lyra. Low power telescope views show a very small blue/green disk, not much bigger than a star. Medium to high power will magnify the size of the nebula while lea...

On 2016 Nov 30th, the 19 km diameter asteroid (869) Mellena will occult a 5.2 mag star in the constellation Orion Read more