An unknown, unseen "planetary mass object" may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets to be published in the Astronomical Journal. This object would be different from—and much closer than—the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence yet awaits confirmation.

In the paper, Kat Volk and Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, or LPL, present compelling evidence of a yet-to-be- discovered planetary body with a mass somewhere between that of Mars and Earth. The mysterious mass, the authors show, has given away its presence—for now—only by controlling the orbital planes of a population of space rocks known as Kuiper Belt objects, or KBOs, in the icy outskirts of the solar system.

While most KBOs—debris left over from the formation of the solar system—orbit the sun with orbital tilts (inclinations) that average out to what planetary scientists call the invariable plane of the solar system, the most distant of the Kuiper Belt's objects do not. Their average plane, Volk and Malhotra discovered, is tilted away from the invariable plane by about eight degrees. In other words, something unknown is warping the average orbital plane of the outer solar system.

"The most likely explanation for our results is that there is some unseen mass," says Volk, a postdoctoral fellow at LPL and the lead author of the study. "According to our calculations, something as massive as Mars would be needed to cause the warp that we measured."

The Kuiper Belt lies beyond the orbit of Neptune and extends to a few hundred Astronomical Units, or AU, with one AU representing the distance between Earth and the sun. Like its inner solar system cousin, the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the Kuiper Belt hosts a vast number of minor planets, mostly small icy bodies (the precursors of comets), and a few dwarf planets.

Did you see a halo around the sun on Tuesday?

If you did, you spotted an atmospheric optical phenomenon known as a 22-degree halo.

Earthsky.org explains it very simply:

Halos are a sign of high thin cirrus clouds drifting 20,000 feet or more above our heads.

These clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals. The halos you see are caused by both refraction, or splitting of light, and also by reflection, or glints of light from these ice crystals.

It is called a 22-degree halo because the ring has a radius of approximately 22 degrees around the sun or moon.

The sun was attracting attention in Daytona Beach on Tuesday with a showy halo, just one day before the summer solstice and the first official day of summer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says rings like this one form around the sun when light refracts off ice crystals in cirrus clouds.

Ellen Bacca took the pic. above in downtown Grand Rapids Monday. It's a "fire rainbow" also known as a circumhorizontal arc.

It's actually not a rainbow caused by rain and you would be looking at a rainbow with the sun at your back. This occurs when sunlight passes through a band of high clouds with 6-sided crystals in the shape of plates.

The sun has to be at least 58 degrees above the horizon to see a circumhorizontal arc. That means today (one day from the Summer Solstice) you could see a circumhorizontal arc between 11:41 am and 3:50 pm and in Grand Rapids you can only see a fire rainbow from April 18 to August 23rd, when the sun climbs to 58 degrees above the horizon.

North (and south) of 55 deg. latitude, you'll never see a fire rainbow. In London, England (51.5 deg. latitude), they only have a total of 140 hours a year when the sun is high enough to see a circumhorizontal arc.

Two months before the first total solar eclipse to cross the continental United States in a century, NASA on Wednesday is expected to detail its plans to study and promote a celestial show that will darken skies from Oregon to South Carolina.

During the Aug. 21 eclipse, the moon will pass between the sun and Earth, blocking the face of the sun and leaving only its outer atmosphere, or corona, visible in the sky.

It is the first coast-to-coast total eclipse since 1918.

Weather permitting, astronomy enthusiasts can watch as the moon's 70-mile (113-km) wide shadow crosses the country, starting at 10:15 a.m. PDT (1715 GMT) around Lincoln Beach, Oregon, and ending at 2:49 p.m. EDT (1849 GMT) in McClellanville, South Carolina.

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration will discuss several solar physics and Earth science experiments to be conducted during the eclipse in a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. The agency also plans live broadcasts during the eclipse from dozens of locations along the path.

Genetic biotechnology is usually discussed in the context of current and emerging applications here on Earth, and rightly so, since we still live exclusively in our planetary cradle. But as humanity looks outward, we ponder what kind of life we ought to take with us to support outposts and eventually colonies off the Earth.

While the International Space Station (ISS) and the various spacecraft that ferry astronauts on short bouts through space depend on consumables brought up from Earth to maintain life support, this approach will not be practical for extensive lunar missions, much less long term occupation of more distant sites. If we're to build permanent bases, and eventually colonies, on the Moon, Mars, asteroids, moons of outer planets or in free space, we'll need recycling life support systems. This means air, water, and food replenished through microorganisms and plants, and it's not a new idea.

Space exploration enthusiasts have been talking about it for decades, and it's the most obvious application of microorganisms and plants transplanted from Earth. What is new, however, is the prospect of a comprehensive use of synthetic biology for a wide range of off-Earth outpost and colonization applications.

To this end, considering human outposts on the Moon and Mars, a study from scientists based at NASA Ames Research Center and the University of California at Berkeley examined the potential of genetic technology, not only to achieve biologically based life support systems, but also to facilitate other activities that must be sustained on colony worlds. Not discussed as often with biotechnology and space exploration in the same conversation, these other activities include creation of rocket propellant, synthesis of polymers, and production of pharmaceuticals. Together with the life support system, they paint a picture of the beckoning era of space activity that puts synthetic biology at center stage.

Although written specifically in the context of lunar and Martian outposts, the proposed biologically based technical infrastructure is just as applicable to a colony on less frequently discussed worlds, such as the dwarf planet Ceres or an outer planet moon, or to a colony that orbits in the Earth moon system.

Nemesis is apparently real, even if its bad reputation is undeserved.

For decades, some scientists have speculated that the sun has a companion whose gravitational tug periodically jostles comets out of their normal orbits, sending them careening toward Earth. The resulting impacts have caused mass extinctions, the thinking goes, which explains the putative star's nickname: Nemesis.

Now, a new study reports that almost all sun-like stars are likely born with companions, bolstering the case for the existence of Nemesis.

"We are saying, yes, there probably was a Nemesis, a long time ago," study co-author Steven Stahler, a research astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.

But the new results don't paint Nemesis as a murderer: The sibling star probably broke free of the sun and melted into the Milky Way galaxy's stellar population billions of years ago, study team members said.

Circumzenithal arc over Harleston in the Waveney Valley

As the storm approached a circumzenithal arc and sun dogs formed ahead of the thicker clouds .

Last Sunday morning a number of Vineyarders spotted an extraordinary atmospheric event in the sky, a peculiar high altitude rainbow. This was not the usual rainbow we are all familiar with following a summer shower, where rain clouds are nearby. This was different.

What our friends saw on Sunday was what meteorologists call a circumhorizontal arc, not a very attractive name for a pretty event, created by sunlight passing through high altitude ice crystals.

A circumhorizontal arc is far more related and a cousin to a halo and also a sun dog. Though all three are rare, the rarest of them all is the circumhorizontal arc. This is an event that takes place way up high in the neighborhood of cirrus clouds, well over 20,000 feet above ground.

Our changing atmosphere is a giant part in the creation of Sunday's show. The air around us was dry and stable, while high aloft there was change, an approaching cold front. High in the sky, there was bitter cold air interacting with moisture creating ice crystals. One more ingredient in this phenomena involves the relative angle between us, the crystals and the sun.

Sun dogs, halos and circumhorizontal arcs were used to predict the weather. They were a sign of an advancing change in the air. Last Sunday, the cold front passed over the Vineyard and brought with it rainy weather by the end of the day.

In all parts of the region Sunday afternoon, people saw a glowing ring around the sun.

Between 1 and 3 p.m., dozens of pictures were posted to social media from the seacoast to the Monadnock Region.

This is known as a 'sun halo' and occurs when sunlight passes through ice crystals high in the sky. The light is refracted by the ice crystals, and its straight path is bent in a 22 degree angle.