Scientists from the Paris Observatory have discovered mysterious undulating objects on space photos made with the Hubble space telescope and ESO's Very Large Telescope, scientific magazine Nature wrote.

A team of astronomers led by Anthony Boccaletti has been searching the gas-and-dust disc of a young star AU Microscopii for any signs of clumpy or warped features, as such signs might give away the location of possible planets. AU Mic is located in the Microscope constellation, 32 light years away from Earth. It is a small dim star, classified as a red dwarf and a flaring temporary star.

Having analyzed the images, the scientists discovered five unknown wave-like formations, resembling ripples in water, within the planet-forming disc of the AU Mic. These structures present another astronomic mystery to be solved, because nothing similar was ever seen before. The scientists haven't yet determined the nature of these "waves".

"Everything about this find was pretty surprising!" said co-author Carol Grady of Eureka Scientific, USA. "And because nothing like this has been observed or predicted in theory we can only hypothesise when it comes to what we are seeing and how it came about."

These mysterious roll clouds engulfed the sky of Bern, Switzerland.

What a wavy cloud formation.

From the "possible measurement error" department.

Larry O'Hanlon (via AGU blogs) writes:

Something strange has happened to the atmospheric concentration of a newly discovered, human-made, ozone-destroying gas: it has suddenly dropped and nobody knows why.

The gas, HCFC-133a, is a type of hydrochlorofluorocarbon, ozone-destroying compounds used in some industrial processes, including the manufacturing of refrigerants. The use of HCFCs, which are also powerful greenhouse gases, is restricted under the Montreal Protocol. A study last year first identified HCFC-133a as one of four previously undetected human-made gases in the atmosphere that are contributing to destruction of the ozone layer, but the source of HCFC-133a remains a mystery.

"This is enormous, how quickly the trend reversed," said Martin Vollmer of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology in Dubendorf, Switzerland. But instead of deepening the mystery of HCFC-133a's sources, the abrupt change offers new clues, Vollmer said.

New measurements show that after a rapid increase of the compound in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere from 0.13 parts per trillion (ppt) in 2000 to 0.50 ppt in 2013, the concentration suddenly dropped to about 0.44 ppt by early 2015. This drop in concentration is equivalent to a 50 percent decline in global emissions percent of the gas: from 3,000 metric tons (3,300 US tons) in 2011 to about 1,500 metric tons (1,700 tons) in 2014, according to the new study.

Coinciding events in space have brought the spectacular event much further south than it can usually be seen

The Northern Lights are to be visible for much of the UK for the next few weeks, because of a strange quirk of space weather.

People in the north of England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are in with a higher chance of seeing the phenomenon, according to the Met Office. But it may come even further south at times.

The best way to see the lights is to head somewhere as dark and away from light pollution as possible. Visibility will be better further north.

The extra visibility is caused by a burst of solar wind coming from a "coronal hole" in the Sun, which is in line with the worth and is shooting solar winds at the planet. That has combined with the time of year to make the Northern Lights extra visible.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered never-before-seen moving features within the dusty disk surrounding the young nearby star AU Microscopii (AU Mic). The fast moving, wave-like structures are unlike anything ever observed in a circumstellar disk, said researchers of a new analysis. This new unexplained phenomenon may provide valuable clues about how planets form inside these star-surrounding disks.

AU Mic is located 32 light-years away in the southern constellation Microscopium. It is an optimal star to observe because its circumstellar disk is tilted edge on to our view from Earth. This allows for certain details in the disk to be better seen.

Astronomers have been searching AU Mic's disk for any signs of clumpy or warped features that might offer evidence for planet formation. They discovered some unusual, apparently outward-moving features near the star by using ESO's Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument mounted on the Very Large Telescope.

If you're on the east coast tonight, keep an eye on the sky between 7pm and 9pm: NASA is launching a test of some new tech that will include releasing colorful vapor tracers 130 miles above the Earth. It sounds like it's going to be beautiful.

The vapors will be ejected from a sounding rocket launched from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA explains that it has actually been injecting various vapor tracers into the atmosphere since the 1950s—these trails help scientists understand "the naturally occurring flows of ionized and neutral particles" in the upper atmosphere by injecting color tracers and tracking the flow across the sky.

Tonight, NASA says it's ejecting four different payloads of a mix of barium and strontium, creating "a cloud with a mixture of blue-green and red color."

Following the posting on the Central Bureau's Transient Object Confirmation Page about a possible Nova in Sgr (TOCP Designation: PNV J18033275-2816054) we performed some follow-up of this object remotely through a 0.43-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD) of iTelescope network (MPC Code Q62 - Siding Spring).

On our images taken on September 28.4, 2015 we can confirm the presence of an optical counterpart with R-CCD magnitude 9.5 at coordinates:

R.A. = 18 03 32.77, Decl.= -28 16 05.3

(equinox 2000.0; UCAC4 catalogue reference stars).

Our annotated confirmation image. Click on it for a bigger version:

The sun is triggering the deadliest earthquakes on the planet, including the recent M8.3 earthquake in Chile on September 16, 2015 and deadly tsunami that followed, according to two papers to be published October 5th in New Concepts in Global Tectonics. The papers investigate fluctuations in the magnetic field activity of the sun and found a statistically significant relationship between M8+ earthquakes and the extremes and reversals in magnetism of solar polar magnetic fields.

The team first announced the results in August 2014, and recently used the methods proposed in that study to provide evidence that a recent major earthquake fit the patterns observed in the foundational study. In early 2014, Dr. Christopher Holloman's team of researchers at The Ohio State University Statistical Consulting Service was able to construct a model that exhibited very strong agreement between solar magnetism patterns and the occurrence of large earthquakes.

Dr. Holloman warned that formal testing of the model can only be performed by examining its performance over the next few years, but that the agreement was sufficient to suggest that a relationship likely exists between solar polar fields, or magnetic fields associated with the north and south poles of the sun, and large earthquakes. Now we have a subsequent event that appears to comport with the initial study.

"This type of confirmation is merely the first step, but it is certainly a positive one," notes lead author Ben Davidson of SpaceWeatherNews LLC, "we were already in the process of investigating large seismic events since the end-date of our initial study when the Chile disaster occurred, and we hope to have further publications covering those events in more detail in 2016." The second paper was submitted by Davidson alone, and was restricted to analysis of the Chile earthquake in order to accompany the initial study.

If only calculating the distance between Earth and far-off galaxies was as easy as pulling out the old measuring tape. Now University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers are proposing a new way to calculate distances in the cosmos using mysterious bursts of energy.

In a study just featured in the journal Physical Review Letters, UBC researchers propose a new way to calculate cosmological distances using the bursts of energy also known as fast radio bursts. The method allows researchers to position distant galaxies in three dimensions and map out the cosmos.

"We've introduced the idea of using these new phenomena to study cosmological objects in the universe," said Kiyoshi Masui, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC and a global scholar with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. "We believe we'll be able to use these flashes to put together a picture of how galaxies are spread through space."

Some unknown astrophysical phenomenon is causing these bursts of energy that appear as a short flashes of radio waves. While only ten fast radio bursts have ever been recorded, scientists believe there could be thousands of them a day.

Where would be the best place to observe the northern lights if not from the International Space Station? Watch the ethereal display of colored lights shimmering across the Earth's night skies, captured from the Cupola observatory module.

The stunning time-lapse footage of the aurora lights is the product of the Cupola - an observatory module with seven illuminators that open up a 360-degree view - which has allowed for the recording of incredible footage from between September 7 and 12.