Here are some recent stories of interest..
—Vatican News: “Vatican Astronomer Releases ‘A Jesuit’s Guide to the Stars’“
Br Guy Consolmagno, the director of the Vatican Observatory, has published a new book entitled A Jesuit’s Guide to the Stars. Published on the 4th February, the book charts the long history of Jesuit engagement with astronomy. As Consolmagno notes in the book’s introduction, this is a story which has its origin in the very earliest days of the Society of Jesus. The founder of the Jesuit order, St Ignatius of Loyola, says in his autobiography (which, somewhat confusingly, is written in the third person) that “the greatest consolation that he received . . . was from gazing at the sky and stars, and this he did often, and for quite a long time.”
—LiveScience: “Astronomers Discover ‘Quipu’, the Single Largest Structure in the Known Universe“
Astronomers have discovered what may be the largest-scale structure in the known universe — a group of galaxy clusters and clusters of galaxy clusters that spans roughly 1.3 billion light-years across and contains a mind-boggling 200 quadrillion solar masses. The newfound structure is dubbed Quipu after an Incan system of counting and storing numbers using knots on cords.
—Astrobiology: “A Large Number Of Exocomets Have Been Discovered“
CfA astronomers and its Submillimeter Array were critical for identifying a cache of belts where comets may reside outside our Solar System. For the first time, astronomers have imaged dozens of belts around nearby stars where comets and tiny pebbles within them are orbiting. This result reveals regions around 74 stars spanning a wide range of ages – from those recently formed to others billions of years old – showing how comets play a role in the formation of stars and planetary systems.
Our Awesome Universe 