Hurricane "Patricia" slammed into the coast of southwestern Mexico on October 23, 2015, with winds reaching 270 km/h (165 mph) and was downgraded to a category 2 hurricane since, National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported. So far no victims have been reported, and the damage seems to be much less than feared, at first sight. However, this is still a dangerous system and shouldn't be underestimated, Mexico's president warned, following Patricia's landfall.

Patricia made landfall 85 km (55 miles) of Manzanillo, near Cuixmala, along the coast of southwestern Mexico on October 23, 23:15 UTC, NHC reported. The system slammed the land as a category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 270 km/h (165 mph). Its minimum central pressure was estimated at 920 hPa at the time.

A team of astronomers from Germany have compiled the largest astronomical image of the Milky Way galaxy so far, the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) announced on October 21, 2015.

​Small region of Milky Way showing the Eta Carinae star. Image credit: Lehrstuhl für Astrophysik, RUB

Scientists have monitored our Galaxy for five years, searching for objects with variable brightness, such as stars in front of which a planet is crossing or systems of stars that orbit and obscur each other. For this purpose the team has been observing the southern night sky on a nightly basis using the telescope at Bochum's University Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile. So far, over 50 000 bright variable objects have been detected during the project.

NASA's scientists discovered a new asteroid on October 10, 2015, using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) mounted on Mount Haleakala, Hawai'i. Asteroid was named 2015 TB145, and is expected to make the closest approach to our planet since 2006, on October 31.

Newly discovered asteroid is expected to make a flyby on October 31, 17:18 UTC, at about 1.3 lunar distances from the Earth, which is equivalent to approximately 499 000 km (310 000 miles). The object is estimated to be between approximately 300 and 470 m (984 to 1 541 feet) in diameter. The asteroid's encounter velocity is about 126 000 km/h (78 292 mph), which is an unusually high speed, according to NASA JPL's report.

2015 TB145's eccentricity values reach 0.86, making it a very eccentric object with a high inclination estimated at approximately 40°. Asteroid's Tisserand parameter, used in astronomy to distinguish between different kinds of planetoid orbits, is showing values of 2.973, suggesting the object might be cometary in nature.

The first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, provided last week by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft show the hazes scatter blue light, NASA announced on October 8, 2015. New Horizons has also detected small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto, using the Ralph spectral composition mapper.

Although the haze particles are most likely gray or red by themselves, the striking blue light they scatter can offer a lot of information regarding the size and composition of the haze particles.

Pluto’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles (called tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface. This image was generated by software that combines information from blue, red and near-infrared images to replicate the color a human eye would perceive as closely as possible. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI