This Week’s Sky at a Glance, November 19 – 27

Orion now rises in the east around 8 p.m. Will Betelgeuse or Rigel be the first of his bright stars to come up? That depends on your latitude; Los Angeles and Atlanta are balance points. The Pleiades and Aldebaran watch this scene from high above. The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 19 – 27 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Read More

The greatest asteroid encounters of all time!

Asteroids are important building blocks of our solar system. When spacecraft study these small worlds, we learn more about how our neighborhood was formed — moons, planets and, of course, our own planet, Earth. A flurry of spacecraft have visited asteroids in recent decades to piece together the secrets of the solar system, and more such missions are launching soon. Galileo is first to an asteroid! Image 1 of 3 Gaspra (Image credit: NASA/JPL) Image 2 of 3 Ida and Dactyl (Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS) Image 3 of 3 An artist’s…

Read More

The ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ season 4 premiere is not one of its strongest starts (review)

Spoilers decloaking off the port bow!  It’s been just 10 months since Michael Burnham’s indecisive yo-yoing between should-she-stay-in-Starfleet and should-she-go on “Star Trek: Discovery.”  Ten months since we discovered a young Kelpien with self-confidence issues stranded on a planet comprised almost entirely of dilithium accidently caused the deaths of millions of members of almost every spacefaring species in the galaxy. And while the last season took a nosedive into absurdity in the second half, it did have one of the strongest starts of any new season of any “Star Trek”…

Read More

Ultrahot ‘superionic’ ice is a new state of matter

Scientists just squeezed a water droplet between two diamonds and blasted it to star-like temperatures with one of the world’s most powerful lasers. The result was a new and mysterious phase of water.  Called superionic ice, the “strange, black” water exists under the same pressures and temperatures as those at the center of Earth — a fact that could soon help researchers investigate the secrets buried inside the cores of other worlds.  Previously, researchers used shock waves to create this weird ice for just 20 nanoseconds before it dissolved. This…

Read More