Whenever discussions of original “Star Wars Trilogy” royalty are raised, Phil Tippett’s name comes into the esteemed mix alongside George Lucas, Ralph McQuarrie, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Brian Johnson, Dennis Muren, Joe Johnston, Jon Berg and others. As an Academy Award-winning artist and Industrial Light & Magic special effects guru responsible for such indelible “Star Wars”moments as the holochess scene in “A New Hope” and AT-ATs and Tauntauns striding across the icy battlefields of Hoth in “The Empire Strikes Back,” as well as “Return of the Jedi’s” Rancor monster in…
Read MoreMonth: June 2022
A Strange White Dwarf with a Chaotic Past
New observations show that both rocky and icy worlds fell onto a white dwarf, indicating past orbital chaos in the system. The post A Strange White Dwarf with a Chaotic Past appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Read MoreNASA Updates Astronaut Assignments for Boeing Starliner Test Flight
NASA will fly two astronaut test pilots aboard the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission to the International Space Station, where they will live and work off the Earth for about two weeks.
Read MoreThe Progress Pride Flag Flies at NASA Headquarters
The Progress Pride flag is seen flying at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters Building.
Read MoreLife and Death in Nearby Galaxies
New images of nearby galaxies and their surroundings reveal details in galactic formation and evolution — and puzzles that remain to be solved. The post Life and Death in Nearby Galaxies appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Read MoreMars rover Perseverance spots shiny silver litter on the Red Planet (photo)
No, this isn’t evidence of advanced (but careless) Martian life. On Monday (June 13), NASA’s Perseverance rover snapped a photo of a shiny silver object wedged between two rocks on the floor of the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater, which the car-sized robot has been exploring since its February 2021 touchdown. This space trash is not native to Mars; Perseverance hauled it from Earth, the rover’s handlers said. Related: 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover’s 1st year on Mars “My team has spotted something unexpected: It’s a piece of a…
Read MoreFastest-growing black hole ever seen is devouring the equivalent of 1 Earth per second
The fastest-growing black hole ever seen is swallowing the mass equivalent of an entire Earth every second. This gargantuan black hole has a mass 3 billion times that of the sun, and its rapid consumption is causing the behemoth to grow rapidly, an international research team found. The black hole gorges via a process called accretion, in which it siphons matter from a thin disk of gas and dust rotating around the massive object. Other black holes of a similar size stopped growing billions of years ago, but this newly…
Read MoreDid China just detect signals from an alien civilization?
The internet is abuzz with rumors that China may have picked up signals from an alien civilization. The news centers on observations by China’s “Sky Eye” — the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), which is located in southwestern Guizhou province. One report, by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, cited Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley. Related: The search for alien life Zhang is…
Read MoreNASA, Partner Agency Leaders to Talk to Space Station Astronauts
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, Italian Space Agency (ASI) President Giorgio Saccoccia, and leadership from the U.S. Embassy in Rome will speak with astronauts aboard the International Space Station this week.
Read MoreHave We Found the First Rogue Black Hole in the Milky Way?
Hubble observations have revealed a stellar-mass compact object — a black hole or possibly a neutron star — wandering our galaxy. The post Have We Found the First Rogue Black Hole in the Milky Way? appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
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