Turkey earthquake prompts United Nations to activate emergency satellite mapping

The United Nations has activated its emergency mapping satellite service following a devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday (Feb. 6). The magnitude 7.8 earthquake caused widespread destruction throughout Turkey and northwest Syria, claiming the lives of more than 2,000 people and injuring thousands more, Reuters reports (opens in new tab). The epicenter of the 11-mile-deep (18 kilometers) earthquake appears to have been along the southern border of Turkey just west of the city of Gaziantep, according to data (opens in new tab) collected by the United States…

Read More

Ultra-rare ‘rainbow clouds’ light up the Arctic Circle like auroras in stunning new photos

Bright multi-colored clouds shining in the night sky above Mount Jökultindur in Iceland on Jan. 25. (Image credit: Jónína Guðrún Óskarsdóttir) The dark skies in the Arctic Circle recently shone with ethereal multi-colored light. But this jaw-dropping spectacle was not caused by auroras. Instead, the iridescent rainbows were caused by clouds of tiny ice crystals floating higher in the atmosphere than is normally possible. The Arctic Circle (opens in new tab) clouds, known as polar stratospheric clouds (PSC), only form when the lower stratosphere reaches temperatures below minus 114 degrees…

Read More

Senator Mark Kelly, Roy Bridges to enter Astronaut Hall of Fame

The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame will celebrate the careers of two space shuttle pilots, one who flew at the start of the program and another who helped bring it to a close almost 30 years later. Retired Major General Roy Bridges and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) have been chosen as the 2023 Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees (opens in new tab). The two will be enshrined during a public ceremony at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida on May 6. “This year’s class is another example…

Read More

A Visit to NISAR

Officials from NASA, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and the Indian Embassy visit a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 3, 2023, to view the scientific instrument payload for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission.

Read More

Bright blue stars crawl among Tarantula Nebula clouds in Hubble telescope photo

A stunning new view of the Tarantula Nebula captures turbulent clouds of gas and dust swirling between young stars. Located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group — the galaxies nearest to the Milky Way. This new view comes from the Hubble Space Telescope and combines data collected during multiple observations.  The Tarantula Nebula houses the hottest and most massive stars known, making it the “perfect natural laboratory in which…

Read More

Doomsday clock advances to 90 seconds to midnight — the closest to apocalypse it’s ever been

A billowing white mushroom cloud during Operation Ivy, the first test of a hydrogen bomb, at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. (Image credit: CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) The Doomsday Clock, created 76 years ago by atomic scientists to warn against a human-made apocalypse, has moved to 90 seconds to midnight. Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the climate crisis, and biological threats such as the unchecked spread of COVID-19 were the leading reasons given by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), a non-profit organization of scientists and policy experts,…

Read More

Strange unprecedented vortex spotted around the sun’s north pole

A huge filament of solar plasma has broken off the sun’s surface and is circling its north pole like a vortex of powerful winds, but scientists have no clue what caused it. “Talk about polar vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our star,” space weather forecaster Tamitha Skov said on Twitter while sharing a video sequence taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory showing the odd whirlwind. “Implications for understanding…

Read More

Release of ‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’ video game delayed to April 28

Gamers champing at the bit to play the upcoming “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor” video game next month will have to wait a bit longer, as the development team recently shared news that the game would be delayed and offered up the new release date of April 28, 2023. Respawn Entertainment, Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm Games’ “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor” is the hotly anticipated sequel to 2019’s “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order” that space opera gaming fans can’t wait to get their mitts on. Its intense storyline extends renegade Jedi Cal…

Read More