Month: January 2024

The Quadrantid meteor shower 2024 peaks tonight alongside a bright moon

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Early each January, the Quadrantid meteor stream provides one of the most intense annual meteor displays, with a brief, sharp maximum lasting only a few hours.  The Quadrantid meteor shower actually radiate from the northeast corner of the constellation of Boötes, the Herdsman, so we might expect them to be called the “Boötids.” But back in the late-18th century there was a constellation here called “Quadrans Muralis,” the “Mural or Wall Quadrant” (an astronomical instrument). Quadrans Muralis is a long-obsolete star pattern, invented in 1795 by J.J. Lalande to commemorate…

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Total solar eclipse 2024: Live updates

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Refresh 2024-01-03T10:11:19.869Z Why not experience totality from one of these eclipse-themed locations? There are dozens of eclipse-related place names in North America.  (Image credit: Michael Zeiler/GreatAmericanEclipse.com) Eclipse Island, Corona and Moon Island are just some of the places you can watch the total solar eclipse on April 8.  Here we’ve rounded up eclipse-related place names located within the path of totality along with the local time and duration of totality.  Read more: These eclipse-themed places will experience totality on April 8, 2024 2024-01-02T12:04:41.410Z The best places in the US to…

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Review: Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon’ is a joyless jumble of rehashed sci-fi fare

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“A good conscience is a continual Christmas,” Benjamin Franklin once wrote. So it’s with a heavy heart and a liberated soul that I cannot honestly recommend the new Netflix space fantasy, “Rebel Moon: Part One — A Child of Fire,” to anyone but the most hardcore of Zack Snyder acolytes. And that pains me as a serious admirer of Snyder’s previous work on sci-fi and fantasy features like “Dawn of the Dead,” “300,” “Watchmen,” “Man of Steel,” “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” and “Justice League.” However, “Rebel Moon,” with…

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NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 Preflight

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Jupiter, top, and Venus, bottom, are seen with the crescent Moon above the Vehicle Assembly Building, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as preparations continued for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission. The agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission was the sixth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

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Crescent Moon Over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

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NASA / Joel Kowsky The crescent moon, along with Jupiter (top right of Moon) and Venus (below Moon) appeared over the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Feb. 22, 2023, as preparations continued for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission. NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev launched to the International Space Station March 2, 2023. The NASA Headquarters photographers chose this photo as one of the best images from 2023. See the rest on Flickr. Image…

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Payroll

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1 Min Read Payroll The NASA Shared Services Center (NSSC) Payroll Office (NPO) reviews, validates, and delivers time and attendance data to the Department of the Interior (DOI) Interior Business Center (IBC) for NASA Centers.  NPO acts as liaison between Centers, employees and IBC for other payroll related activities such as supplemental payments, prior pay period adjustments  (PPPA) and settlement agreements. 2024 NASA Payroll Calendar Employment Verification POD A-12 – Non-Receipt of DD/EFT Payment Payroll Schedule Calendars

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Quadrantid meteor shower 2024: The year’s 1st meteor shower blazes over North America on Jan. 3

NeRD

The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak this week and could bring up to 120 shooting stars per hour to the night sky. It has the potential to be the strongest meteor shower of 2024, according to the American Meteor Society, but with such a short peak — just six hours — the shower’s climax can often occur in daylight. This year, the predicted peak is 7:53 a.m. EST (12:53 GMT) on Jan. 4, according to EarthSky. That makes the pre-dawn hours — from around 4:53 a.m. EST to dawn —…

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Artemis 2 moon astronaut says his 1st space launch will feel epic

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One of the Artemis 2 astronauts will mark his first trip in space with a trip to the moon. Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen recently shared in a video on X, formerly Twitter, how he and the rest of the Artemis 2 crew plan to get to the moon in 2024, including what he expects to feel on the big launch day. “You can imagine what it’s really going to be like to come up to the launch pad and have this living, breathing rocket full of fuel,…

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Earth’s intense gravity may rip space rocks apart, reducing the risk of ‘planet killer’ asteroids

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Every year, dozens of asteroids come closer to our planet than the moon is, and yet catastrophic collisions are exceedingly rare.  Now, a new study proposes that Earth has a built-in defense system —  its intense gravitational forces — that it uses to tackle asteroid interlopers. The enormous masses of planets and their moons mean they exert tremendous gravitational forces on nearby objects. The differences in gravity these objects experience, called tidal forces because astronomers used them to explain how the moon causes tides on Earth,  can be so strong…

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