Day: October 5, 2024

This Week In Space podcast: Episode 131 —The Star Wars vs. Star Trek Food Fight

NeRD

The Star Wars vs. Star Trek Food Fight – Vulcan Launches, Voyager 2 Powers Down, the Sun Powers Up – YouTube Watch On On Episode 131 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik tackle a question that rivals the meaning of life itself: which is better, Star Trek or Star Wars? Of course, they are very different, and that’s really the core of it–one is a sweeping fantasy adventure incorporating the “Hero’s Journey,” while the other is a science fantasy wrapped around a morality play. In the…

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Ancient supermassive black hole is blowing galaxy-killing wind, James Webb Space Telescope finds

NeRD

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have spotted the earliest powerful “galaxy-size” wind blowing from a feeding supermassive black hole-powered quasar. The powerful wind is pushing gas and dust from its galaxy at incredible speeds, killing star birth in its host galaxy.  This quasar, designated J1007+2115, is so distant that it is seen as it was just 700 million years after the Big Bang — when the 13.8 billion-year-old universe was just around 5% of its current age. Though this makes J1007+2115 just the third-earliest quasar ever seen,…

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See Venus rendezvous with the crescent moon in the night sky tonight (Oct. 5)

NeRD

On Saturday evening (Oct. 5) as darkness is falling, be sure to take a look low toward the west-southwest part of the sky for a beautiful celestial tableau formed by a lovely crescent moon and the brilliant planet Venus.  The moon will appear to hover about 4-degrees below and to the left of Venus. Your clenched fist held at arm’s length measures roughly 10-degrees. So, the moon and Venus will appear to be less than a “half a fist” apart. These Venus-moon rendezvous occur on roughly a monthly schedule. Indeed, if…

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