Category: Solar System

Our solar system

SpaceX, NASA stand down from Oct. 10 Europa Clipper launch due to Hurricane Milton

NeRD

We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see NASA’s Europa Clipper probe get off the ground. The $5 billion Europa Clipper mission had been scheduled to launch on Thursday (Oct. 10) atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), on Florida’s Atlantic Coast. But Hurricane Milton has nixed that plan. “NASA and SpaceX are standing down from the Thursday, Oct. 10, launch attempt of the agency’s Europa Clipper mission due to anticipated hurricane conditions in the area,” NASA officials wrote in an update on Sunday…

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What it was like to experience the ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse on Easter Island

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RAPA NUI (EASTER ISLAND), Chile — Eclipse-chasers from across the globe gathered on remote Rapa Nui — also known as Isla de Pascua and Easter Island — to witness a fabulous “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse for about six minutes. It was the island’s first in 236 years and last for 321 years.  I was there with eclipse-chaser experts Astro Trails, who I joined in Santiago, Chile to take a five-hour flight to the tiny Chilean island, 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) east of Pitcairn Island and 2,200 miles (3,540…

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SpaceX will launch Europe’s Hera asteroid probe today: Watch it live

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ESA’s Hera mission launch (Official broadcast) – YouTube Watch On SpaceX will launch Europe’s Hera spacecraft toward the asteroid Dimorphos for a post-impact evaluation on Monday (Oct. 7), and you can watch the liftoff live. The European Space Agency‘s Hera mission will visit Dimorphos — the asteroid that NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft knocked off course in September 2022. Hera will assess the aftermath of that impact and study both the surface and internal structure of the asteroid in greater detail.  The main Hera spacecraft and its two…

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

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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

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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)

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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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Blue Origin to debut 2nd human-rated New Shepard rocket on Oct. 7 launch (photo)

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Blue Origin will debut a new spacecraft on Monday (Oct. 7), if all goes according to plan. Jeff Bezos‘ aerospace company plans to launch its uncrewed NS-27 mission Monday morning, sending its New Shepard rocket-capsule combo on a brief trip to suborbital space. It will be the first mission for this particular vehicle, according to Blue Origin. NS-27 will launch from the company’s West Texas site during a window that opens at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT; 8:00 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch the action live via Blue…

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NASA’s exoplanet hunter TESS spots a record-breaking 3-star system

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Using NASA’s exoplanet-hunting spacecraft, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists have spotted a record-breaking triple-star system so tightly bound that it could fit comfortably between the sun and its closest planet, Mercury. The system, designated TIC 290061484 contains twin stars that race around each other once every 1.8 Earth days as well as a third star that orbits this pair once every 25 Earth days. This triple star system’s super-tight orbit, located just under 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the swan, makes it a record-breaker.  The previous…

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This Celestron beginner telescope is 18% off before Prime Day

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The Celestron 70mm Travel Scope is 18% off on Amazon in this early Prime Day telescope deal. Amazon’s Big Deal Days sales event starts Oct. 8, and we have a roundup of all the best early Amazon Prime Day deals, which you can check out. Save 18% on the Celestron 70mm Travel Scope when you grab it on Amazon ahead of Big Deal Days. Celestron’s 70mm Travel Scope is ideal for beginners, and, at under $90, it’s a low-risk investment if you’re taking your first steps into astronomy. You get…

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James Webb Space Telescope finds supernova ‘Hope’ that could finally resolve major astronomy debate

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have captured a stunning image of a distant supernova in a galaxy that looks like it’s being stretched like warm taffy. However, the golden smear hiding this gravitationally lensed supernova, which has been nicknamed “supernova Hope,” isn’t just remarkable for its aesthetic value. The supernova, which exploded when the 13.8-billion-year-old universe was just around 3.5 billion years old, tells us something about a huge problem in cosmology called the “Hubble tension.”  The Hubble tension comes from the fact that scientists can’t agree on…

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