Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Satellite images capture Hurricane Milton intensifying into Category 5 storm (videos)

NeRD

In the heart of the Gulf of Mexico, a new hurricane is brewing. Hurricane Milton, now having intensified into a Category 5 storm, was caught in incredible space-based imagery from spacecraft such as the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-East satellite.  Hurricane Milton comes just ten days after Hurricane Helene, the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Katrina, made landfall in the southeastern U.S.  Milton poses a solid threat to the regions it will impact, and the National Hurricane Center is urging residents of Florida to take…

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Save 50% on your first month of Paramount Plus

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Paramount Plus is 50% off the first month when you get your subscription via Sling TV. While we’re struggling to find many Prime Day streaming deals this time round, and this offer isn’t strictly that, it does allow you to watch a variety of sci-fi favorites for less. Get 50% off your first month of Paramount Plus when you get it via Sling TV. If you’re a trekkie, this is the deal for you. Paramount Plus is the home to a Starship load of Star Trek content including The Original…

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‘The Ark’ creators on Season 2’s finale, alien artifacts and the colonists’ next destination (exclusive)

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Danger: Spoiler-ey Territory Ahead! Explorers aboard the colony spaceship Ark One in the sophomore season of SYFY’s outer space saga, “The Ark,” have been through a lot on their troubled mission to find a healthy new home after leaving Earth 100 years into the future.   Their first destination of Proxima b unfortunately exploded at the end of the series’ debut season in 2023, but the characters finally arrived at an alternate exoplanet suitable for supporting life in the Trappist System during the Season 2 finale that aired this week…

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

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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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