Category: The Moon

Our moon

Gaia space telescope discovers 55 ‘runaway’ careening away from stellar cluster at 80 times the speed of sound

NeRD

Using Europe’s Gaia space telescope, astronomers have identified 55 runaway stars being ejected at high speeds from a densely packed young cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. This is the first time so many stars have been seen escaping from a single star cluster. The star cluster R136, located around 158,000 light-years away, is home to hundreds of thousands of stars and sits in a massive region of intense star formation in the LMC. It’s home to some of the biggest…

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Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is being squeezed, Hubble Telescope finds — and nobody knows why (video)

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The venerable Hubble Space Telescope has watched Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS) oscillating, as though it were being squeezed in and out roughly every 90 days.  Why this huge anticyclone, which has been shrinking over the decades and currently measures about 9,165 miles (14,750 kilometers) across (although astrophotographer Damian Peach has reportedly measured it to be just 7,770 miles, or 12,500 km, wide), is behaving in such fashion is a mystery.  “With Hubble’s high resolution, we can say that the GRS is definitely squeezing in and out at the same…

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Hopes dim for another bright October comet after Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

NeRD

While skywatchers around the world have been raving about the performance of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, there has been talk on social media of yet another spectacular comet due to make its appearance at the end of this month.  The lineage of this second object apparently connects it with a family of comets, some of which have been among the most brilliant ever observed. For this reason, some might have already branded it as “The Great Halloween Comet.”  Unfortunately, it now appears likely that this will not happen.   We’ll get into…

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Severe solar storm could supercharge auroras across US, impact power grids, NOAA warns

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Get ready, aurora chasers: There’s a good chance you’ll be able to catch a nice light show by the end of the week! Forecasters with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) are highlighting the potential for a severe geomagnetic storm on Thursday (Oct. 10) and Friday (Oct. 11). That storm is likely to be in the G4 class — the second-highest level on the SWPC’s geomagnetic storm scale, which takes into account both severity and potential impacts.   Indeed, the SWPC has issued a…

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Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS photobombs SOHO spacecraft during powerful solar flare (video)

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Nothing makes a photo more interesting than an unexpected guest appearing in the background. And how cool would it be if the photobomber were a comet? That’s exactly what happened to the sun-studying Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, a joint effort of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, beginning on Oct. 7. Typically, scientists use the view from SOHO’s Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument to monitor the sun’s activity and determine if a coronal mass ejection (CME) accompanies a solar flare from active sunspot regions. Coronographs block…

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Official ‘Star Trek’ magazine ends an impressive 30-year run in December

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As the old proverb goes, “all good things must come to an end,” and so it is with Titan Publications’ “Star Trek Explorer” magazine, which will deliver its final issue (Star Trek Explorer #14) on Dec. 4, 2024 after 30 years of covering Paramount’s popular sci-fi franchise as their official publication. London-based publisher Titan, the firm that also produces a full lineup of comics, graphic novels, and pop culture books, started publishing the deluxe monthly “Star Trek Magazine” in 1995, prior to its rebranding as “Star Trek Explorer” in 2021.…

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Record-breaking ancient spinning galaxy challenges cosmic evolution theories

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The most distant and thus earliest rotating disk galaxy ever spotted has surprised astronomers and could challenge our theories of galactic evolution. Not only does it seemingly exist too early in the cosmos to be strongly spinning, the galaxy also shows hints of spiral arms similar to highly evolved “modern” galaxies like our own Milky Way. The galaxy, designated REBELS-25, is seen as it was just 700 million years after the Big Bang, at a time when astronomers expect galaxies to have been small and messy. Living up to its…

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Can Rocket Lab come to NASA’s rescue with new Mars sample-return plan?

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NASA’s troubled Mars sample-return program may have a new lifeline, in the form of a proposal from private space company Rocket Lab to help save the mission. When the Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021, the plan was to follow up with a mission in the early 2030s that would retrieve the canisters containing samples of Martian dirt, rocks and atmosphere collected by the rover, and bring them to Earth for detailed study. The hope is that the samples will be able to tell researchers about conditions on Mars…

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Dragon’s-eye view: Astronaut captures amazing shots of Hurricane Milton from space (photos)

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NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick has given us dramatic, Dragon’s-eye views of Hurricane Milton churning its way toward landfall. Dominick posted a timelapse video on X (formerly Twitter) today, showing Hurricane Milton through the window of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour, which is docked to the International Space Station (ISS). Endeavour is flying SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission for NASA; in early March, the capsule carried Dominick to the orbiting lab along with fellow NASA astronauts Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, as well as Alexander Grebenkin of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. Zoomed-in view of…

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

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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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