Items tagged with astronomy
A new research has revealed that sun-like stars in our galaxy experience one violent "superflare" approximately once every hundred years—far more often that scientists previously thought. With that, many believe that the Sun in our solar system is overdue for such a superflare, especially since the last one was back...
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Grab a warm blanket, lawn chair, some hot cocoa, and get ready for one of the most dazzling meteor showers of the year. The colorful Geminid meteor light show is expected to peak tonight as well as tomorrow night with up to 160 meteors per hour (with the right conditions, of course). Bonus: the Geminids usually occur...
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Jupiter is well-known for its Great Red Spot, but astronomers have recently discovered equally large spots at the giant gas planet’s north and south poles that appear and disappear at random. The dark UV ovals were first spotted by NASA’s Hubble spacecraft in the late 1990s, but have only recently been studied in...
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NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft captured the moment when a headless Halloween comet flew too close to the Sun and vaporized. Comet 2024 S1 ATLAS reached its perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun on Sunday around 7:30am ET.
Comet 2024 S1 was first discovered on September 27, 2024, in...
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Researchers from Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory (NAOJ) are throwing shade at the now iconic image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The image in question, constructed by another group of researchers from data collected by the EHT...
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NASA says a bus-sized asteroid is about to make a close approach, coming within 148,000 miles of Earth. According to the space agency, the asteroid, named 2024 UQ1, measures approximately 32-feet across.
Astronomers and scientists are constantly on the lookout for large space rocks that could pose a threat to...
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A supernova event recorded by Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1181 is at the heart of a first-of-its-kind 3D animated map, unveiling new secrets of a flowering “zombie star.” Supernova Sn 1181 is one of the few to be documented before the invention of telescopes.
The zombie star in question was first discovered...
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The month of September is chock full of celestial goodness, with a partial lunar eclipse highlighting the festivities. September’s full moon, also called the Harvest moon, will also be a Supermoon, meaning it will appear ever so slightly bigger and brighter than the average full moon.
As NASA and the US government...
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Be sure to look up this month, as night skies in August will be filled with cosmic wonders, ranging from meteor showers, the Lagoon Nebula, and Jupiter and Mars converging. So, pack a blanket, grab a few friends, and enjoy the celestial shows occurring throughout the month.
About a week after August’s new moon, the...
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NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), conducted the fifth biennial Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise this week. The tabletop exercise gathering aimed “to inform and assess the ability as a nation to respond effectively to the...
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As June brings the heat of summer, it also brings the Strawberry Moon, and the earliest summer solstice in 228 years. The last time the summer solstice arrived this early was in 1796, when it took place at 1:45pm ET on June 20.
The summer solstice will begin at 4:50pm EDT on Thursday, June 20 (today), and with it...
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According to NASA, there are several airplane-sized asteroids hurtling toward Earth this week. The largest of the five is estimated to be 110 feet in size, while the closest will come within 447,000 miles of Earth.
It is not uncommon for large asteroids to go zipping by Earth at a safe distance. This week, however...
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With summer coming in hot, it is time for cookouts, camping trips, and of course, fireworks. But this summer, NASA says to be on the lookout for a different type of fireworks, a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to see the results of a nova explosion in the night sky.
T Coronae Borealis, also known as the “Blaze...
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Star Trek fans may be disappointed to learn that Spock’s home planet of Vulcan has turned out to be an illusion. While the planet Vulcan may not exist in real life, Spock’s star system, 40 Eridani, is very real.
Star system 40-Eridani is located 16.5 light-years away from Earth, and NASA says its primary star can...
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Stargazers will be able to view six of the Solar System’s planets form a straight line as they take their place in a parade of planets. Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus will all take part in the parade, with Venus being the only one absent.
While the recent aurora that stretched across much of...
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NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) made its first ever startling discovery of a free-floating rogue planet, and NASA says it is hunting for more. While TESS will continue to be on the lookout for more rogue planets, the space agency is hopeful that its upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will...
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SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is celebrating the completion of the largest camera ever built for astronomy and astrophysics. The mammoth 3,200-megapixel (3.2-gigapixel) prime focus digital camera will soon ship to Chile and be mounted on a telescope inside the Rubin Observatory.
The Legacy Survey of Space...
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A new study from a survey of 91 pairs of twin stars named C3PO sheds new light on the so-called “three-body problem” that has befuddled scientists for centuries. At least 8%, or 1 in 12, of twin stars in the study show chemical anomalies that indicate one star had gobbled up planetary material that once orbited it...
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Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile spotted an indelible mark on the surface of a white dwarf star that has an appetite for destruction. Researchers believe the scar left on white dwarf WD 0816-310 is a concentration of metals imprinted on the star’s...
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The discovery of a second universe-defying megastructure in the remote universe is making astronomers rethink some of the basic assumptions about cosmology. The Big Ring is the second of these ultra-large structures to be found by PhD student Alexia Lopez.
The Big Ring is located 9.2 billion light-years from Earth...
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The last full moon of 2023, often referred to as the Full Cold Moon, will brighten the night sky and the holiday festivities. This month’s Cold Moon got its moniker after a Mohawk name that referenced the chilly conditions during this time of year.
December’s full moon will be at its fullest on December 26, and is...
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The Ursid meteor shower will be the last chance to catch a falling star to wish upon for the wanted gift to be left under the tree on Christmas morning. That's because the celestial light show is the final meteor shower of 2023, and it's predicted to peak during the early morning hours of December 23, 2023.
The...
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