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Posts Tagged ‘astronomy’

Timelapse of the Milky Way with the sky held motionless and the Earth rotating

One of the smartest, most interesting people I ever knew once told me about a time when he got really interested in the problem of calculating the orbits of the planets based on the idea tha the Earth was stationary and everything was moving relative to it (this being one of the corollaries of ...

See the Perseids meteor shower peak tonight (August 12)!

The Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, August 12! The meteors are particles left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle. The bright moon will wash out much of the show but you could still spot ten to 15 an hour depending on where you are. Watch the skies! From NASA's Perseids page:

How to Observe Perseids

If it’s ...

Something big smashed into Jupiter

Amateur astrophotographer Ethan Chappel was using his telescope to look for Perseid meteors on Wednesday night when he happened to capture an image of something very large slamming into Jupiter. It was most likely a massive meteor. From Sky and Telescope:

After running the camera data through a program designed to alert the user ...

Jupiter’s great red spot “unraveling”

Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a vast storm system visible on the gas giant since at least the 1830s and perhaps the 1660s, is reportedly "unraveling."

“I haven’t seen this before in my 17-or-so years of imaging Jupiter,” reports veteran observer Anthony Wesley of Australia, who photographed a streamer of gas detaching itself from the ...

NASA, FEMA and International Partners are planning an asteroid impact exercise

When it comes to planning for a potential asteroid strike on planet Earth, The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency don’t want to miss a thing. Alongside international partners like the European Space Agency’s Space Situational Awareness-NEO Segment and the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office ...

NASA releases the “last light” image taken by Kepler before it retired last year

NASA has released the final view taken by Kepler in September, shortly before the space telescope was retired after nearly a decade of unprecedented discoveries about the universe beyond our solar system. “It bookends the moment of intense excitement nine and a half years earlier when the spacecraft first opened its eye to the skies ...

A surprise meteorite hit the moon during Monday’s total lunar eclipse

During Monday's super wolf blood moon lunar eclipse, some observers noticed a tiny flash on the surface. Turns out that was a football-sized meteorite smashing into the western surface of the moon. This was the first time a meteorite impact was spotted during a total lunar eclipse. Now, scientists will study images from NASA's Lunar ...

Total lunar eclipse Sunday January 20 will be ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’

Starting Sunday evening, Jan. 20, 2019, North and South America will have a chance at seeing 2019's only total lunar eclipse, from start to finish.

Our Earth, Moon and Sun line up on Sunday night for the only total lunar eclipse of of the year. Catch it if you can.

And especially because it's a ...

Astronomers spot more mysterious radio signals from far outside the galaxy

Whenever some new “cosmic puzzle” crops up, you always have to be ready for the other shoe to drop. But just because something isn’t an alien message or Ringworld doesn’t mean it can’t be interesting science. Today’s shoe drop concerns “fast radio bursts” coming from a distant galaxy — but don’t expect a secret message ...

Mysterious repeating signal from distant galaxy detected by new radio telescope

One distant galaxy, one "very unusual repeating signal." But it's never aliens.

...a very unusual repeating signal, coming from the same source about 1.5 billion light years away. Such an event has only been reported once before, by a different telescope. ... The CHIME observatory, located in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, consists of four ...