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Moon or Not, the Perseid Meteor Shower Is On!

        From :-  Sky & Telescope By :- Bob King Editted by : - Amal Udawatta     On August 12, 2019, under a waxing gibbous Moon, a Perseid earthgrazer (left of center) scratches a path in the sky above Tucson, Arizona. Eliot Herman Aristotle postulated that meteors occurred when dry and smoky exhalations rose from cracks in the ground and ascended into the sublunar realm, where they suddenly burst into flame. The reality is much more exciting. Sand-sized grains spalled from 4.5-billion-year-old interplanetary travelers strike Earth's atmosphere at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour, fast enough to heat them to incandescence and etch the heavens with fleeting streaks of glowing air. Every year, around mid-August, Earth crosses the orbit of 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Debris from the comet strikes Earth's atmosphere, producing a meteor shower. Occasionally, our planet cuts across narrow, denser filaments laid down by the comet. This year, we expect a p...
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Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS: What We Know Now

  From :- Sky & Telescope  By :- David L . Chanler  Edited by :- Amal Udawatta High resolution image of interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS, captured by the Vera Rubin observatory on July 3rd. C.O. Chandler et al. Observations have revealed the comet’s fuzzy coma, hinted at a weird tail, and suggested an ancient history. Plus, some missions might keep observing the interstellar comet when it ducks behind the Sun. Telescopes on Earth and above it have their eyes on the third-ever interstellar object ever seen inside our solar system, Comet 3I/ATLAS. Already, telescopes including the 8.4-meter Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the Very Large Telescope, and the Gemini South telescope have spent time on the object. Just last week,  the Hubble Space Telescope joined in , and the James Webb Space Telescope is expected to do so in the coming days. This unusual comet is the second extrasolar comet ever seen, after Comet 2I/Borisov, found in 2019. (The first interstellar object, ...

A Candidate Direct-Collapse Black Hole in the Infinity Galaxy

   From :- Sky & Telescope By :- AAS NOWA Edited by :- Amal Udawatta JWST image of the Infinity Galaxy. ASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, P. van Dokkum (Yale University) Researchers have discovered a rare ring-galaxy duo that appears to harbor a supermassive black hole formed through direct collapse — a process similar to what may have jump-started the growth of the first supermassive black holes in the universe. Researchers have discovered a rare ring-galaxy duo that appears to harbor a supermassive black hole formed through direct collapse. Searching for Oddballs A portion of the COSMOS-Web field. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco, and the COSMOS-Web team; CC BY 4.0 To find something remarkable, sometimes you have to go looking for it. As described in an article published today in the  Astrophysical Journal Letters , a research team led by Pieter van Dokkum (Yale University; Dragonfly Focused Research Organization) recently struck gold in their sea...

Is this the end for Easter Island's moai statues?

   From - BBC World News  , By -   Sofia Quaglia, Editted by - Amal Udawatta Sofia Quaglia (Credit: Sofia Quaglia) Easter Island's famous moai statues are crumbling into the sea, forcing locals to face urgent decisions about how best to protect their heritage. In an ancient quarry on top of a volcano on a remote Pacific island, half-finished figures hewn into the rock ignore Maria Tuki as she walks by. The rugged faces of these figures sport world-famous furrowed brows and sloping noses. This is the land of the moai, iconic human statues unique to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island – an isolated island around  the size of Washington DC  situated 3,500km (2,170 miles) off the coast of Chile. Before my visit, I expected to see just a couple of these famous faces at designated tourist sites. But the sheer number of the moai is breathtaking; bits of them are strewn alongside roads, bordering the coast, and shouldering hills. Together, they form a real p...