Nature Hub

       From-  Sky & Telescope    By - Bob King    Edited by - Amal Udawatta Comet ATLAS exhibits a bright coma and short dust tail pointing southwest on December 15th. At the time it was magnitude 8.1 and 19° from the Sun. Nick James, BAA Comet ATLAS (C/2024 G3) is on its way! Discovered April 5th by the automated  Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System  (ATLAS) when it was magnitude 19 and 4.4 astronomical units from Earth, it's now visible at 8th magnitude in Scorpius at dawn for observers at equatorial and southern latitudes. Hang tight. The future looks bright for this latest visitor from afar. The comet's position along its orbit — gray below the ecliptic plane and white above it — is shown for December 18th. It makes a hairpin curve around the Sun at perihelion on January 13th, during which time it will rapidly brighten and then just as quickly fade. NASA / JPL   with additions by Bob King Arriving at perihelio...

  From BBC News   By-  Kamala Thiagarajan   Edited by - Amal Udawatta Sai Krishan, Thirunelly Tribal Special Intervention Programme Lakshmi and Shantha with a species of tuber locally called the Noorang (Credit: Sai Krishan, Thirunelly Tribal Special Intervention Programme) In a tribe in southern India, a group of women are working hard to revive the country's ancient native tubers, and bring them back into everyday culture. Lakshmi spends several hours each day digging out large lumpy and hairy yam tubers, starchy roots that grow below the soil. Some weigh an unwieldy 5kg (11lb) and are 4.5ft-long (1.4m), almost as tall as she is. It's painstaking work, says 58-year-old Lakshmi, who goes by one name. First, she has to cut out the thick shoot above the ground. Then, she uses shovels to dig up the earth around the buried stem and a paddle-like flat chisel to gently pry out the tuber. She uses her hands to dig the tuber out of the ground to avoid damaging its delicate...

    From - Sky & Telescope   By - Joe Rao   Edited by - Amal Udawatta     Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank. In the coming weeks, Jupiter’s four Galilean satellites will arrange themselves in some unusual geometric patterns that will be fascinating to observe. Jupiter’s four  Galilean satellites  are always fun to watch as they change position relative to each other from night to night and even hour to hour. Galileo originally assigned  Roman numerals  to these moons, based on the amount of time each took to revolve around Jupiter. However, the mythological names that we use today were chosen by Galileo’s rival,  Simon Marius , who claimed that he discovered the four moons about a month before Galileo did. Io (I), the innermost of this quartet, takes only 1.8 days to make one revolution around Jupiter. Europa (II) takes twice as long at 3.6 days, while Ganymede (III) circles Jupiter in 7.2 days — exactly four t...

   From - BBC world News   By -   Soo Min Kim   Edited by -Amal Udawatta Robin Greenfield One million trees worldwide are cut down each year to make toilet paper. Is it more sustainable to grow your own? In Meru, a town in eastern Kenya, a lush, leafy plant sways over the landscape. Benjamin Mutembei, a Meru resident, is growing the  Plectranthus barbatus  plant  – not for food, but to use as toilet paper. He started growing the plant in 1985. "I learned about it from my grandfather and have been using it ever since. It's soft and has a nice smell," he says. Plectranthus barbatus  is a leafy plant that can grow up to 2m (6.6ft) tall. Its leaves are roughly the size of an industrial toilet paper square and emit a minty, lemony fragrance. Covered in tiny hairs, the leaves have a soft texture. This plant thrives in warm tropical temperatures and partial sunlight and is  widely grown across Africa , where it is sometimes used to de...