Nature Hub

  From - Sky & Telescope, By -    Emily Lakdawalla,  Edite by - Amal Udawatta NASA's Psyche spacecraft takes a spiral path to the asteroid Psyche, as depicted in this graphic that shows the path from above the plane of the planets, labeled with key milestones of the prime mission. The test periods for NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology demonstration are indicated with red dots. NASA / JPL-Caltech NASA’s newest mission is bound for the metallic asteroid of the same name, a metal-rich world that offers an insider’s view of planet formation. With solar panels the size of a singles tennis court, Psyche the spacecraft will use the tiny but constant push from ion engines to spiral outward from the Sun, flying past Mars in spring 2026 and arriving into orbit at asteroid 16 Psyche in August 2029. Why 16 Psyche? Because it’s metal, or at least, metal-rich. Its unusual spectral properties hint at exposed metal on the surface, like iron asteroids. Th...

   From - Sky & Telescope,   By - Bob King,  Edited by - Amal Udawatta, Denser air near the horizon acts like a lens and refracts (bends) the Sun's bottom half upward into the top, compressing the solar disk into a bean. Refraction also "lifts" the Sun into view at the horizon about 2 minutes before the real Sun arrives there. Both effects increase the amount of daylight we experience at the equinoxes. Bob King Astronomical cycles acquaint us with the inevitable. That's what I'm thinking right now as we approach the first official day of fall (spring in the southern hemisphere), also known as the autumnal equinox. At 2:49 a.m. EDT, the Sun will cross the celestial equator going south and won't stop its descent until it bumps into the winter solstice on December 21st. The  celestial equator  is a projection of Earth's equator on the sky. On that special day, the Sun will pass directly overhead at noon for residents living along the equator, from Nairobi...

              By – Amal Udawatta,                                   Astonishing photo of Comet NEOWISE C2020 F3 C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)  or  Comet NEOWISE  is a  long period comet  with a  near-parabolic  orbit discovered on March 27, 2020, by astronomers during the  NEOWISE  mission of the  Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer  (WISE)  space telescope . At that time, it was an  18th-magnitude  object, located 2 AU (300 million km; 190 million mi) away from the Sun and 1.7 AU (250 million km; 160 million mi) away from Earth. NEOWISE is known for being the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere since  Comet Hale–Bopp  in 1997. It was widely photographed by professional and amateur observers and was even spotted by people living near...

 From - The Guardian, By -  Damian Carrington  Environment editor, Edited by - Amal Udawatta, First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged Their assessment found that six out of nine “planetary boundaries” had been broken because of human-caused pollution and destruction of the natural world. The planetary boundaries are the limits of key global systems – such as climate, water and wildlife diversity – beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing. The broken boundaries mean the systems have been driven far from the safe and stable state that existed from the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, to the start of the industrial revolution. The whole of modern civilisation arose in this time period, called the Holocene. The assessment was the first of all nine planetary boundaries and represented the “first scientific health check for the entire planet...