Nature Hub

    From - Sky & Telescope,    By - Monica  Young,   Edited by  - Amal Udawatta Artist's impression of the Tasmanian Devil, an explosive flare that keeps on flaring, so far more than a dozen times. Caltech / R. Hurt (IPAC) A brilliant flash of blue light briefly outshined its host galaxy before fading away — but then it exploded again, and again. On September 7, 2022, an automatic telescope picked up a blazing dot of blue light some 1,000 times brighter than a typical supernova. The brilliant blue flare lasted only days before it faded away, but not before an automated system had put astronomers on alert. The system designated the event AT2022tsd, but it some came to be called the “Tasmanian Devil.” It joined the short list of a special class of objects discovered in 2018 known as  luminous fast blue optical transients  (LFBOTs). Astronomers think these explosive flares are a special kind of supernova, but they could also be stars ripped ...

From - Sky & Telescope By  - Arwen Rimmer, Edited by  - Amal Udawatta   This ultraviolet image comes from the Akatsuki spacecraft, pieced together by Damia Bouic, an amateur image processor, combined Akatsuki images taken through its UV1 filter — at different distances — to create this composite image. The brown region bristles with small convective clouds. JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic Scientists have long assumed that Venus’s atmosphere contains a significant amount of atomic oxygen. New observations now provide direct evidence for its existence, enabling new science. For the past 50 years, many observations of Venus’s atmosphere have resulted in claims of an “indirect detection” of atomic oxygen (as well as a single direct detection that was never confirmed). Now, a group led by Heinz-Wilhelm Hübers (DLR, Germany) has identified atomic oxygen on both Venus’s dayside and nightside using observations from NASA’s and DLR’s  SOFIA airborne telescope. The team ...

  From - Sky & Telescope, By - Emily Lakdawalla, Edited by Amal Udawatta UPDATE: (November 8, 2023):  The Lucy mission surprises again! While the probe caught a view of the Dinkinesh's small satellite in the one of the first images of the flyby, the mission turned as it flew by and captured another view from a different angle. That new perspective revealed that the little asteroidal moon is actually a  contact binary , meaning it's made of two objects in contact with one another. This is the first contact binary asteroid moon discovered. Read more details on  NASA's website . This image shows the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. This image was taken at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 UTC) Nov. 1, 2023, about 6 minutes after closest approach, from a range of approximately 1,010 miles (1,630 km). From this perspective, the satellite is revealed to be a contact binary,...

  By Steven McIntosh Entertainment reporter, Edited by Amal Udawatta IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES Image caption, Leto said it was a "nice surprise" to see his mother through the window when he reached the 80th floor He's known for going to great lengths to win an Oscar - and now Jared Leto is going to great heights to promote his band's next tour. The actor and musician has become the first person to legally scale the 102-story Empire State Building. Leto, 51, climbed the outside of the New York landmark in a bright orange jumpsuit and using a rope and harness. He took on the challenge to promote the forthcoming world tour for his band Thirty Seconds To Mars. Leto told NBC's Today show:  "I was more excited than nervous to tell you the truth. But I have to be honest, it was very, very hard. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. "Just the endurance that it took, the stamina that it took, and it was very sharp." The actor won an Oscar for his ...

  From Sky & Telescope By - Govert Schilling, Edited by - Amal Udawatta The region shown here covers 100×100 arcseconds around the newly discovered galaxy dubbed Nube. The color image is a composite of light collected through the g, r, and i filters. The black-on-white background, imaged in the g and r bands, is shown in reverse color to highlight the galaxy's faint outskirts. Montes et al. / arXiv 2023 Astronomers have discovered a large but very dim ghost-like galaxy. Its origins are unknown, and its very existence challenges our notions of dark matter. Astronomers have discovered a ghost-like galaxy about half as large as our own Milky Way but no more massive than the puny Small Magellanic Cloud, our galaxy’s dwarf satellite. Since the new galaxy’s stars are spread out over a huge volume, it’s invisible to most telescopes, like a Halloween specter. The origin of Nube (Spanish for “cloud”), as astronomers are calling the new find, may challenge popular ideas about the nature ...