Nature Hub

    From: - Sky & Telescope  By :- Camille M. Carlisel   Edited by :- Amal Udawatta Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank. A male northern cardinal makes its voice heard. Cardinals are one of hundreds of species included in a recent study of light pollution's effects on when diurnal birds begin and end their days. Shiva Shenoy / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-2.0 In this roundup of recent news, birds react to light pollution and a respected mirror maker calls it a day. Light Pollution Is for the Birds A study of the songs from hundreds of diurnal bird species indicates that, on average, birds in light-polluted areas wake up earlier and stay up later.  Scientists had already documented such activity for specific species , but Brent Pease (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) and Neil Gilbert (Oklahoma State University) say their study is unique because it combines data across species, spaces, and seasons. The researchers used millions of observa...

        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...

  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, ...