Nature Hub

    From:  Space.Com  By Keith Cooper Edited by:  Amal Udawatta An artist's impression of a centaur gradually transitioning into a comet with a coma and tail. Image credit: iStock) Astronomers have witnessed a small, icy body that orbits the Sun out beyond Jupiter transforming into a comet, providing a missing link between comets and inert bodies called centaurs. The object in question is called 450P/LONEOS and is named after the Lowell Observatory survey that found it back in 2004. It is a centaur, which is a breed of inactive body that orbits the sun between Jupiter and Neptune . These objects are thought to have wandered in from the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto , their paths perhaps perturbed by distant gravitational interactions with the gas giant planets, or even a nudge from a passing star . Because a given centaur's orbit crosses the path of at least one of Jupiter, Saturn , Uranus and Neptune, a centaur's orbit is unstable over millions of years. C...

   From: BBC World News By :-   Nadine Yousif      Senior Canada reporter Edited by:  Amal Udawatta  Supplied by Rocky Avery The floating island was first spotted by boaters in mid-August   A small, floating island on a lake in the Canadian province of British Columbia has been spotted again after officials lost track of it on satellite images following its initial discovery. The forested island was first spotted in the middle of Williston Reservoir, BC's largest fresh water lake, in early August by boaters who captured the scene in a video that has since gone viral. : S A satellite image from late July confirmed the existence of the island, which is the size of about one-and-a-half American football fields. But a few weeks later, it had vanished from that spot. Officials in BC say they have now been able to locate it again near shore, though it's unclear where it came from. Bob Gammer, a spokesperson for BC Hydro, a government-owned uti...