Nature Hub

    From - Sky & Telescope  By- Bob King  Edited by - Amal Udawatta The nova is located between the Teapot's "Spout" and the bright open cluster M7 in Scorpius. I include a suggested star-hopping route, starting at the 2nd magnitude star Epsilon (ε) Sagittarii. Once you've arrived at the asterism (circled), use the chart below to pinpoint the nova's location. North is up. Stellarium with additions by Bob King A new nova for early risers plus three fun observing  projects for the week ahead. We have a new "star" in the night sky. In truth, it's been there for billions of years, but it only first revealed itself a little more than a week ago. Nova Sagittarii 2025 no. 3 was independently discovered on March 23–24 by the Russian  New Milky Way (NMW) Survey  and Japanese amateur Tadashi Kojima at a right ascension of 18 h  02′ and declination of –33° 11′. Both parties caught the star around magnitude 13; two days later it had brightened to 10....

     From - Sky & Telescope By - AAA Nova  Edited by - Amal Udawatta Artist's impression of the view from one of the planets orbiting Barnard's Star. International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor/J. Pollard Following decades of disproven claims, four small exoplanets have been confirmed to orbit Barnard’s Star, the second-closest star system to Earth after Alpha Centauri. System Under Scrutiny Just 6 light-years away, Barnard’s Star is a well-studied 10-billion-year-old M dwarf with a mass of 0.16 solar mass. Finding exoplanets around Barnard’s Star has been something of a white whale for astronomers for more than half a century; starting in the 1960s, researchers have claimed to have spotted various planets around Barnard’s Star, from distant Jupiter-mass companions to close-in super-Earths. Each of these claims has been refuted. Illustration of the nearest star systems to Earth. Barnard's Star is the nearest single star and second-nearest star sy...

  From - Sky & Telescope  By- Bob King Edited by - Amal Udawatta    Sky & Telescope  Consulting Editor Gary Seronik captured this triptych portrait of the January 2019 total lunar eclipse. After more than two years, the Americas score a lunar eclipse bullseye. It's been more than two years since observers in the Americas witnessed a total lunar eclipse. The wait ends Thursday night / Friday morning, March 13–14, when the full Moon slips back into Earth's shadow for 66 glorious and colorful minutes. All of totality and most of the partial phases will be visible throughout the Western Hemisphere. In the continental U.S., totality happens late at night, beginning at 11:26 p.m. for the West Coast and 2:26 a.m. for the East. While no optical aid is needed to observe the eclipse, be sure to set your alarm so you don't miss it! Those in North and South America have ringside seats for the total lunar eclipse on March 13–14, 2025. Leah Tiscione / Sky & Telesc...

  From - Sky &Telescope By - David L. Chandler  Edited by - Amal Udawatta An artist's illustration of an asteroid N. Bartmann / ESA / Webb / ESO / M. Kornmesser and S. Brunier / N. Risinger    2024 YR4 is no longer a danger for Earth, and a (small) chance of a lunar impact could provide great science data. “We are all rooting for the Moon!” Richard Binzel (MIT) is referring to the asteroid 2024 YR 4 , which for a few weeks had remained at the second-highest-rated probability of potential Earth impact of any asteroid discovered. Now, although its impact probability has fallen to virtually zero for Earth, it still has a slight chance of impacting the Moon on December 22, 2032. An Earth impact by an object of this size — estimated at anywhere from 40 to 90 meters across — could have been serious for a local region, if populated, and astronomers around the world have scrambled for weeks to obtain observations in order to refine the object’s orbit, using the Canada Fr...

      From - Space. Com     By -   Robert Lea    Edited by - Amal Udawatta (Left) An image of the sky in the direction of the cosmic web detection (Right) The image shows the diffuse gas (red) contained within the cosmic filament connecting two galaxies (yellow stars), extending across a vast distance of 3 million light-years.   (Image credit: Joseph DePasquale/Space Telescope Science Institute/Davide Tornotti/University of Milano-Bicocca)   For the first time, we could trace the boundary between the gas residing in galaxies and the material contained within the cosmic web through direct measurements. Astronomers have imaged a spectacular thread in the cosmic web, connecting two actively forming galaxies that existed when the universe was just 2 billion years old. Both galaxies at hand are home feeding  supermassive black holes. The  cosmic web  stretches for an incredible 3 million light-years, making it about 3...