Nature Hub

 From -  Sky & Telescope  By - Fred Espenak  Edited by - Amal Udawatta This clay cuneiform tablet records lunar eclipses between 609 and 447 BC. The Babylonians also recorded solar eclipses. © The Trustees of the British Museum Before the advent of computers or even a working theory of the solar system, the ancients predicted solar eclipses. How did they do it? Today's astronomers use electronic computers and mathematical models to calculate the motions of the Sun and the Moon. This information can then be used to predict when solar (and lunar) eclipses take place. But the ability to predict eclipses goes back more than 25 centuries ago. This is long before the advent of computers or even Copernicus's heliocentric theory needed to understand the motions of the Sun and the Moon. So how could ancient civilizations foresee the occurrence of eclipses? They used a clever idea called the Saros cycle. In a previous post “ How Rare is a Total Solar Eclipse? ”, I described the two c

From - Sky & Telescope By - Monica Young Edited by  - Amal Udawatta The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed galaxies in the early universe, hidden star formation, and sniffed the atmospheres of exoplanets. But it's also exploring closer to home, imaging each of the giant planets in detail. The telescope can see aspects of the planets' compositions in ways that passing satellites typically can't, both thanks to its sensitivity and its spectral resolution. At the same time, homing in on the planets has tested Webb's capabilities for tracking objects that are not only quite bright compared to distant galaxies, but also extended, rotating, and moving quickly across the plane of the sky. The planets are so bright that they can quickly saturate the detectors. Imaging also requires multiple exposures that are later combined into mosaics. To make full use of Webb's technological advances, Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester, UK) and colleagues are conducting the

    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 apart in the intense gravitational field

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 reports the results

  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, the fi

  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