Nature Hub

    From -Sky & Telescope By - Bob King  Edited by- Amal Udawatta         The dipper-shaped Pleiades cluster (M45) is also called the Seven Sisters and named for the mythological seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The young cluster is between 75 and 150 million years and lies 444 light-years from Earth. Jared-Bowens The Pleiades star cluster is one of the night sky's best-known astronomical sights. Alluring to the naked eye, it's even more amazing through binoculars or a small telescope, both of which reveal dozens more stars. As the cluster plows through space at 6 kilometers per second (13,400 mph), its hot, youthful suns illuminate a happenstance interstellar cloud, turning it into a gossamer nebula that temporarily enshrouds the stellar bunch. Additional treasures lie within its bounds: There are also about a half-dozen double and multiple stars within the Pleiades. You might already be familiar with 2.9-magnitude Alcyone, a choice triple st...

  From BBC News   By-  David McKenna   Edited by- Amal Udawatta    Hulton Archive/Getty Images Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher "really lends herself to operatic treatment", according to producers Margaret Thatcher's time as prime minister might not seem like the most obvious inspiration for an opera, but for some she is a diva. The Rest is History podcast co-host and historian Dominic Sandbrook is working with composer Joseph Phibbs to produce a two-act show entitled Mrs T. As well as covering her time in Downing Street, the opera aims to explore the Iron Lady's character and personality away from the public gaze. "I feel she really lends herself to operatic treatment. She was a very theatrical character, in many ways," Phibbs told the BBC. The opera has been described as "an intimate exploration of one of the most polarising and influential figures in British politics". PA Media Historian Dominic Sandbrook said the opera was not a politica...

    From BBC World News By -  Deborah Nicholls-Lee Edited by - Amal Udawatta      Munchmuseet/ Halvor Bjorngard Winter isn't all bad – these "sublime" landscapes of the frozen North from the turn of the 20th Century offer us a way into resilience – and an "acceptance of the seasonality of life". With its bare trees, long nights and icy temperatures, it's perhaps unsurprising that, culturally in the Northern Hemisphere, we seem so conditioned to complain about winter. Yet, as the author Katherine May points out in her 2020 book Wintering, winter is also a valuable time for rest and retreat. "Winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit," she writes. Its "starkness", she argues, re-sensitises us, and "can reveal colours that we would otherwise miss". Finnish National Gallery/ Alteneum Art Museum View from Pyynikki Ridge (1900) by Helmi Biese, depicts a bird's-eye view of the Finnish boreal forest (Credit: Finnish National Galler...