Sunday, July 13

Amazing Facts

‘It was a miracle.’ Amazing tales of dead spacecraft that came back to life
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

‘It was a miracle.’ Amazing tales of dead spacecraft that came back to life

The hulk of metal moved silently through space, high above the blue Earth. Power no longer coursed through its wires, its instruments were dead to the outside universe, and its communications antenna was silent. To all intents and purposes it was deceased, and almost everyone back home had given up on it.Almost everyone.Despite the last vestiges of its battery having been drained, suddenly, from somewhere, there was a spark of life. As a failsafe, its computer was tasked with rebooting the spacecraft once the battery was empty — there was always more energy to garner from its solar arrays. Suddenly, the small satellite's various sub-systems began waking up. The flight computer reactivated, reaction wheels began spinning, instruments began sensing and its radio antenna began broadcasting on...
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Planet-observing is fun and easy: Top tips here
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

Planet-observing is fun and easy: Top tips here

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Jelieta Walinski of St. David, Arizona, captured this image on January 23, 2025, and wrote: “This single-exposure photo captures the Desert Bloom Observatory at its center, glowing with a warm red light. Above, a stunning planetary parade unfolds, with Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars visible to the naked eye.” Thank you, Jelieta. Have you been enjoying the current planetary alignment? See planet-observing tips below. February 2025 evening skies have a string of bright planets across the sky. Here are planet-observing tips. Planet-observing is easy and fun Sometimes when you’re out gazing at the brightest objects in the night sky, you’re seeing the planets without knowing it. There are five planets you can view without optical aid: Mercury, Venus, Mars, ...
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40 cosmic questions and answers
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

40 cosmic questions and answers

Credit: Vitalij Kopa/Dreamstime.com There are thousands upon thousands of questions related to the topic of astronomy, from the basics of the science to the complexities of the distant cosmos. Here are just 40 such questions that we as astronomers — professional and amateur — hear. I hope their answers help you explain some of these concepts to family, friends, or visitors at star parties. 1. Is Pluto a planet? Not according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which demoted Pluto to dwarf planet status in 2006 after setting forth several criteria for planethood that it does not meet. This change remains controversial. 2. How many orbits has the Hubble Space Telescope made? As of its upcoming 35th anniversary, on April 24, 2025, Hubble will have cir...
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Great Backyard Bird Count begins February 14
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

Great Backyard Bird Count begins February 14

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Lynzie Flynn of Fountain Valley, California, submitted this image on December 22, 2024, and wrote: “This is an adult male Vermilion Flycatcher. It was flying from tree to tree and posing for me. It’s such a colorful bird and one of the few colorful birds we see in my area. They are always a treat to see and photograph.” Thank you. Lynzie! Find out more about the Great Backyard Bird Count below. Great Backyard Bird Count The annual Great Backyard Bird Count, now in its 28th year, is set to take place February 14-17, 2025. During this popular community science event, people from all over the world head outdoors to count birds. Scientists use the data to track the health of bird populations. Watching birds can be a pleasant activity to engage in, and parti...
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Juvenile sea turtles might be active swimmers
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

Juvenile sea turtles might be active swimmers

Juvenile sea turtles are active swimmers! Video via EarthSky. Scientists have long thought that young sea turtles – after hatching on the shore and making their way into the ocean – drifted passively on currents. But the University of Florida said on February 6, 2025, that these juvenile sea turtles might be active swimmers. A team of scientists tracked four species of juvenile turtles from the Gulf of Mexico and discovered they can actively swim and control their position. This life stage from terrestrial to oceanic habitat marks a critical transition in their life cycle that has not received much study. Co-author Kate Mansfield of the University of Central Florida said: Historically, all our information about this young life stage has been limited to opportunistic sightings of these li...
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New method to cryopreserve drone semen
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

New method to cryopreserve drone semen

Bee-reaking news: Belgian scientists have developed a simple method to cryopreserve the semen of drones, the male equivalent of honey bees (Apis mellifera). As part of the FreezeBEE project at the University of Liège, the researchers then thawed the semen and successfully artificially inseminated queens. It resulted in a female brood with an equivalent viability to bees inseminated with fresh semen. Unlike existing preservation methods, this didn’t require antibiotics for success, opening up new opportunities in apiculture and bee conservation. Let’s get down to bees-ness “Bees play a crucial role in the ecosystem and agriculture,” explains lead author of the research Sophie Egyptien, from the University of Liège. About 35% of global crop production relies on bees. But they ...
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Dancing turtles reveal how animals navigate magnetic fields
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

Dancing turtles reveal how animals navigate magnetic fields

UNC-Chapel Hill researcher holding a juvenile loggerhead sea turtle. Credit: Ken Lohmann, UNC-Chapel Hill I can’t imagine what it would be like to sense a magnetic field. But a new study has presented the first evidence that loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) use magnetic fields as a compass to determine direction and also use it to determine their geographical location. There’s a little dance involved, too. Sea turtles are extraordinary navigators, able to trace unseen pathways across thousands of kilometres of the ocean and return to the same feeding sites migration after migration. The discovery is a major advance in the understanding of how animals perceive and use the Earth’s magnetic field.  Understanding how turtles detect and interpret magnetic fields could help...
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How scientists spotted that most energetic neutrino
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

How scientists spotted that most energetic neutrino

Recent research on lightweight particles called neutrinos might have passed you by – much like the more than 10 trillion neutrinos passing through your body each second. Now, our new paper – with 21 countries, more than 60 institutes and around 360 scientists contributing – reports the observation of the most energetic neutrino yet. Despite the enormous number of neutrinos around us, this is one of the most exciting – and rarest – astronomical events of the year. Our paper has been published in the journal Nature. Neutrinos are tiny elementary (sub-atomic) particles that are abundant in our universe. Yet, you probably haven’t seen any. They do not interact with other matter in the ways we are familiar with. Their lack of charge, for example, means that the electrostatic force that...
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To Probe the Interior of Neutron Stars, We Must Study the Gravitational Waves from their Collisions
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

To Probe the Interior of Neutron Stars, We Must Study the Gravitational Waves from their Collisions

When massive stars reach the end of their life cycle, they undergo gravitational collapse and shed their outer layers in a massive explosion (a supernova). Whereas particularly massive stars will leave a black hole in their wake, others leave behind a stellar remnant known as a neutron star (or white dwarf). These objects concentrate a mass greater than the entire Solar System into a volume measuring (on average) just 20 km (~12.5 mi) in diameter. Meanwhile, the extreme conditions inside neutron stars are still a mystery to astronomers. In 2017, the first collision between two neutron stars was detected from the gravitational waves (GWs) it produced. Since then, astronomers have theorized how GWs could be used to probe the interiors of neutron stars and learn more about the extreme phys...
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The JWST Gives Us Our Best Image of Planets Forming Around a Star
13Feb By Muhammad MirzaNo Comments
Amazing Facts

The JWST Gives Us Our Best Image of Planets Forming Around a Star

Planets are born in swirling disks of gas and dust around young stars. Astronomers are keenly interested in the planet formation process, and understanding that process is one of the JWST’s main science goals. PDS 70 is a nearby star with two nascent planets forming in its disk, two of the very few exoplanets that astronomers have directly imaged. Researchers developed a new, innovative approach to observing PDS 70 with the JWST and uncovered more details about the system, including the possible presence of a third planet. PDS 70 is an orange dwarf star about 370 light-years away and hosts two young, growing planets: PDS 70b and PDS 70c. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) imaged both of the planets directly, and PDS 70b has the distinction of being the...
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