A HYPERGIANT star is dying and researchers have been studying the phenomenon closely. Astronomers at the University of Arizona have developed a model to track the activity of a red hypergiant star. 1 Artist’s illustration of VY Canis MajorisCredit: NASA, ESA, Roberta Humphreys (UMN), Joseph Olmsted (STSc) Dubbed VY Canis Majoris, this star may be … Read more
Scientists are abuzz with anticipation for the first full-color images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest and most powerful infrared space-based telescope, which will be revealed in July. “[The images] are sure to deliver a long-awaited ‘wow’ for astronomers and the public,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in … Read more
A view of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef from low Earth orbit (shown at 8x normal speed). gif: NanoAvionics/Gizmodo Proprietary space-grade cameras are expensive, limited, and a pain to develop. Smallsat manufacturer NanoAvionics recently sidestepped any development issues and opted for something off the shelf instead. The company used a GoPro Hero 7 mounted to a … Read more
The US military’s X-37B robotic space plane is closing in on a mission-duration record. The X-37B launched to Earth orbit on May 17, 2020 on the sixth mission for the program, a flight known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 (OTV-6). The Space Force minishuttle has now been aloft for 773 days. That’s just a week shy … Read more
Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket will be back to the Vehicle Assembly Building this week. Trevor Mahlmann The US space agency has spent a long, long time designing, developing, building, and testing the Space Launch System rocket. When NASA created the rocket program in 2010, US legislators said the SLS booster should be … Read more
Spang, A. et al. Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Nature 521, 173–179 (2015). CAS PubMed PubMed Central Article Google Scholar Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka, K. et al. Asgard archaea illuminate the origin of eukaryotic cellular complexity. Nature 541, 353–358 (2017). CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar Eme, L., Spang, A., Lombard, J., Stairs, C. … Read more
A stream of supercharged particles from the sun recently crashed into Earth with no prior warning. (Image credit: Shutterstock) (opens in new tab) Scientists were recently left scratching their heads after a “potentially disruptive” solar storm smashed into Earth without warning. The surprise solar storm hit earth just before midnight UTC June 25 and continued … Read more
You know you’re living in the space age when a rocket hits the moon, and the industry as a whole points to the sky and, like an angry teacher holding up a paper airplane, asks “Who launched this?!” Truly, that is what occurred this week as an unidentified rocket stage (!) impacted the lunar surface, … Read more
image: Researchers investigated the linkage between earthquakes and oil and gas production activities in the Delaware Basin of Texas and New Mexico. The graphic indicates how strongly seismicity is linked with hydraulic fracturing, shallow wastewater injection, and deep wastewater injection in different regions. The lower the p-value the higher the association confidence. In some cases, … Read more
However, Herschel was unwilling to entertain a move to the busy but musically competitive London. So, after a brief stint as organist of Halifax Parish Church in West Yorkshire — according to Miller, he informed the panel in his audition that he had already accepted a better offer elsewhere — he moved to Bath in … Read more