“Black hole family portrait” is a fancy way of saying “new catalog.” But it’s a very important and exciting catalog, released October 28, 2020 by gravitational wave astronomers, containing 39 new signals from black hole or neutron star collisions. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/ligo-virgo-new-catalog-gwtc-2-black-hole-family-portrait…
Tag: Color
Electric! Astronomers find sprites in Jupiter’s atmosphere
Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission say they have detected sprites or elves – electrical phenomena above thunderstorms on Earth – in the clouds of Jupiter for the first time. Unlike the red-colored earthly ones however, the Jovian ones are blue. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/sprites-or-elves-in-jupiters-atmosphere-lightning-juno…
Blue Moon and red Mars on Halloween
The full moon of October 31, 2020 is the second full moon of a calendar month and therefore carries the name Blue Moon. It’s also the smallest full moon of 2020. And it’s near red Mars! Watch for it. Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/blue-moon-and-mars-on-halloween…
What’s a Blue Moon, and when is the next one?
We have a Blue Moon coming up on October 31, 2020. It’ll be called a Blue Moon because it’ll be the 2nd of 2 full moons in a single calendar month. And it’ll be near a bright red object in the sky, Mars! Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/when-is-the-next-blue-moon…
No Implants Needed For Precise Control Deep Into the Brain
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: In April, Guoping Feng and colleagues at MIT, along with [Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist and bioengineer at Stanford University] demonstrated a minimally invasive optogenetic system that required drilling a small hole in the skull, then being able to control opsin-expressing neurons six millimeters deep into the brain using blue light. This approach…
Humans experience 200 times more radiation standing on the moon than standing on the Earth
January 31, 2021, will mark 50 years since the launch of Apollo 14. This historic mission was the first to broadcast a color television signal from the surface of the moon and marked the heroic return to space of America’s first astronaut, Alan Shepard, who famously hit two golf balls off of the lunar regolith. While the significance of Apollo 14…
Pluto’s snowcapped mountains are unlike any on Earth
A new study shows how methane snow accumulates on Pluto’s mountain peaks. These snowcaps – first seen by New Horizons in 2015 – look a lot like ones on Earth, but form in a very alien environment. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/methane-snowcapped-mountains-on-pluto-new-horizons…
Autumn’s false dawn, the zodiacal light
The coming weeks are great for catching the zodiacal light or false dawn from northerly latitudes? Southern Hemisphere? Look for the false dusk. Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/zodiacal-light-false-dawn-of-autmn…
Ancient microbial life used arsenic to thrive in a world without oxygen
Today, most life on Earth is supported by oxygen. But ancient microbial mats existed for a billion years before oxygen was present in the atmosphere. So what did life use instead? Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ancient-microbial-life-arsenic…
Astronomers produce largest 3-D catalog of galaxies
A team of astronomers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Institute for Astronomy (IfA) has produced the world’s largest three-dimensional astronomical imaging catalog of stars, galaxies and quasars. The team used data from UH’s Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System or Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) on Haleakalā. The PS1 3π survey is the world’s largest deep multi-color optical survey, spanning three-quarters…