Best observing targets for binoculars

What are the best solar system and deep-sky objects to view to get the most out of your binoculars? From moon-encircled worlds to starry knots in the Milky Way, our list makes the sky’s wonders easy to find. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/best-targets-for-binoculars-moon-planets-nebula-clusters…

Happy birthday to Galileo, born February 15

One of our greatest astronomers, Galileo Galilei, was born February 15, 1564. His discoveries with the improved telescopes he made changed the way we view the universe – and got him in trouble with the church. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/galileos-birthday-feb-15-1564…

Top 12 brightest objects in the solar system

Can you name the top 12 brightest objects in the solar system? How many have you seen without the aid of binoculars or a telescope? Source: https://earthsky.org/space/what-are-the-brightest-objects-in-our-solar-system…

Hear the strange music of distant planetary system TOI-178

In the animation in this post, the rhythmic movement of newly discovered planets around the star TOI-178 is represented through a musical harmony, created by attributing a note (in the pentatonic scale) to each of the planets. Hear the music of these planets. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/star-system-tio-178-planets-in-resonance-orbits-cheops…

Why AWS Is Forking Elasticsearch and Kibana

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes at ZDNet: When Elastic, makers of the open-source search and analytic engine Elasticsearch, went after Amazon Web Services (AWS) by changing its license from the open-source Apache 2.0-license ALv2) to the non-open-source friendly Server Side Public License, I predicted “we’d soon see AWS-sponsored Elasticsearch and Kibana forks.” The next day, AWS tweeted it “will launch new forks…

NASA’s Juno mission expands into the future

NASA has authorized a mission extension for its Juno spacecraft exploring Jupiter. The agency’s most distant planetary orbiter will now continue its investigation of the solar system’s largest planet through September 2025, or until the spacecraft’s end of life. This expansion tasks Juno with becoming an explorer of the full Jovian system—Jupiter and its rings and moons—with multiple rendezvous planned for…

InSight and Juno Keep on Trucking

NASA’s InSight lander on Mars and the Juno orbiter at Jupiter have new leases on life. From a report: The spacecraft are expected to continue gathering data about their respective planetary targets during their newly extended missions, allowing scientists to learn more about seismic activity on Mars and turn their attention to the moons of Jupiter. Juno’s mission has been extended…

Hackers Target Cryptocurrency Users With New ElectroRAT Malware

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Security firm Intezer Labs said it discovered a covert year-long malware operation where cybercriminals created fake cryptocurrency apps in order to trick users into installing a new strain of malware on their systems, with the obvious end goal of stealing victims’ funds. The campaign was discovered last month in December 2020, but researchers…

A magnified view of Jupiter and Saturn at conjunction

On December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will be only 1/5 of a moon-diameter apart! Guy Ottewell offers insights and charts showing a magnified (telescopic) view of their once-in-20-years great conjunction. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-telescopic-magnified-dec-2020…

PHP 8.0 Brings Major (And Breaking) Changes to a 25-Year-Old Language

“PHP version 8.0 has arrived, bringing with it a major update to the 25-year-old programming language…” writes Tech Republic. New language features include the nullsafe operator and attributes (commonly known as annotations in other languages) to add metadata to classes — and more: The JIT compiler is designed to bring performance improvements to web applications by turning code into instructions for…