The Stellar Survey for September 21 - October 12
Another group of galaxies that’s baffling scientists? Meet the “Little Red Dots”. | Kind of cute, kind of menacing. Horror movie or fantasy? Who even knows?
Another instalment of Amanda’s favourite topic: waste in space! | Here’s why we should never (and also, can never) shoot our garbage into the sun.
A nuclear blast could save us from an asteroid that veers too close. | Maybe Armageddon was onto something…
A comet last seen in the Stone Age is about to streak by again! | It has an 80,000 year orbit around the Sun. Whoa. Look for it in the skies in the early evening of tomorrow, October 13!
Mars’ “missing” atmosphere might be hiding in its soil, say recent scientific discoveries. | It’s one step from here to terraforming, right?
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs did not travel alone! | Scientists have discovered that it most likely travelled in a group.
Check out these amazing photos from the recent annual eclipse over Easter Island. | Doesn’t it make our world look…otherworldly? Amazing to know that this is right here, on our own home. <3
China aims to breed zebrafish aboard the Tiangong space station. | Again! This is how all space horror movies start! (And also scientific advancement and discovery, but I digress.)
BepiColumbo (the spacecraft with my favourite name) is helping to unravel the magnetic mysteries of Mercury. | Score one and two and three for Bepi.
JWST has found a supernova that could resolve the Hubble tension. | The Hubble tension is a problem in cosmology wherein scientists can’t nail down exactly how fast the universe is expanding. But maybe, with this supernova—nicknamed Hope!—we can finally figure this out.
Air pollution from exploding satellites exists in a legal loophole. | Because, of course.
Talk about mileage! | Curiosity’s wheels are more battered than ever.
If you meet an alien, kill him. | This is the dubious first step in some scientists’ plan to understand extraterrestrial life.
‘The stars foretell our doom”: what it will look like when our solar system gives up the ghost. | Fear not: we’re talking billions of years in the future. Or maybe sooner if we really get this climate change thing going. Who knows.
It was a week of auroras! | Check out all of these wonderful photos from the Aurora Borealis, seen spectacularly far south over the past few nights. (our Sun operates on an approximately 11-year cycle of high and low activity. We’re at the peak of that activity right now, which is why we’re seeing auroras so far south this year. That, plus the wide availability of smartphone cameras sophisticated enough to pick up on the lighting, plus the wide availability of social media sites sharing photos, means that it seems like auroras were everywhere! (Except for in Hamilton, where I was, because the light pollution drowned them out. Sigh.) But it’s not chem trails or cloud seeding. I promise.
Finally: auroras aren’t enough for you? Humdrum, thanks to all those social media posts? Fair! | Check out these photos of the aurora from space!
The aurora from space!!