Tag: IFTTT

Gravel Ejected from Asteroid Bennu

Why does asteroid Bennu eject gravel into space? No one is sure. The discovery, occurring during several episodes by NASA’s visiting ORISIS-REx spacecraft, was unexpected. Leading ejection hypotheses include impacts by Sun-orbiting meteoroids, sudden thermal fractures of internal structures, and...

/ September 16, 2020

Biomarker Phosphine Discovered in the Atmosphere of Venus

Could there be life floating in the atmosphere of Venus? Although Earth’s planetary neighbor has a surface considered too extreme for any known lifeform, Venus’ upper atmosphere may be sufficiently mild for tiny airborne microbes. This usually disfavored prospect took...

/ September 15, 2020

Corn Moon Rising

A rising moon can be a dramatic sight. A rising Full Corn Moon was captured early this month in time-lapse with a telephoto lens from nearly 30 kilometers away — making Earth’s ascending half-degree companion appear unusually impressive. The image...

/ September 14, 2020

M2 9: Wings of a Butterfly Nebula

Are stars better appreciated for their art after they die? Actually, stars usually create their most artistic displays as they die. In the case of low-mass stars like our Sun and M2-9 pictured here, the stars transform themselves from normal...

/ September 13, 2020

The Reappearance of Mars

Mars reappears just beyond the Moon’s dark limb in this stack of sharp video frames captured on September 6. Of course to reappear it had to disappear in the first place. It did that over an hour earlier when the...

/ September 11, 2020

Jupiter s Swimming Storm

A bright storm head with a long turbulent wake swims across Jupiter in these sharp telescopic images of the Solar System’s ruling gas giant. Captured on August 26, 28, and September 1 (left to right) the storm approximately doubles in...

/ September 10, 2020

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster

Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can...

/ September 9, 2020

GW190521: Unexpected Black Holes Collide

How do black holes like this form? The two black holes that spiraled together to produce the gravitational wave event GW190521 were not only the most massive black holes ever seen by LIGO and VIRGO so far, their masses —...

/ September 8, 2020

The Milky Way over St Michaels Mount

Where do land and sky converge? On every horizon — but in this case the path on the ground leads to St Michael’s Mount (Cornish: Karrek Loos yn Koos), a small historic island in Cornwall, England. The Mount is usually...

/ September 7, 2020

M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble

This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less...

/ September 6, 2020