Comet Neowise captured soaring past Earth by ISS Sign up HERE for science breakthroughs in health, business and more that matter SUBSCRIBE Invalid email We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info Dipping your toes in astronomy and space exploration might seem daunting at first but in the age of digital technology, stargazing has never been easier. If you are currently isolating at home and want to learn more about astronomy, here are the best apps on iOS and Android you can download for free today. And the good news is, you will not need a telescope or binoculars. Trending Skyview on iOS and Android Skyview is a popular choice among astronomers and comes with a free version, Skyview Lite, and paid Skyview Pro version. The app uses your …
Astronomy
Why is a theatre company opening a college to teach astronomy and cooking?
By Ian Youngs Published 31 July 2018 Share close Share page Copy link About sharing Award-winning Slung Low theatre company is known for staging epic outdoor theatre productions around the UK. Now it's decided to cut back on the number of shows it makes and set up a "community college" teaching astronomy, cooking and decorative blacksmithing. Artistic director Alan Lane said it was "the most useful and most interesting" thing they could do with their subsidy. The classes will begin in September and be held on a converted double-decker bus in Slung Low's home city of Leeds. The company's past shows include the four-part Flood, one part of which was screened from Hull on BBC Two. They also staged a re-telling of Moby Dick on a floating stage in Leeds and a play about King Arthur with a 137-strong cast in Sheffield. This year they will spend less time staging plays and …
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Weekend: British wildlife broadcaster keen to film Slovak wildlife
In this week’s roundup, we are writing about chamois in the Tatras, comets, Slovak hockey players, and upcoming events. The Presidential Palace was lit green on November 1 and 2 in the evening on the occasion of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. (Source: TASR) ANIMAL Chamois in the Tatras counted At least 1,095 chamois will spend their winter in the Tatras National Park. "Our expectations that the total numbers would be higher remained unfulfilled," said zoologist Jozef Hybler. Based on year-round observations, however, it is assumed the real chamois population in the Tatras is slightly higher than the autumn count showed. While on the Slovak side of the Tatras experts registered 781 chamois on the day of counting, 314 were counted in Poland. Out of the total number of 1,095 chamois, 44 were born this year. "However, it cannot be inferred from this that only a few chamois have made it to this winter, as up to 64 percent of chamois could not be …
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Leonid meteor shower: Shooting stars to grace UK for several days -’Best chance to view’
Lyrid meteor shower: Expert discusses cluster of ‘shooting stars’ Sign up HERE for science breakthroughs in health, business and more that matter SUBSCRIBE Invalid email We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info Astronomy enthusiasts will have to wake up at dawn on November 17 to watch the Leonid meteor shower peak. The best time to look is before dawn, according to Space.com. Related articles Archaeologists stunned by ancient human settlement in Scotland ISS emergency: Russia sparks fury after BLOWING UP satellite To be exact, the perfect slot to admire the shooting stars is set around 8 am British Time, on the morning of the peak. For best viewing conditions, EarthSky recommends going to a dark area with no light with as …
Scientists have found a behemoth mesh of galaxies lurking in the early universe
Astronomers have found an enormous mishmash of galaxies hiding in the early universe. Located only 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang—which occurred some 13.8 billion years ago—this gigantic proto-supercluster is the largest and most massive structure ever discovered at such an early stage in the life of the universe. Dubbed Hyperion after an ancient Greek Titan, the tangled galactic mesh holds more than 1 million billion times the mass of our sun. "It was a surprise to see something this evolved when the universe was relatively young," said astronomer Olga Cucciati in a statement, first author of a study describing the find published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics . "Normally these kinds of structures are known at lower redshifts, which means when the Universe has had much more time to evolve and construct such huge things." Galaxy filaments—enormous thread-like boundaries—tie at least seven highly dense areas of the proto-supercluster together in a sprawling …
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Astronomers find hundreds of new worlds, including unusually close Saturn-sized gas giants
Astronomers have discovered 366 new worlds outside the solar system, including a star orbited by two gas giants that are in extremely close proximity to each other. These extra-solar planets, or exoplanets, add to the catalog of more than 4,500 worlds discovered that orbit stars other than our sun. The find could enable researchers to understand better the evolution of planetary systems as well as showing them how unique, or not, our solar system is in the wider Milky Way. "Discovering hundreds of new exoplanets is a significant accomplishment by itself, but what sets this work apart is how it will illuminate features of the exoplanet population as a whole," said Erik Petigura, an astronomy professor at the University of California Los Angeles. The finding was made possible thanks to a planet detection algorithm designed by a UCLA postdoctoral scholar, Jon Zink, which searched through data collected by the NASA Kepler Space Telescope's K2 mission. Zink's algorithm analyzes …
Captivating pics of Northern Lights as they dance above Britain in rare sighting
THE starry night sky turned a magnificent pink and green last night as the Northern Lights made a rare appearance over Britain. Nature's dazzling Aurora Borealis danced above parts of England, Scotland and Wales after a solar flare brought perfect viewing conditions. The phenomenon, caused by electrically charged particles from the sun smashing into gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere, lit up the cloudless skies near Hadrian's Wall in Brampton, Cumbria. Stunning snaps show a tree in perfect silhouette against a backdrop of fluorescent pink. And the purple sky above glittered with thousands of twinkling stars during the spectacle. The extravaganza was also spotted from Kensaleyre on the Isle of Skye, Findhorn Beach in Moray, and Sandwick, Shetland, where sightings are more common. Scotland and surrounding areas tend to be the best place to watch the lights from as they are furthest north. However, the marvel made a rare appearance off the coast of Llandudno, …
We’re Gonna Need Another Space Telescope
For most of us, today is just Thursday. For astronomers, it’s practically a holy day. Today is an event that comes only once a decade, and it’s of cosmic importance—literally. Today, a special committee has revealed the priorities for the next decade of American astronomy, like a synod giving word from on high. These directives, divined from many deliberations within the astronomy community, have guided the country’s exploration efforts since the 1960s , giving rise to instruments as wondrous as the Hubble Space Telescope . Go forth , the committee says, and discover something new. Like others before them, the new recommendations will eventually be subject to slightly less harmonious influences—Congress and the White House among them—but on this day, they’re pure: a crisp vision of what the future of scientific discovery could look like. If that vision crystallizes into reality, it could change human knowledge as profoundly as the moment Copernicus realized that Earth wasn’t …
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Search for alien life is the top priority of astronomers over the next ten years, major Nasa-sponsored report says
The search for alien life is the top priority of astronomers in the next ten years, according to a major Nasa -sponsored report. Humanity must keep hunting for worlds that could be home to other kinds of life, the survey of mostly US astronomers found, as catalogued in a report issued today by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. It noted that we have already made “extraordinary progress” in finding exoplanets and surveying them. The eventual goal would be to take photographs of other worlds that might be like Earth.“Life on Earth may be the result of a common process, or it may require such an unusual set of circumstances that we are the only living beings within our part of the galaxy, or even in the universe. Either answer is profound,” the report stated. “The coming decades will set humanity down a path to determine whether we are alone.” The survey also called for more work to look into black holes, neutron stars, galaxies and the universe. …
James Webb: Our best-ever space telescope is set for launch
Imagine you are flipping through the pages of your old family photo album. You start from the back. You arrive at the planet pinata party photos from your fourth birthday and even some of you as a toddler. But then you realize that before this, there are no pictures. Your life has been captured only from the time you were already out of babyhood. Then someone comes and offers to reveal some earlier pictures of you as a baby. You probably would want to see them. Now imagine you were offered the chance to see such pictures for the whole universe. And that's exactly what the new and impressive James Webb Space Telescope, finally scheduled for launch on December 18, 2021, promises to give us, in all likelihood drastically changing our understanding of the cosmos. Telescopes allow us to see faraway objects. Most use mirrors to gather and focus light. And the bigger the mirror, the more powerful the telescope is. You find them on hills and in deserts but also mounted on …
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