The Night Sky

Cool NYC picture, but also highlights how long I've been out of NY. RFK & Mario Cuomo bridges, DAFQ?? They'll always be the Triborough & Tappan Zee, maybe the "New" Tappan Zee to this LI Boy...

These almost always turn out anti-climactic, hoping this one isn't.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-observations-announcement-coming[/URL]

Guess this was the big announcement

[URL unfurl="true"]https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-003[/URL]

Guess this was the big announcement

[URL unfurl="true"]https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-003[/URL]

I'm thinking maybe this was it???

[HEADING=2]Hubble Telescope Zooms In on the Biggest Comet Ever Spotted[/HEADING]
The space observatory helped scientists make a more precise measurement of the comet, which has a mass of 500 trillion tons and an appearance like burned toast.

Last year, scientists announced that they had discovered a [colossal comet]('https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/science/comet-largest-ever-seen.html') lingering just [inside Neptune’s orbit]('https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C%2F2014%20UN271;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb'). They estimated its icy core to be between 62 and 125 miles long, based on its brightness. If the estimates were accurate, this would be the largest comet ever discovered.

But scientists wanted to be certain that the superlative stuck, so in January they pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at the comet and measured its nucleus with precision. As reported this week in [The Astrophysical Journal Letters]('https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac626a'), the comet’s core could be up to 85 miles across, making it more than twice the width of [the state of Rhode Island]('https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-020'). It also has a mass of 500 trillion tons, equivalent to roughly [2,800 Mount Everests]('https://weightofstuff.com/how-much-does-mount-everest-weigh/#:~:text=about%20Mount%20Everest.-,How%20much%20does%20Mount%20Everest%20weigh%3F,weight%20of%20357%20trillion%20pounds.').

“It’s 100 times bigger than the typical comets we’ve been studying for all these years,” said [David Jewitt]('http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/~jewitt/David_Jewitt.html'), an astronomer and planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an author of the new study.

Despite its impressive dimensions, this comet — named C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) after its two discoverers — will be visible to the naked eye for only a brief time. It is barreling toward the sun at 22,000 miles per hour. But at its closest approach, in 2031, it will get only within a billion miles of the sun — just behind Saturn’s orbit — where it will appear as a faint glow in the night sky before boomeranging back out into the shadows.

With the help of Hubble, however, astronomers can see and study this effervescing extraterrestrial visitor in all its glory, almost as if they were flying right beside it — a spectral haze of blue enveloping a seemingly bright, white heart. “The image that they have is beautiful,” said the comet’s co-discoverer [Pedro Bernardinelli]('http://pbernardinelli.com/'), an astrophysicist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study.

Pretty wild

[MEDIA=youtube]aKK7vS2CHC8:5[/MEDIA]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/fireball-spotted-over-southern-mississippi-221742718.html[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/rare-black-moon-going-coincide-201156142.html[/URL]

BLACK MOON ???‍?

Astronomy humor: Subaru sees Mercury flaming out!!

OK, the real 'splanation... The group of stars up top is an open cluster of stars, the Pleiades or 7 Sisters to most of us, but to our Japanese friends, it's SUBARU, ergo the car company's star logo. The "comet" below is NOT a comet, but it's the planet Mercury.

Here's why there's a "tail": *Long exposures of our [Solar System's innermost planet]('https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mercury/overview/') may reveal something unexpected: a tail. [Mercury]('https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170723.html')'s thin [atmosphere]('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mercury') contains small amounts of [sodium]('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium') that glow when excited by light from the Sun. Sunlight also liberates these molecules from [Mercury's surface]('https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110616.html') and pushes them away. The yellow glow from [sodium]('

*

The Parade of Planets over the first pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser!!

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/cosmic-horror-nasa-pinpoints-terrifying-120945122.html[/URL]

[[IMG alt="Miami Herald"]https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/luYG8DnGD7NdWI0ko6xxoQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTE4MDtoPTQ4O2NmPXdlYnA-/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-12/92470c90-34ef-11eb-bd77-23f1e090d6ce[/IMG]]('https://www.miamiherald.com/')
[HEADING=2]‘Cosmic horror.’ NASA pinpoints terrifying ‘sounds’ echoing from distant black hole[/HEADING]

he unsettling “sounds” of a black hole can finally be heard thanks to new NASA technology, and listeners are calling the result hypnotic and downright [“terrifying.”]('https://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard/posts/371800778324226?comment_id=1343708446096979')

NASA posted a[ 34-second recording on YouTube ]('

“The popular misconception that there is no sound in space originates with the fact that most of space is essentially a vacuum, providing no medium for sound waves to propagate through,” NASA reported.

“A galaxy cluster, on the other hand, has copious amounts of gas that envelop the hundreds or even thousands of galaxies within it, providing a medium for the sound waves to travel.”

Those “ripples” have been made audible with a sound machine — a process called “sonification” — after NASA says it overcame the challenge of raising the “astronomical data” to a level humans can hear.

NASA dodged describing the results from the black hole — which has such a strong gravitational pull that nothing, including light, can escape its invisible grasp — but the sound could be likened to ghostly howls ... or the collective moan of a billion lifeforms.

There are more than 5,000 reactions and comments on NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Facebook page, some using terms like [“eerily beautiful]('https://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard/posts/371800778324226?comment_id=718298246287637')[”]('https://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard/posts/371800778324226?comment_id=718298246287637') and [“menacing,”]('

Some described it as the [“sound of darkness,” ]('

[MEDIA=youtube]ioR5np1fmEc[/MEDIA]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/cosmic-horror-nasa-pinpoints-terrifying-120945122.html[/URL]

[[IMG alt="Miami Herald"]https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/luYG8DnGD7NdWI0ko6xxoQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTE4MDtoPTQ4O2NmPXdlYnA-/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-12/92470c90-34ef-11eb-bd77-23f1e090d6ce[/IMG]]('https://www.miamiherald.com/')
[HEADING=2]‘Cosmic horror.’ NASA pinpoints terrifying ‘sounds’ echoing from distant black hole[/HEADING]

Great soundtrack for Halloween - no kids coming to your door!

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/monster-black-hole-galaxy-236-153848580.html[/URL]

The moon sure was bright Tuesday

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/06/rare-night-sky-event-on-tap-with-5-planets-and-moon-all-visible.html?fbclid=IwAR3aWC3hfH6dnPf6hyBw8PYkaYtu-5bpQE6wr6VwFjq_0h4suA5Vk6xXPpU[/URL]

At about a half-hour before sunrise on Friday, all five planets visible to the naked eye and the moon will line up in an arc across our night sky.

It will be the first time in 18 years that so many planets will be visible to the unaided eye and the first time since March 1864 that Friday’s configuration will be visible. It won’t happen against until 2040, according to NASA.

Wait....wait....

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.space.com/satellites-falling-off-sky-solar-weather[/URL]

Wait....wait....

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.space.com/satellites-falling-off-sky-solar-weather[/URL]

On the flip side, we may get some great aurora activity!!!

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/06/rare-night-sky-event-on-tap-with-5-planets-and-moon-all-visible.html?fbclid=IwAR3aWC3hfH6dnPf6hyBw8PYkaYtu-5bpQE6wr6VwFjq_0h4suA5Vk6xXPpU[/URL]

At about a half-hour before sunrise on Friday, all five planets visible to the naked eye and the moon will line up in an arc across our night sky.

It will be the first time in 18 years that so many planets will be visible to the unaided eye and the first time since March 1864 that Friday’s configuration will be visible. It won’t happen against until 2040, according to NASA.

We got up early to see the alignment. Unfortunately between obstructions, clouds and morning glow we couldn't see Mercury, but otherwise the planets put on a good show.

We got up early to see the alignment. Unfortunately between obstructions, clouds and morning glow we couldn't see Mercury, but otherwise the planets put on a good show.

A group of 5 Italian amateur astronomers got together to put this college together with all the visible planets in the morning sky, including the elusive Saturn and Uranus, although there are may some here that might resemble the later...

NASA is releasing the first images from the Webb telescope live at 10:30 today:

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive[/URL]

if you're interested.