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Gazing into the past and future at historic observatories
At the top of Mount Hamilton, near San Jose, California, Lick Observatory looks out over the dense sprawl of the San Francisco Bay Area. On a clear day from the 4,200-foot summit, you can see San Francisco to the north, as well as the entrance to Yosemite Valley, 120 miles east, as the crow flies.…
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Astromomy is a changing science
Photo: Pixabay It was a clear, sunny day on Mars, with just a few streaks of cirrus cloud. A range of low hills defined the horizon. That was one of the images sent back to us by one of the robots we have exploring the Red Planet. Then we have pictures transmitted back from Titan,…
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Fascinating recent discoveries about comets and meteors in our solar system
As space objects go, comets and meteors are not very big. While a planet like Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and a star like our Sun is about 865,000 miles across, the largest asteroid, Ceres, is only about 600 miles wide and the largest comet, Bernardinelli-Bernstein, has a diameter of only 80 miles.…
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Look to the stars as Astrofest 2023 takes off in Perth
Astrofest, Australia’s largest astronomy festival, in Perth this weekend Run by Astronomy WA, the event features telescopes and talks on the universe Free event at Curtin Stadium on Saturday, 18 November Thousands of stargazers are expected to attend the Astrofest festival this weekend to learn more about the universe and use some of Western Australia’s…
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Catch the biggest meteor shower of the year this December with an astronomer
If there’s ever a time to bring your sofa cushions outside and set up in a horizontal position in the hope of catching a shooting star, it would be December 14 – when the biggest meteor shower of 2023 will be lighting up the sky. It’s predicted that, with the Geminids meteor shower, 150 shooting…
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How Scientists Are Hunting for Alien Life on Other Planets
In September, NASA announced that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) had detected potentially convincing evidence of life on an exoplanet about 120 light years from Earth. The atmosphere of K2-18b, a planet about nine times the size of our own, was found to contain methane, carbon dioxide, and—most tantalizing—a molecule called dimethyl sulfide. On…
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Stellar corpse nicknamed the ‘Tasmanian devil’ releases powerful explosions months later
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. CNN — Space is full of extreme phenomena, but the “Tasmanian devil” may be one of the weirdest and rarest cosmic events ever observed. Months after astronomers witnessed the explosion of a distant star, they spotted…
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The Leonid meteor shower peaks this weekend. Here’s how to see it
Probably the most famous of the annual meteor showers will soon be reaching its maximum: The Leonids. These ultrafast meteors are due to reach their peak on Saturday morning (Nov. 18). The Leonid meteor shower is known for producing some of the most amazing meteor displays in the annals of astronomy. Most notable are meteor…
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Jupiter’s moon Io is covered in active volcanoes. Now we have the 1st map of them
The most volcanically active world in the solar system, Jupiter’s moon Io, may possess a global ocean of magma underneath its surface, as well as mysteriously warm poles, a new study finds. Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s four largest moons, is slightly bigger than Earth’s moon. Io is the most volcanically active body in the…
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How ASTRO 3D Achieved Gender Parity in Astronomy in Just Five Years | Center for Astrophysics
Cambridge, MA – Around the world, research agencies are struggling to achieve gender parity. A paper published in Nature Astronomy today reports how the national Australian astronomy center ASTRO 3D, led at the time by Professor Lisa Kewley, now director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), achieved equal numbers of women…