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Tuesday, October 31, 2023

This 160-million-year-old fish gouged out its victims' flesh - National Geographic

Lampreys have been feeding on flesh and blood since the depths of prehistory. These jawless, eel-like creatures have suctioning discs lined with teeth for mouths, which many modern species use to latch on to prey and suck blood from their living hosts. Now stunning fossils from China have revealed a pair of large fossil lamprey species with specialized mouthparts to scoop flesh out of their victims, representing the evolution of these animals into impressive predators.

“There have been no other lamprey fossils from the dinosaur age that preserve their terrorizing oral apparatus quite so clear,” says Canadian Museum of Nature paleontologist Tetsuto Miyashita, who was not involved in the new study.

The fossil fish were described recently in Nature Communications by Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Feixiang Wu and colleagues. The delicately preserved fossils were found in the roughly 160-million-year-old rock of Liaoning Province and represent two new species. They include entire lampreys preserved from their sucker-like mouths to the tips of their tails.

“I was deeply impressed at first sight,” Wu says, especially the preservation of the mouths and teeth. The fossils were found in rocks that formed among prehistoric lakes.

Paleontologists usually don’t get to examine prehistoric lampreys in such detail. Despite existing for more than 360 million years, ancient lampreys are hard to find. “The lamprey fossil record is very sparse and poor,” Miyashita says, with mostly small species, only a few inches long, known from the first two hundred million years of their history. Experts are uncertain what the earliest lampreys fed on, whether it was small prey or even algae, but they lacked the specialized mouthparts to feed on blood or flesh from other fish. The new fossils substantially add to the fossil record of these animals and provide new clues about how they evolved.

The larger of the two new species, Yanliaomyzon occisor, stretched over two feet long, making it the biggest fossil lamprey yet uncovered, about the size of the largest living lampreys. The fish was many times larger than its earlier cousins—and its wicked teeth provide a clue to what spurred this size boost.

“Modern lampreys are either parasitic or non-parasitic as adults,” Miyashita says. The size of Yanliaomyzon fits best with the large, parasitic species known today, which generally feed on bony fish like trout and catfish. The fossils represent the oldest known occurrence of this peculiar lifestyle.

The Yanliaomyzon fossils have mouths full of sharp teeth and a specialized structure called piston cartilage for moving the fish’s tongue, Wu says, that resemble those of a living, flesh-feeding species called the pouched lamprey. By 160 million years ago, lampreys were larger than ever before, actively swimming after fish to gouge out flesh from their prey like living ice cream scoops.

One of the new Yanliaomyzon fossils even includes skeletal fragments preserved in its gut, indicating that it was biting chunks out of its meals that ripped away bone. If the fossil lampreys had similar capabilities to today’s pouched lamprey, Wu and colleagues write, Yanliaomyzon might have even been able to destroy the skulls of its fishy prey.

A change in available meals might have opened the evolutionary pathway to flesh-eating lampreys. The earliest of these animals coexisted with larger fish that were covered in thick body armor that the tiny lampreys wouldn’t have been able to penetrate. But by 160 million years ago, Wu says, “bony fishes with thin scales began to abundantly emerge” and provided lampreys with a new food source. The slithery fish began to evolve into proficient hunters, and the new fossils hint that today’s bloodsucking species evolved from flesh-eating ancestors.

The new fossils also establish when lampreys evolved a multi-stage life cycle. Both Yanliaomyzon species have long, ribbon-like fins on their undersides, Wu and colleagues write, a feature that is associated with swimming in flowing waters. This might indicate that Yanliaomyzon behaved similar to modern lamprey species, the adults swimming up freshwater rivers to deposit their young. The babies would have started their lives as filter-feeders in freshwater before eventually making their way out to the ocean to hunt and begin the cycle again.

Additional fossils could further elucidate the major changes that lampreys have undergone since their early days as tiny fish in a world of armored swimmers. “The lamprey fossil record, compared with records of other vertebrate groups, must be among the least complete,” says University of Chicago paleontologist Michael Coates, who was not involved with the study.

The new fossils are “fascinating material,” he notes, providing a wealth of new information about a group of ancient animals that is mostly known from just a few isolated mouth parts. Now it is clear that by the Jurassic period, lampreys had evolved an impressive bite.

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Monday, October 30, 2023

Webb telescope image captures ghostly glow of the Crab Nebula - CNN

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CNN  — 

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured wispy new details of cosmic gas and dust within the Crab Nebula, revealing insights into what happens in the aftermath of a massive star explosion.

The Crab Nebula is a well-studied supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the Taurus constellation.

Astronomers in China, Japan and the Middle East first spotted the “crab” in the night sky in 1054, recording their observations of what they believed to be a new star. Later, it was determined that the phenomenon was actually the bright light of a supernova, or exploding star, reaching Earth.

Having historical evidence of a stellar explosion event is rare, which is why there is so much interest in the nebula.

Despite the fact that the relatively nearby Crab Nebula has long been observed, modern astronomers still have questions about the doomed star and the chemical makeup of the glowing cosmic cloud it created.

The Crab Nebula has been studied by other space observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope. But Webb’s ability to view the universe in infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, was able to pierce through the otherwise obscuring dust of the nebula to pick out previously unseen features.

Researchers used Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument to study the nebula with the aim of unveiling insights into its origins.

“Webb’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to accurately determine the composition of the ejected material, particularly the content of iron and nickel, which may reveal what type of explosion produced the Crab Nebula,” said Tea Temim, research astronomer at Princeton University in New Jersey, in a statement.

Hubble's Crab Nebula
Webb's Crab Nebula

Capturing aspects of the ever-expanding Crab Nebula

Hubble captured the celestial object using an optical wavelength in 2005 (above left), while Webb’s latest infrared image (above right) revealed more of its structural details and inner workings.

Yellow-white and green filaments, made of dust grains, appear in the Webb image for the first time. The prominent smokelike material that dominates the nebula’s interior is evidence of synchrotron radiation, or patterns created by charged particles moving around the lines of magnetic fields.

This milky haze is produced by the nebula’s power source, a pulsar, or a rapidly rotating neutron star. Neutron stars are the dense remnants that form after massive stars burn through their internal nuclear fuel and collapse. The pulsar’s magnetic field accelerates charged particles to the point that they emit radiation as they zoom around the star’s magnetic field lines.

In the new image, rippling, circular wisps point to the nebula’s pulsar heart, seen as a central bright white spot. Closer to the edges of the image are thin white lines that outline the pulsar’s magnetic field, which provides the nebula with its shape. The nebula continues to expand over time as wind created by the spinning pulsar pushes the interior gas and dust outward.

As astronomers continue to analyze the Webb data and compare it with data collected by other telescopes, they are also anticipating a fresh perspective on the nebula from Hubble within the next year. Together, the observations could help astronomers turn back time to unlock what happened before the star exploded.

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Dust Might Have Made the Dinosaurs Go Extinct - The New York Times

A simulation suggests that fine particles played a stronger role in cooling the planet and stalling photosynthesis after an asteroid impacted the Earth.

On a spring day over 66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into the sea just off the coast of modern-day Mexico. Known as the Chicxulub impact, it set off a global shock wave, earthquakes and megatsunamis that exterminated the nonavian dinosaurs and plunged Earth into a long and dark winter.

A study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience has uncovered a cause of this cold snap: dust. The study’s authors say that micrometer-size fine silicate dust lingered as long as 15 years in the atmosphere after the impact and contributed to the global cooling. Additionally, they say, all photosynthetic activity on Earth may have ceased completely within two weeks following the Chicxulub impact largely because of fine dust.

Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research, said studies like this one aided understanding of the time period after the asteroid’s impact.

“They help us empathize with T. rex, Triceratops and the other dinosaurs that woke up in the morning on the top of the food chain but by the end of the day were facing a world in chaos,” he said.


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Live coverage: SpaceX to launch 23 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral – Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

File photo of SpaceX’s Starlink V2 Mini satellites inside a payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral earlier this year. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX will make another attempt Monday night to launch a Falcon 9 carrying 23 more satellites for its Starlink internet service from Cape Canaveral. Liftoff from pad 40 is scheduled for 7:20 p.m. EDT (2320 UTC).

On Sunday night the countdown reached T-30 seconds when an abort was called. The launch director said a problem was detected with the system used to separate the first and second stages of the rocket and launch was pushed back to Monday.

A forecast issued by the 45th Weather Squadron at Cape Canaveral gave the Falcon 9 an 95-percent chance of favorable conditions for launch. The only concern being rules associated with lightning-triggering cumulus clouds.

SpaceX has seven back up launch opportunities on Monday night if needed, the last of which is at 10:22 p.m. EDT (0222 UTC).

Spaceflight Now will bring you live coverage from the Cape, starting about an hour before launch.

After lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the Falcon 9 will pitch and roll onto a south-easterly trajectory as it targets an orbit inclined at 43 degrees to the equator.

The first-stage booster, making its eighth flight, will touch down on the drone ship ‘Of Course I Still Love you’ about eight and a half minutes after launch.

The booster, tail number B1077, first flew in October 2022, carrying Crew 5 to the International Space Station aboard Dragon Endurance. It went on to fly the GPS III F6, Inmarsat I6-F2, CRS-28, and Intelsat G-37 missions, plus two Starlink delivery flights.

Deployment of the 23 Starlink satellites into a 182×177 mile (293×285 km) orbit is scheduled to occur 1 hour, 5 minutes and 38 seconds after launch.

A launch of 22 Starlinks from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday brought the number of Starlink satellites currently in orbit to 4,988, according to statistics compiled by Jonathan McDowell. If all goes according to plan with Monday’s East Coast launch, SpaceX will have more than 5,000 Starlink satellites in orbit.

Tonight’s launch will be the 90th orbital mission for SpaceX in the last 365 days, roughly a launch every four days on average. Company officials have said they hope to accelerate the pace of launches and make 100 flights in 2023, surging to a total of 144 in 2024.

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James Webb Space Telescope dives deep into the Crab Nebula supernova wreckage (video) - Space.com

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers has captured an unprecedented, ethereal view of the Crab Nebula.

This cosmic crustacean, located around 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, is the remnant of a supernova first recorded by 11th-century astronomers in 1054. In the modern era of astronomy, the Crab Nebula continues to enthrall scientists who use this relatively close cloud of gas and dust to study how stellar explosions proceed and what their after-effects are.

"The JWST’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to accurately determine the composition of the ejected material, particularly the content of iron and nickel, which may reveal what type of explosion produced the Crab Nebula," team leader and Princeton University researcher Tea Temim said in a statement.

The JWST observed the nebula in infrared using its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) instruments, seeing the general infrared shape of the nebula closely resembling the shape seen in optical light. However, there the observatory did reveal  some stunning new details.

Related: James Webb Space Telescope spots jet stream on Jupiter stronger than a Category 5 hurricane 

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula in the search for answers about the supernova remnant's origins. Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have revealed new details in infrared light. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The anatomy of a cosmic crab 

In the data collected by the JWST, red-orange, fluffy tendrils of gas can be seen caging the central heart of the Crab Nebula. What is new in these observations are dust grain emissions seen at the nebula's core glowing in yellow, white and green. Loops of these brightly-colored filaments   represent concentrated locations of dust grains in the structure.

The JWST's view of the Crab Nebula also shows new details about the inner workings of this material that was once blasted from a supernova. In particular, the powerful space telescope uncovered emissions from a type of radiation in the nebula called synchrotron radiation. Appearing as milky white smoke in the image, this radiation is produced by charged particles called electrons moving along magnetic field lines at speeds approaching that of light, known as "relativistic" speeds.

This radiation stems from  a rapidly rotating neutron star, or pulsar, at the heart of the supernova wreckage. When the massive star collapsed at the end of its life, it would've triggered the supernova that caused the wreckage itself. The pulsar's powerful magnetic field of the pulsar would've accelerated the charged particles to relativistic speeds.

The heart of the Crab Nebula can be traced in the image by following circular ripples in the middle of the image to the bright white dot that sits at the center. Leading out from this are closely clustered curving wisps that show the structure of the magnetic fields of the pulsars as they determine the Crab Nebula’s shape. 

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The neutron star’s location is marked by white material curving sharply inwards from the edges of the red, dusty and spine-like cage that surrounds it. This abrupt “pinching” of the Crab Nebula could be the result of a belt of dense gas constraining the expansion of supernova winds, even as winds from the central pulsar push a shell of gas and dust rapidly outward. 

Scientists will continue to examine JWST data collected from the Crab Nebula as they await data collected from its fellow space telescope, Hubble, which has recently completed its first look at the nebula for over two decades.

When this Hubble data lands, astronomers can then put together observations from both space telescopes to learn more about the Crab Nebula than ever before. 

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Sunday, October 29, 2023

SpaceX to launch 23 satellites tonight on 2nd half of Starlink doubleheader - Space.com

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set to launch 23 Starlink internet satellites tonight (Oct. 29), on the second of two planned missions for the day.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station tonight at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT). If the Falcon 9 can't get off the ground on time, seven backup opportunities are available, from 8:17 p.m. EDT to 10:47 p.m. EDT (0017 to 0247 GMT on Oct. 30), according to a SpaceX mission description

You can watch the action live via SpaceX's account on X (formerly known as Twitter). Coverage will start about five minutes before liftoff.

Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky

If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9's first stage will come back to Earth for a vertical landing about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It will be the eighth launch and landing for this rocket's first stage, according to the mission description. 

The 23 Starlink satellites will deploy from the Falcon 9's upper stage into low Earth orbit about 65.5 minutes after liftoff, if all goes according to plan.

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Tonight's launch is the second half of a planned Sunday Starlink doubleheader. SpaceX  was scheduled to send 22 Starlink craft skyward from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base early Sunday morning. 

Starlink is SpaceX's broadband megaconstellation, which beams internet service down to customers around the world. SpaceX has launched more than 5,000 Starlink satellites to LEO to date, and many more liftoffs are coming: The company has permission to deploy 12,000 of the spacecraft, and it has applied for approval for another 30,000 on top of that.

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Webb telescope probes space explosion and makes fascinating discovery - Mashable

Astronomers detected a potent space explosion this year and directed the powerful James Webb Space Telescope at the cosmic blast.

This blast was a "gamma-ray burst" containing the most energetic type of light that's often generated by the collapse and explosion of enormous stars, events called supernovae. But the eruption in March 2023, dubbed "GRB 230307A," wasn't any ordinary gamma-ray burst. It was 1,000 times brighter than the typically observed burst, and the rays hit our instruments for a whopping two minutes. Usually, they last just two seconds.

In new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, scientists conclude that a momentous type of explosion called a "kilonova" created the blast. And researchers suspect two curious objects called neutron stars — objects so incredibly dense that a teaspoon of neutron star weighs around a whopping 1 billion tons — collided, triggering the explosion.

Crucially, astronomers theorize that important elements and metals, like gold and platinum, are forged in these outbursts. In this kilonova, the Webb telescope detected the rare element tellurium, which on Earth is rarer than platinum (and platinum is some 30 times rarer than gold).

It's a significant find. The same blast likely made other elements close to tellurium like iodine, "which is needed for much of life on Earth," NASA explains.

"Just over 150 years since Dmitri Mendeleev wrote down the periodic table of elements, we are now finally in the position to start filling in those last blanks of understanding where everything was made, thanks to Webb," Andrew Levan, an astrophysicist at Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the UK who led the research, said in a statement.

In the Webb telescope image below, you can see the source of the potent gamma-ray burst. That red dot is the distant kilonova. Other instruments, like NASA’s gamma-ray-detecting Swift observatory, allowed the researchers to pinpoint the source of the blast. To the right is the galaxy where these dense, massive neutron stars originated.

Below the image is a graphic showing how Webb detected the rare, heavy metal tellurium, which was likely forged in this outburst. One of Webb's most vital investigative instruments is its spectrograph, called NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph). This instrument separates out the types of light coming from an object, similar to a prism separating visible light into a rainbow of colors. Certain wavelengths, or types of light, correspond to different elements or molecules. In this case, the Webb's spectrum showed clear signs that tellurium was present in that kilonova.

A view of the kilonova explosion (red dot on top left) responsible for creating the potent gamma-ray burst.
A view of the kilonova explosion (red dot on top left) responsible for creating the potent gamma-ray burst. Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / A. Levan (Radboud University and University of Warwick)
A light emission spectrum from the James Webb Space Telescope showing evidence of tellurium.
A light emission spectrum from the James Webb Space Telescope showing evidence of tellurium. Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

In the coming years, astronomers expected to find more rare, heavy metals, forged by explosions in the deep cosmos.

"Webb has certainly opened the door to do a lot more, and its abilities will be completely transformative for our understanding of the universe," Ben Gompertz, an astronomer at the University of Birmingham who worked on the research, said in a statement.

The Webb telescope's powerful abilities

The Webb telescope — a scientific collaboration between NASA, the ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency — is designed to peer into the deepest cosmos and reveal new insights about the early universe. But it's also peering at intriguing planets in our galaxy, along with the planets and moons in our solar system.

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Here's how Webb is achieving unparalleled feats, and likely will for decades:

- Giant mirror: Webb's mirror, which captures light, is over 21 feet across. That's over two and a half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. As described above, the telescope is peering at stars and galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

"We're going to see the very first stars and galaxies that ever formed," Jean Creighton, an astronomer and the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable in 2021.

- Infrared view: Unlike Hubble, which largely views light that's visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see far more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves more efficiently slip through cosmic clouds; the light doesn't as often collide with and get scattered by these densely packed particles. Ultimately, Webb's infrared eyesight can penetrate places Hubble can't.

"It lifts the veil," said Creighton.

- Peering into distant exoplanets: The Webb telescope carries specialized equipment called spectrographs that will revolutionize our understanding of these far-off worlds. The instruments can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) exist in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets — be they gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb will look at exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we'll find?

"We might learn things we never thought about," Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, told Mashable in 2021.

Already, astronomers have successfully found intriguing chemical reactions on a planet 700 light-years away, and as described above, the observatory has started looking at one of the most anticipated places in the cosmos: the rocky, Earth-sized planets of the TRAPPIST solar system.

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Saturday, October 28, 2023

Full Hunter's Moon lunar eclipse, last eclipse of 2023, an early Halloween treat for stargazers (photos) - Space.com

The moon passed through part of Earth’s shadow in a partial lunar eclipse visible to potentially millions of stargazers across the Eastern Hemisphere on Saturday, offering an early skywatching treat days before Halloween. 

The partial lunar eclipse of Oct. 28, the last of four eclipses of 2023 - two each of the moon and sun - occurred during October's Full Hunter's Moon, offering the spooky sight of part of the moon disappearing as it was engulfed in the darkness of Earth's shadow.

The lunar eclipse was only from the night side of Earth as our planet moved between the moon and sun. Skywatchers with clear skies could see the event from countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and parts of Australia. Some observers in select states in the U.S., like New York, Alaska, and North Carolina, were also able to catch the end stages of the eclipse. For everyone else, several livestream webcasts of the lunar eclipse showed online views from TimeandDate.com as well as from Ceccano, Italy by the Virtual Telescope Project.

The full Hunter's Moon is seen during a partial lunar eclipse above Kuwait City in Kuwait on Oct. 28, 2023 in this photo by AFP photographer Yasser Al-Zayyat released by Getty Images. (Image credit: Yasser Al-Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images)

TimeandDate.com captured stunning video of the entire lunar eclipse, with telescopes spread across three continents in regions like Bergen, Norway, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Perth, Australia. 

Near the end of the eclipse, the telescope from Norway captured a truly spectacular sight: the fading lunar eclipse with the brilliant planet Jupiter in to the upper right of the moon.

The last bits of Earth shadow can be seen in the lower right of the moon while the brilliant planet Jupiter shines to the upper right in this stunning vie of the partial lunar eclipse of Oct. 28 from Bergen, Norway. (Image credit: TimeandDate.com)

In Dubai, nearly 200 spectators gathered at the Al Thuraya Astronomy center in Mushrif Park to watch the lunar eclipse with the Dubai Astronomy Group, which webcast its views in TimeandDate.com's livestream. 

"Lots of children came to see this event. We are very excited and nobody is on their phone, which is incredible, just everyone just looking up at the moon," Khadijah Ahmad, operations manager of the Dubai Astronomy Group, said during the livestream. "We have about eight telescopes set up downstairs and the public are all over these telescopes observing and taking pictures."

A view of the peak of the partial lunar eclipse of Oct. 28, 2023 from Dubai, UAE. (Image credit: TimeandDate.com)

Cloudy weather in London, England wasn't enough to ruin the view for one skywatcher.

"My clouds parted just in time for the climax at at 9:14 pm in London," wrote one observer, who goes by Epiphany and @FunkyAppleTree on X, formerly known Twitter, while sharing stunning photos. "Thrilled."

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Another observer in Delhi, India, was amazed as well. 

"Omg. 1st time in [my] life I tried & luckily watched [a] very clear lunar eclipse in Delhi," wrote Shweta @imshwetta on X. "Partial moon covered in black."

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Here are a some more amazing views from eclipse watchers on X who tracked the lunar eclipse from around the world. 

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In Italy, photojournalist  Lorenzo Di Cola of NurPhoto and Getty Images captured this view of the lunar eclipse from L'Aquila, Italy, showing the Earth's shadow on the moon from a different vantage point. 

(Image credit: Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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A map of the world showing the path of a partial lunar eclipse over Africa, Europe and Asia on Oct. 28, 2023. (Image credit: In-The-Sky.org/Dominic Ford)

Saturday's partial lunar eclipse began at 2:01 p.m. EDT (1901 GMT) and was expected to last about 4.5 hours, ending at 6:26 p.m. EDT (2226 GMT). It was a partial eclipse because at the time of the event, the moon only partially moved into the darkest part of Earth's shadow  — called  the umbra. 

This was the last lunar eclipse of 2023. The next one will occur on March 24, 2024, but will be be less impressive, with the moon passing only through the Earth's outer shadow, which scientists call the penumbra. That eclipse will be visible from North America and is a preview for a truly spectacular total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, which will be visible from Mexico, the United States and Canada.

If you are plan to observe the Full Hunter's Moon of October, our guides to the best telescopes and binoculars are a great place to start when looking for skywatching gear.

If you're looking to snap photos of the night sky in general, check out our guide on how to photograph the moon, as well as our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.

Editor's Note: If you snap an image of the Hunter's Moon and would like to share it with Space.com's readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

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Astronomers Spot New Aurora in the Gases Around Uranus - Gizmodo

A visualization of recent a discovered aurora on Uranus.
A visualization of a recently discovered aurora on Uranus.
Illustration: NASA, ESA and M. Showalter (SETI Institute) for the background image of Uranus

Feast your eyes on Uranus’ glowing edges. We’re serious—a team of astronomers has spotted a new aurora on the seventh planet from the Sun, glowing at infrared wavelengths.

Ultraviolet aurorae were first spotted on the planet in 1986, but an infrared aurora had never been seen before. The aurora’s discovery was made with the Keck II Telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSPEC) and reported this week in Nature Astronomy. The observations were actually made in September 2006, but new analysis of the ion H3+ detected in the data revealed the aurora’s presence.

“This paper is the culmination of 30 years of auroral study at Uranus, which has finally revealed the infrared aurora and begun a new age of aurora investigations at the planet,” said Emma Thomas, an astronomer at the University of Leicester and the study’s lead author, in a university release. “Our results will go on to broaden our knowledge of ice giant auroras and strengthen our understanding of planetary magnetic fields in our solar system, at exoplanets and even our own planet.”

Uranus is an ice giant about four times the size of Earth. It has nearly 30 moons, the largest of which may have ocean layers, ripe for astrobiological inquiry. But the world itself is also of scientific value; an astronomy report released last year declared that a probe to Uranus should be “the highest priority large mission” of the next decade.

The newly spotted aurora is one of several new developments spotted on Uranus this year alone. In April, the $10 billion Webb Space Telescope imaged the planet’s dusty rings—tough to spot in older space telescope imagery but clear as day to Webb’s perceptive gaze. Hubble images published in March 2023 showed how the planet’s rotational axis had shifted, tilting Uranus’ north pole toward the Sun.

Aurorae on Uranus are caused by the same type of interaction as on Earth; charged particles interact with planets’ atmospheres by way of their magnetic fields, emitting a luminous glow across visible light wavelengths as well as, in Uranus’ case, infrared and ultraviolet. The researchers believe studying Uranus’ aurora could improve our understanding of the planet’s atmosphere and the way its poles change locations.

“We don’t have many studies on this phenomena and hence do not know what effects this will have on systems that rely on Earth’s magnetic field such as satellites, communications and navigation,” Thomas added. “However, this process occurs every day at Uranus due to the unique misalignment of the rotational and magnetic axes. Continued study of Uranus’s aurora will provide data on what we can expect when Earth exhibits a future pole reversal and what that will mean for its magnetic field.”

The Uranus probe recommended by the 2022 decadal survey of astronomy goals would map the planet’s gravitational and magnetic fields, the latter of which are responsible for the recently observed aurora. But, should such a probe become a reality, it likely won’t launch until 2031 or 2032, to capitalize on a gravitational assist from Jupiter on its way to the more distant icy planet.

More: What’s That Big White Splotch on Uranus?

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Twisted Edison: Filaments curling at the nanoscale produce light waves that twirl as they travel - Phys.org

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Twisted Edison: Filaments curling at the nanoscale produce light waves that twirl as they travel    ...

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