James Webb captures stunning moment two spiral galaxies collide - Daily Mail

Lyrid meteor shower will reach its peak. Here's how to watch. - Business Insider

The Lyrid meteor shower can offer about 10 to 20 shooting stars per hour

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• A meteor shower peaking this weekend is expected to offer a spectacular show.
• The Lyrid meteor shower can offer around 10 to 20 shining meteors an hour.
• Here are tips to give you the best chance of seeing the shower in all its glory.

The Lyrid meteor shower is peaking this weekend, giving lucky skygazers the chance to see around 10 to 20 shooting stars an hour.

The event happens every year when the Earth passes through a cloud of dust left behind by the tail of a comet.

As debris from the comet falls into our planet's atmosphere, it burns up and leaves behind a trail of dazzling shooting stars in the night sky that can be viewed for several seconds.

This year, conditions are optimal to catch a glimpse of the streaks with the naked eye as the moon will be in its first crescent and won't be obscuring the show.

The showers began last week, and are due to peak from April 21 to 23 in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere will also have a chance to see Lyrid meteors, but they will be fewer in number.

Here's how to get the best view of this stunning event, according to NASA.

If you can, go just before dawn

Going late at night gives you the best chance of seeing the showers.

Longhua Liao/Getty Images

The best time to view the showers is during the dark hours, per NASA. That's when the moon has set, but the sun hasn't risen yet.

That gives you the best shot of seeing the showers. The shooting stars of the Lyrids are known for being characteristically long — they last a few seconds — but they will still be dim in comparison to moonlight or sunlight.

If dawn isn't an option, go late at night instead

The Lyrid meteor shower at night.

NASA/Screenshot

If the dark hours aren't an option, you may still get a pretty good show from 10:30 p.m., Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, told Space.com. 

That's in part because of the serendipitous timing of the moon. At the time when the meteor shower is at its peak, the moon will be in its waxing crescent, meaning its only casting 6% of its maximal light, per Space.com. 

That means that even if the moon is out, it likely won't be too bright to dim the showers. 

Friday and Saturday will give you the best show

A meteor seen streaking through the sky.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The Earth is already passing through the cloud of dust that is causing the showers, so you may already be seeing more shooting stars in the sky. 

But the showers will peak around Friday and Saturday, per NASA. At that point, there should be about 18 meteors falling through the sky per hour. 

That's pretty good for a Lyrid, In general, 10 to 20 Lyrid meteors can be seen each hour during their peak, per NASA. 

But the Lyrids can get much more intense. In years where there is a so-called outburst, more than 100 shooting stars can be seen in an hour. Sightings of these heavier showers occurred in Virginia in 1803, Greece in 1922, Japan in 1945, and the US in 1982, per NASA. 

These outbursts are hard to predict, however. 

Lie on your back, and point your feet east

People looking up at a meteor shower.

harpazo_hope/Getty Images

For the best shot at seeing the showers, head away from city lights that create a lot of background-light pollution.

Lay on your back — bring a blanket, lawn chair, or sleeping bag — and look straight up to the sky. No need to bring goggles or a telescope as the meteors are best seen with the naked eye.

NASA recommends pointing your feet east for the best view of the shower.

The shooting stars can appear anywhere in the sky, but if you want something to point your gaze to, look for the Lyra constellation — which is what the shower is named for as the Lyrids often emerge from that corner of the sky.

Be patient, and let your eyes adjust

Going late at night give you the best chance of seeing the showers.

Qing Zai Yi Téng / EyeEm/Getty images

Chances are you weren't driving in complete darkness and you would have been looking at your phone to get you where you need to be.

That means your eyes will need some time to adjust to the darkness.

Be patient. NASA says you should give your eyes at least 30 minutes to get used to the dark sky before trying to watch the shooting stars.

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 18 April 2023: Map of Total solar eclipse path - HT Tech

The first solar eclipse of 2023 is almost here with a hybrid eclipse taking place on April 20. But how does an eclipse occur? According to NASA, a solar eclipse occurs when the Sun, the Moon, and Earth line up, either fully or partially. Depending on how they align, eclipses provide a unique, exciting view of either the Sun or the Moon. However, not all eclipses are visible all over the globe. NASA released a map citing details of 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses in the United States.

Today's NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day is the map of the total solar eclipse path which will take place on April 8 next year. Viewers in locations outside the paths will not experience a total solar eclipse or annular eclipse, but they may still see a partial eclipse. Apart from the hybrid solar eclipse occurring on April 20, an annular solar eclipse will also take place on October 14, while a total solar eclipse will happen on April 8, 2024. Lines running parallel to each path indicate how much of the Sun will become covered by the Moon during the partial eclipse. For the annular eclipse, these lines appear faint yellow. For the total eclipse, they're faint purple.

The picture was created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) which allows science enthusiasts to learn about NASA programs through visualization. According to NASA, the SVS works closely with scientists in the creation of visualizations, animations, and images to promote a greater understanding of Earth and Space Science research activities at NASA and within the academic research community supported by NASA.

NASA's description of the picture

Would you like to see a total eclipse of the Sun? If so, do any friends or relatives live near the path of next April's eclipse? If yes again, then you might want to arrange a well-timed visit. Next April 8, the path of a total solar eclipse will cross North America from western Mexico to eastern Canada, entering the USA in southern Texas and exiting in northern Maine.

All of North America will experience the least a partial solar eclipse. Featured here is a map of the path of totality. Many people who have seen a total solar eclipse tell stories about it for the rest of their lives. As a warmup, an annular solar eclipse will be visible later this year -- in mid-October.

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Watch Russian cosmonauts make their 3rd try at a spacewalk tonight - Space.com

Two Russian cosmonauts will attempt a twice-delayed spacewalk yet again tonight (April 18), and you can watch the action live.

Coverage of the International Space Station (ISS) spacewalk will start tonight at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT Wednesday, April 19) here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA Television. Depending on how preparations go, the spacewalk should start around 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT) and last about 6 hours and 40 minutes, NASA's live page states (opens in new tab).

ISS Expedition 69 cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin have already made two tries at starting this set of space activities. A failed spacesuit pump aborted an attempt on Nov. 25, 2022. Just three weeks later, a Dec. 15 try was called off following a leak on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that started just before the airlock was opened, spewing corrosive coolant into space.

Related: Leaky Soyuz spacecraft at space station returns to Earth in speedy landing

Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev (at right) and Dmitry Petelin prepare a large radiator for its move from the Rassvet mini-research module to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module during a Nov. 17, 2022 spacewalk outside of the Russian segment of the International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA)

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The cosmonauts will exit the station's Russian Poisk airlock on tonight's spacewalk, wearing Orlan spacesuits. "From there, the duo will maneuver to the Earth-facing side of the station and start the work of moving a radiator and an experiment module," a NASA blog post (opens in new tab) stated on April 13.

The spacewalkers will continue to prepare these two bulky pieces of equipment for transfer from the Rassvet module. The Rassvet radiator and experiment airlock were shipped to space in May 2010 aboard the STS-132 space shuttle mission. Now Russia's space agency Roscosmos plans to shift the equipment to the newer Russian Nauka science laboratory that launched to the ISS in 2021.

The work will take four spacewalks all told; one featuring Prokopyev and Petelin already completed all its tasks on Nov. 17, 2022. Pending tonight's extravehicular activity going to plan, the last two excursions will happen on April 25 and May 4 with the same two cosmonauts.

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During all these spacewalks, cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will assist with robotic activities from inside the ISS using the European Space Agency's robotic arm on Nauka, including performing the equipment transfer after the preparation activities are complete.

Prokopyev will wear an Orlan spacesuit with red stripes for tonight's spacewalk, while Petelin will sport blue stripes on his.

Tonight's spacewalk will be the third at the ISS in 2023, following two NASA ones on Jan. 20 and Feb. 2. The EVA will be the second for Petelin and the fourth for Prokopyev, who already has nearly 22 hours of spacesuit time accumulated.

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).

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Could this copycat black hole be a new type of star? - Phys.org

Credit: Pierre Heidmann / Johns Hopkins University

It looks like a black hole and bends light like a black hole, but it could actually be a new type of star.

Though the mysterious object is a hypothetical mathematical construction, new simulations by Johns Hopkins researchers suggest there could be other celestial bodies in space hiding from even the best telescopes on Earth. The findings are set to publish in Physical Review D.

"We were very surprised," said Pierre Heidmann, a Johns Hopkins University physicist who led the study. "The object looks identical to a black hole, but there's light coming out from its dark spot."

The detection of gravitational waves in 2015 rocked the world of astrophysics because it confirmed the existence of black holes. Inspired by those findings, the Johns Hopkins team set out to explore the possibility of other objects that could produce similar gravitational effects but that could be passing as black holes when observed with ultraprecise sensors on Earth, said co-author and Johns Hopkins physicist Ibrahima Bah.

"How would you tell when you don't have a black hole? We don't have a good way to test that," Bah said. "Studying hypothetical objects like topological solitons will help us figure that out as well."

The new simulations realistically depict an object the Johns Hopkins team calls a topological soliton. The simulations show an object looking like a blurry photo of a black hole from afar but like something else entirely up close.

The object is hypothetical at this stage. But the fact that the team could construct it using mathematical equations and show what it looks like with simulations suggests there could be other types of celestial bodies in space hiding from even the best telescopes on Earth.

The findings show how the topological soliton distorts space exactly as a black hole does—but behaves unlike a black hole as it scrambles and releases weak light rays that would not escape the strong gravitational force of a true hole.

Movie clip showing the gravitational lensing effects caused by no object in an observer's line of sight, a black hole, and the topological soliton. Credit: Pierre Heidmann / Johns Hopkins University.

"Light is strongly bent, but instead of being absorbed like it would in a black hole, it scatters in funky motions until at one point it comes back to you in a chaotic manner," Heidmann said. "You don't see a dark spot. You see a lot of blur, which means light is orbiting like crazy around this weird object."

A black hole's gravitational field is so intense that light can orbit around it at a certain distance from its center, in the same way that Earth orbits the sun. This distance determines the edge of the hole's "shadow," so that any incoming light will fatally hit the region that scientists call the "event horizon." There, nothing can escape—not even light.

The Hopkins team simulated several scenarios using pictures of outer space as if they had been captured with a camera, placing a black hole and the topological soliton in front of the lens. The results produced distorted pictures because of the gravitational effects of the massive bodies.

"These are the first simulations of astrophysically relevant string theory objects, since we can actually characterize the differences between a topological soliton and a black hole as if an observer was seeing them in the sky," Heidmann said.

Motivated by various results from string theory, Bah and Heidmann discovered ways to construct topological solitons using Einstein's theory of general relativity in 2021. While the solitons are not predictions of new objects, they serve as the best models of what new quantum gravity objects could look like compared to black holes.

Scientists have previously created models of boson stars, gravastars, and other hypothetical objects that could exert similar gravitational effects with exotic forms of matter. But the new research accounts for pillar theories of the inner workings of the universe that other models don't. It uses string theory that reconciles quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity, the researchers said.

"It's the start of a wonderful research program," Bah said. "We hope in the future to be able to genuinely propose new types of ultracompact stars consisting of new kinds of matter from quantum gravity."

The team includes Johns Hopkins physicist Emanuele Berti. The topological soliton in the simulations was first constructed in research published in 2022 by Bah's group.

More information: Imaging topological solitons: The microstructure behind the shadow, Physical Review D (2023). journals.aps.org/prd/accepted/ … bb8818b2c35a0d77cb4d . On arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2212.06837

Provided by Johns Hopkins University

Citation: Could this copycat black hole be a new type of star? (2023, April 18) retrieved 18 April 2023 from https://ift.tt/1Y0Z7gn

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A rare hybrid solar eclipse occurs on April 20. Here's how to watch it online for free. - Space.com

Update for 11:15 a.m. on April 18: We are just one day away from witnessing a rare hybrid solar eclipse! Weather forecasts look great for Perth, Australia, one of the locations that will be able to witness the spectacle. We've updated our livestream options below for skywatchers interested in seeing the event who aren't in the path of this rare eclipse. The eclipse will begin at 9:36 p.m. EDT on April 19 (0136 GMT on April 20). Let's hope for clear skies!

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A rare celestial event is happening this week.

On Thursday (April 20), the moon will block out the sun during what is known as a hybrid solar eclipse. This type of eclipse shifts from total solar eclipse to annular (ring-shaped) as the moon's shadow moves across the surface of the Earth. The last hybrid solar eclipse happened in 2013, and the next will occur in 2031. After that, future skywatchers will have to wait until March 23, 2164.

The event will be visible from the South Pacific, with the moon's shadow passing over western Australia, East Timor and Indonesia beginning at 9:36 p.m. EDT on April 19 (0136 GMT on April 20) and ending at 2:59 a.m. EDT (0659 GMT) the next day, according to In the Sky (opens in new tab).

If the path of the eclipse doesn't pass over your location, you're still in luck: There will be multiple free livestreams bringing the celestial action right to the screen of your choice. 

Related: Get ready for a rare hybrid solar eclipse on April 20 

TimeAndDate.com

For example, TimeAndDate.com will host a livestream on their YouTube (opens in new tab) channel beginning at 9:30 p.m. EDT on April 19 (0130 GMT on April 20).

Gravity Discovery Centre & Observatory

The Gravity Discovery Centre & Observatory near Perth, Australia will also host a livestream of the eclipse on their YouTube channel (opens in new tab) beginning at 10 p.m. EDT on April 19 (0200 GMT on April 20).

NASA TV

NASA will host a livestream of the eclipse on their NASA TV YouTube channel (opens in new tab). The agency's coverage will begin at 10:30 p.m. EDT on April 19 (0230 GMT on April 20).

There are only two locations on Earth from which the hybrid eclipse will be seen transitioning from annular to total and then back to annular again; unfortunately, both are found in remote areas of the ocean.

A map of the path of the hybrid solar eclipse on April 20, 2023. (Image credit: GreatAmericanEclipse.com/Michael Zeiler)

No matter if you'll be watching the eclipse in person or using one of these livestreams, remember: Don't ever look at the sun with the unaided eye. Doing so can cause permanent damage to one's vision  —  even during an eclipse. Be sure to check out our guide on how to observe the sun safely if you plan on viewing this or any other eclipse.

If you plan on seeing this or any other eclipse in person, these manufacturers sell reliable solar eclipse glasses and solar filters that comply with international standards. 

Another method of observing the sun safely is by using a pinhole camera, a device you can easily make at home.

If you're looking to take photos of the eclipse or any other celestial event, check out our guide on how to photograph a solar eclipse, as well as our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.

Follow us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), or on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab). 

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‘Ring of Fire’ eclipse to appear above Kansas, here’s when - KSNT News

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1. ‘Ring of Fire’ eclipse to appear above Kansas, here’s when  KSNT News
2. A rare hybrid solar eclipse occurs on April 20. Here's how to watch it online for free.  Space.com
3. A very rare 'hybrid' solar eclipse will take place next week, here's how to watch  Livescience.com
4. NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 18 April 2023: Map of Total solar eclipse path  HT Tech
5. How to watch rare solar eclipse in Australia | 9 News Australia  9 News Australia
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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