European astronomers have found the nearest black hole to Earth, according to Associated Press. It is so close that two stars dancing around it can be observed it without a telescope. The black hole, which is lurking 1,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Telescopium, belongs to a system with two companion stars that are bright enough to observe with the naked eye. But you won’t be able to see the black hole itself; the massive object has such a strong gravitational pull that nothing — not even light — can escape it. Astronomers discovered this black hole while...
Our Solar System is weird. And not only because of the existence of this blue planet full of living things, but also because of the lack of gas giants like Jupiter at close distances to the Sun. Over the last few decades, scientists have discovered and confirmed more than 1,000 exoplanets, planets, orbiting other stars. But these star systems are quite different from the solar system – their large planets orbit their stars as close as Mercury orbits the Sun. Such exoplanets, called “hot Jupiters,” are quite common in other star systems, but strangely, they have disappeared from our. But...
Each Planet from the Solar System rotates at a specific speed and this animation shows how different these rotations are. It is the work of Dr. James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist at the Japan Space Agency who once worked for NASA. The video shows how fast each planet rotates around its axis and compares the cosmic bodies with each other. For example, Jupiter rotates 2.4 times faster than Earth. So let’s have a look! Please follow and like us:
These days, in the evenings with clear sky, many people had the opportunity to see the “caravans” of Starlink satellites. Elon Musk’s “Starlink” project for a Broadband Internet sent 60 new low-orbit satellites without a problem on Wednesday last week, bringing the total constellation to 420. The advent of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, which will consist of many thousands of satellites, can seriously hinder astronomical observations. How can Starlink satellites be found in the sky? When the weather is cloudless, you can watch satellite in the night sky. Satellites are often visible as a bright point of light moving in...
Hidden in the center of the colorful swirl of gases is a dying star whose mass is approximately the mass of the Sun. With the aging of the stars, the nuclear reactions that sustain their brilliance begin to diminish. Unstable energy production causes the stars to pulse irregularly, ejecting their outer layers into space. This is how their super-hot core is revealed. It emits huge amounts of ultraviolet light. The radiation causes the gas layers to shine, creating something spectacular like the fragile beauty of the nebula. The star of the image released by the European Space Agency...
Tonight (on the night of the 21st and the 22nd of April) anyone who wants can watch with the naked eye the maximum of the Lyrids meteor shower. An average of 10-15 meteors per hour are expected to fall! Lyrids are observed since 687 BC, but their behavior over the years is unpredictable and often brings surprises. The stream has repeatedly shown unexpected bursts of activity. In 1803 , at the maximum, have fallen more than 700 shooting stars per hours, and in 1922 – 1800! To spot the Lyrids, find a dark sky away from light pollution and look...
There is no danger of waking up one morning to see Jupiter hovering over your head. However, two amazing animations show exactly what this would look like. Astronomer lover Nicholas Holmes creates videos about Space and uploads them to his amazing YouTube channel Yeti Dynamics. One of his creations, which went viral at least several times since its publication in 2013, shows how the planets in our solar system would look if they orbited the Earth from the distance of the Moon. The second video shows slightly different scenarios. Perhaps some of you know that all planets in...
On the night of December 23rd, rain from falling stars awaits us. It is on the eve of the Christmas holidays that the Ursids – the last meteor shower of the year – reach its peak. It has a “modest” intensity – about 10 meteors per hour, so if you are superstitious, it’s time to make a wish list. Ursids are active between December 17-26. Their parent body is the comet 12P / Pons-Brooks, with a period of about 70.7 years. The name of the stream is taken from its radiant point, which is located in the constellation Ursa Minor....
How many of you have looked through a telescope? How many people have seen with their own eyes the surface of the Moon, the belts of Jupiter along with the four Galilean moons, or Saturn with its magic rings? Comparing by my friends, then the people who had a “close encounter” with these space objects is below 10% …That’s why I decided to do something I had never done before, something interesting and exciting, and at the same time very useful. I called it Telescope Project. For the past two years I have been working as a beach lifeguard in...
