HercuList Secrets

There are over 300 ways that the new James Webb Space Telescope could fail, NASA says

This deployment, which will see Webb unfold and unfurl its sun shield once in space, includes quite literally hundreds of "single points of failure," Mike Menzel, Webb lead mission systems engineer for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said ...

Here's how to see Uranus at its brightest in the sky

The distant blue planet Uranus will reach its closest point to Earth Thursday (Nov. 4). While it's a tough world to spot with your naked eye, with binoculars or a telescope you'll have a chance to see this fascinating world at its best.

This bizarre 'superbubble' spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope has scientists scratching their heads

Wispy clouds of gas and a strange "superbubble" dominate the view of a new Hubble Space Telescope image. The view stars a nebula, or gas cloud, known as N44, that is located in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. In the newly released ...

Astronomy Magazine

Looking for galaxies in all the wrong places

Astronomy Magazine

The photographer captured this beautiful view of the Fireworks Galaxy using a Celestron 11-inch EdgeHD telescope set up in their backyard in upstate New York on June 18, 2020. Fortunately, even more modest telescopes can reveal many of the subtle ...

An ancient fireball turned miles of the world's driest desert into glass

(CNN) The Atacama Desert in Chile has been used as a way to simulate alien environments, like Mars on Earth. Now, researchers believe it was the site of an ancient comet explosion intense enough to create giant slabs of silicate glass, according to a new ...

The biggest whales can eat the equivalent of 80000 Big Macs in one day

NPR

NPR

The biggest animals to have ever lived on Earth gobble up much more food than scientists thought, according to a new study of filter-feeding whales that reveals just how important their eating habits could be for recycling nutrients in the ocean.

A natural CO2-sink thanks to symbiotic bacteria

Seagrasses cover large swathes of shallow coastal seas, where they provide a vital habitat. They also remove large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store it in the ecosystem. However, seagrasses need nutrients to thrive, particularly ...

South Taurid meteor shower will shine in the sky tonight

(CNN) A spectacle of light will shine Thursday evening as the South Taurid meteors shoot across the sky. The meteor shower peaks in the late hours of November 4 through the dawn of November ...

ALMA scientists detect signs of water in a galaxy far, far away

Scientists studying SPT0311-58 found H20, along with carbon monoxide in the galaxy, which is located nearly 12.88 billion light years from Earth. Detection of these two molecules in abundance suggests that the molecular universe was going strong shortly ...

Sun outburst goes 'cannibal' as fast new blob overtakes a slower one

It's been a busy few days for our sun, which has produced three of the outbursts that scientists call coronal mass ejections (CMEs) since Monday (Nov. 1). CMEs shoot globs of gas and magnetic fields out into space, often from sunspots, which are knots ...