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By USH
A strange image has been circulating across social media in Thailand, showing a large, dark pillar-like structure mysteriously appearing in the sky over Ubon Ratchathani. According to the photographer, the picture was taken on Sunday, October 20, 2024, while they were trying to capture the "beautiful, colorful sky.
This peculiar sighting isn't entirely unprecedented. Similar strange phenomena have been reported before. On October 7, 2015, a mysterious "floating city" with skyscrapers appeared in the clouds over Foshan, Guangdong province in China. Again, on March 18, 2016, ghostly buildings were seen above the sea along the port of Dalian, in Liaoning Province, China, lingering in the sky for several minutes.
Most recently, on September 11, 2020, an eerie image resembling the Hogwarts School from Harry Potter was spotted hovering over modern buildings in Jinan, Shandong Province. On July 14, 2022, a bizarre occurrence was also witnessed by residents in Haikou, Hainan, where a mysterious floating city appeared in the sky.
Scientists suggest that these events are most likely optical illusions, with mirages being the leading theory. Mirages occur when light rays bend, causing distant objects or parts of the sky to appear displaced. One specific type, known as a Fata Morgana, can create towering, distorted images of distant objects, contributing to these surreal sights.
Although the sightings between 2015 and 2022 were witnessed by many, the photographer in Thailand later realized that the mysterious pillar hadn't been visible to the naked eye at the time. This discovery has led some to speculate that the phenomenon might have been caused by a Project Blue Beam test, holographic technology, or even a temporary vortex connected to a parallel universe.
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By NASA
AMS-02 mounted on the outside of the space station.NASA Visible matter in the form of stars and planets adds up to about five percent of the total known mass of the Universe. The rest is either dark matter, antimatter, or dark energy. The exact nature of these substances is unknown, but the International Space Station’s Alpha-Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS-02 is helping to solve the mystery.
AMS-02 collects data on charged particles from cosmic ray events, which helps scientists understand the origin of those rays and could ultimately reveal whether dark matter and antimatter exist.
To date, the instrument has collected data on about 573 events per second on average – just over 18 billion per year. This high volume of data enables highly precise statistical analyses, and multiple groups of researchers independently process the raw data to ensure accurate results.
Learn more about astrophysics research on the space station.
This view shows the core of AMS-02, a massive magnet that bends particles from space to reveal whether their charge is positive or negative.NASA AMS-02 is the hexagonal shape visible on one of the space station’s trusses, just to the right of the center.NASA Keep Exploring Discover More Topics
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By NASA
2 min read
Hubble Reaches a Lonely Light in the Dark
NASA, ESA, C. Gallart (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias), A. del Pino Molina (Centro de Estudios de Fisica del Cosmos de Aragon), and R. van der Marel (Space Telescope Science Institute); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) A splatter of stars glows faintly at almost 3 million light-years away in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Known as the Tucana Dwarf for lying in the constellation Tucana, this dwarf galaxy contains a loose bundle of aging stars at the far edge of the Local Group, an aggregation of galaxies including our Milky Way, bound together by gravity. The Tucana Dwarf was discovered in 1990 by R.J. Lavery, the same year Hubble launched.
What makes the Tucana Dwarf distinct from other dwarf galaxies comes in two parts: its classification, and its isolation. As a dwarf spheroidal galaxy, it is much smaller and less luminous than most other dwarf galaxies. Dust is sparse and the stellar population skews towards the older range, giving them a dimmer look. Additionally, the Tucana Dwarf lies about 3.6 million light-years from the Local Group’s center of mass, far from the Milky Way and other galaxies. It is only one of two dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Local Group to be this remote, making astronomers theorize that a close encounter with a larger galactic neighbor called Andromeda slingshotted it into the distance about 11 billion years ago.
Having such pristine properties enables scientists to use the Tucana Dwarf as a cosmic fossil. Dwarf galaxies could be the early ingredients for larger galaxies, and with older stars residing in such an isolated environment, analyzing them can help trace galaxy formation back to the dawn of time. For that reason, Hubble reached far across the Local Group using the capabilities of the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 to meet this distant, lonely galaxy. Examining its structure, composition, and star formation history sheds light on the epoch of reionization, when the first stars and galaxies arose from the dark billions of years ago.
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Hubble’s Galaxies
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 23, 2024 Editor Michelle Belleville Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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By NASA
2 min read
August’s Night Sky Notes: Seeing Double
by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
During the summer months, we tend to miss the views of Saturn, Jupiter and other heavenly bodies. But it can be a great time to look for other items, like globular star clusters such as Messier 13, open star clusters such as the Coma Star Cluster (Melotte 111), but also double stars!
Mid-August night sky constellations with the following multiple star systems highlighted: the Double Double in Lyra, Albireo in Cygnus, Polaris in Ursa Minor, Mizar and Alcor in Ursa Major. Credit: Stellarium Web What Are Double Stars?
If you have seen any movies or read any books that refer to having two suns in the sky, that would be a double star system. These star systems typically come in two types – binary and optical doubles. Binary stars are two stars that are gravitationally bound and orbit each other, and optical double stars only appear to be close together when viewed from Earth, but in reality, are extremely far apart from another, and are not affected by each other’s gravity. With a small telescope, in moderately light polluted skies, summer offers great views of these stellar groupings from the Northern Hemisphere:
Double Double: also known by its technical name, Epsilon Lyrae, this multiple star system appears as one star with naked eye observing. But with a small telescope, it can be split into ‘two’ stars. A large telescope reveals Epsilon Lyrae’s secret – what looks like a single star is actually a quadruple star system! Albireo: a gorgeous double star set – one blue, one yellow – in the constellation Cygnus. Polaris: while technically a multiple star system, our North Star can easily be separated from one star to two with a modest telescope. Mizar and Alcor: located in the handle of the Big Dipper, this pair can be seen with the naked eye.
This schematic shows the configuration of the sextuple star system TYC 7037-89-1. The inner quadruple is composed of two binaries, A and C, which orbit each other every four years or so. An outer binary, B, orbits the quadruple roughly every 2,000 years. All three pairs are eclipsing binaries. The orbits shown are not to scale.NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Aside from looking incredible in a telescope or binoculars, double stars help astronomers learn about measuring the mass of stars, and about stellar evolution. Some stars orbit each other a little too closely, and things can become disastrous, but overall, these celestial bodies make for excellent targets and are simple crowd pleasers.
Up next, learn about the Summer Triangle’s hidden treasures on our mid-month article on the Night Sky Network page.
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