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Mysterious Fireball From A Cataclysmic Explosion
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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 USH
A photo recently captured by NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars has revealed a surprising object that stands out from the planet's natural landscape.
The object in question looks like an artificial piece of glass or eventual a mirror, (the contours of the glass/mirror are clearly visible), partially located behind a rock formation.
The fact that it could be a mirror is because the reflection in the mirror seems to show a part of what appears to be a metallic rectangular object what lies in front of the mirror.
Both the glass/mirror and the metallic object seem to be remnants of something either abandoned or wrecked long ago. They clearly do not belong to the rover's equipment or any known NASA gear.
This discovery joins a growing list of mysterious objects found on Mars hinting at the possibility that intelligent civilizations may have once existed on the planet potentially wiped out due to a catastrophic event which made life on the planet impossible.
Link to the photo uploaded by Neville Thompson on his Gigapan page. http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/236036View the full article
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A red giant star and white dwarf orbit each other in this animation of a nova similar to T Coronae Borealis. The red giant is a large sphere in shades of red, orange, and white, with the side facing the white dwarf the lightest shades. The white dwarf is hidden in a bright glow of white and yellows, which represent an accretion disk around the star. A stream of material, shown as a diffuse cloud of red, flows from the red giant to the white dwarf. When the red giant moves behind the white dwarf, a nova explosion on the white dwarf ignites, creating a ball of ejected nova material shown in pale orange. After the fog of material clears, a small white spot remains, indicating that the white dwarf has survived the explosion.NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Around the world this summer, professional and amateur astronomers alike will be fixed on one small constellation deep in the night sky. But it’s not the seven stars of Corona Borealis, the “Northern Crown,” that have sparked such fascination.
It’s a dark spot among them where an impending nova event – so bright it will be visible on Earth with the naked eye – is poised to occur.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” said Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’ll fuel the next generation of scientists.”
T Coronae Borealis, dubbed the “Blaze Star” and known to astronomers simply as “T CrB,” is a binary system nestled in the Northern Crown some 3,000 light-years from Earth. The system is comprised of a white dwarf – an Earth-sized remnant of a dead star with a mass comparable to that of our Sun – and an ancient red giant slowly being stripped of hydrogen by the relentless gravitational pull of its hungry neighbor.
The hydrogen from the red giant accretes on the surface of the white dwarf, causing a buildup of pressure and heat. Eventually, it triggers a thermonuclear explosion big enough to blast away that accreted material. For T CrB, that event appears to reoccur, on average, every 80 years.
Don’t confuse a nova with a supernova, a final, titanic explosion that destroys some dying stars, Hounsell said. In a nova event, the dwarf star remains intact, sending the accumulated material hurtling into space in a blinding flash. The cycle typically repeats itself over time, a process which can carry on for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
“There are a few recurrent novae with very short cycles, but typically, we don’t often see a repeated outburst in a human lifetime, and rarely one so relatively close to our own system,” Hounsell said. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat.”
Finding T Coronae Borealis
A conceptual image of how to find Hercules and the “Northern Crown” in the night sky, created using planetarium software. Look up after sunset during summer months to find Hercules, then scan between Vega and Arcturus, where the distinct pattern of Corona Borealis may be identified. NASA The first recorded sighting of the T CrB nova was more than 800 years ago, in autumn 1217, when a man named Burchard, abbot of Ursberg, Germany, noted his observance of “a faint star that for a time shone with great light.”
The T CrB nova was last seen from Earth in 1946. Its behavior over the past decade appears strikingly similar to observed behavior in a similar timeframe leading up to the 1946 eruption. If the pattern continues, some researchers say, the nova event could occur by September 2024.
What should stargazers look for? The Northern Crown is a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation, ideally spotted on clear nights. It can be identified by locating the two brightest stars in the Northern Hemisphere – Arcturus and Vega – and tracking a straight line from one to the other, which will lead skywatchers to Hercules and the Corona Borealis.
The outburst will be brief. Once it erupts, it will be visible to the naked eye for a little less than a week – but Hounsell is confident it will be quite a sight to see.
A coordinated scientific approach
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Watch V407 Cyg go nova! In this animation, gamma rays (magenta) arise when accelerated particles in the explosion's shock wave crash into the red giant's stellar wind.NASA/Conceptual Image Lab/Goddard Space Flight Center Dr. Elizabeth Hays, chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA Goddard, agreed. She said part of the fun in preparing to observe the event is seeing the enthusiasm among amateur stargazers, whose passion for extreme space phenomena has helped sustain a long and mutually rewarding partnership with NASA.
“Citizen scientists and space enthusiasts are always looking for those strong, bright signals that identify nova events and other phenomena,” Hays said. “Using social media and email, they’ll send out instant alerts, and the flag goes up. We’re counting on that global community interaction again with T CrB.”
Hays is the project scientist for NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has made gamma-ray observations from low Earth orbit since 2008. Fermi is poised to observe T CrB when the nova eruption is detected, along with other space-based missions including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer), NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array), NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), and the European Space Agency’s INTEGRAL (Extreme Universe Surveyor). Numerous ground-based radio telescopes and optical imagers, including the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array in Mexico, also will take part. Collectively, the various telescopes and instruments will capture data across the visible and non-visible light spectrum.
“We’ll observe the nova event at its peak and through its decline, as the visible energy of the outburst fades,” Hounsell said. “But it’s equally critical to obtain data during the early rise to eruption – so the data collected by those avid citizen scientists on the lookout now for the nova will contribute dramatically to our findings.”
For astrophysics researchers, that promises a rare opportunity to shed new light on the structure and dynamics of recurring stellar explosions like this one.
“Typically, nova events are so faint and far away that it’s hard to clearly identify where the erupting energy is concentrated,” Hays said. “This one will be really close, with a lot of eyes on it, studying the various wavelengths and hopefully giving us data to start unlocking the structure and specific processes involved. We can’t wait to get the full picture of what’s going on.”
Some of those eyes will be very new. Gamma-ray imagers didn’t exist the last time T CrB erupted in 1946, and IXPE’s polarization capability – which identifies the organization and alignment of electromagnetic waves to determine the structure and internal processes of high-energy phenomena – is also a brand-new tool in X-ray astronomy. Combining their data could offer unprecedented insight into the lifecycles of binary systems and the waning but powerful stellar processes that fuel them.
Is there a chance September will come and go without the anticipated nova outburst from T CrB? Experts agree there are no guarantees – but hope abides.
“Recurrent novae are unpredictable and contrarian,” said Dr. Koji Mukai, a fellow astrophysics researcher at NASA Goddard. “When you think there can’t possibly be a reason they follow a certain set pattern, they do – and as soon as you start to rely on them repeating the same pattern, they deviate from it completely. We’ll see how T CrB behaves.”
Learn more about NASA astrophysics at:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics
Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jun 06, 2024 Related Terms
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By USH
On 2024-04-27 the Chemcam onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity captured an intriguing image depicting a mysterious mask adorning a sizable rock on the Martian surface.
The mask appears to defy natural origins, bearing the hallmark of artificial craftsmanship and deliberate placement upon the rock.
Is the mask part of an ancient statue, or does it stand alone? What significance might its placement hold, could it represent a sacred relic from an ancient civilization that once inhabited the planet or might the mask serve as a homage to an ancient deity?
Yet, who created this mask?
Links: SOL 4168: https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1326548/ SOL 4168: https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1326546/ Gigapan Neville Thompson: http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/234695 View the full article
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By NASA
X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/U. Manitoba/C. Treturik, (XMM-Newton) ESA/C. Treturik; Optical: (Pan-STARRS) NOIRLab/MDM/Dartmouth/R. Fesen; Infrared: (WISE) NASA/JPL/Caltech/; Image Processing: Univ. of Manitoba/Gilles Ferrand and Jayanne English In the year 1181 a rare supernova explosion appeared in the night sky, staying visible for 185 consecutive days. Historical records show that the supernova looked like a temporary ‘star’ in the constellation Cassiopeia shining as bright as Saturn.
Ever since, scientists have tried to find the supernova’s remnant. At first it was thought that this could be the nebula around the pulsar — the dense core of a collapse star — named 3C 58. However closer investigations revealed that the pulsar is older than supernova 1181.
In the last decade, another contender was discovered; Pa 30 is a nearly circular nebula with a central star in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is pictured here combining images from several telescopes. This composite image uses data across the electromagnetic spectrum and shows a spectacular new view of the supernova remnant. This allows us to marvel at the same object that appeared in our ancestors’ night sky more than 800 years ago.
X-ray observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton (blue) show the full extent of the nebula and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (cyan) pinpoints its central source. The nebula is barely visible in optical light but shines bright in infrared light, collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer (red and pink). Interestingly, the radial structure in the image consists of heated sulfur that glows in visible light, observed with the ground-based Hiltner 2.4 m telescope at the MDM Observatory (green) in Arizona, USA, as do the stars in the background by Pan-STARRS (white) in Hawaii, USA.
Studies of the composition of the different parts of the remnant have led scientists to believe that it was formed in a thermonuclear explosion, and more precisely a special kind of supernova called a sub-luminous Type Iax event. During this event two white dwarf stars merged, and typically no remnant is expected for this kind of explosion. But incomplete explosions can leave a kind of ‘zombie’ star, such as the massive white dwarf star in this system. This very hot star, one of the hottest stars in the Milky Way (about 200 000 degrees Celsius), has a fast stellar wind with speeds up to 16,000 km/h. The combination of the star and the nebula makes it a unique opportunity for studying such rare explosions.
The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission/chandra-x-ray-observatory/
Visual Description:
This is a composite image of SNR 1181, the remains of an explosion hundreds of years ago caused by the merger of two stars.
A bright, multi-colored, spherical nebula sits in the middle of the canvas surrounded by a field of stars that appear as white dots. In the center of the nebula is a small point of aqua-colored light. This is the hot white dwarf star that was left behind after the likely merger of two smaller white dwarfs caused an explosion. From this single point of aqua light, several spectacular rays expand outward, resembling a single firework bursting in celebration in the night sky.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center
Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
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