Spacebytes

Don't Miss the Meteor Showers Tonight! 😎

Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight — here’s what to expect from one of the best shooting star shows of the year Up to 150 shooting stars may brighten the night sky each hour during the Dec. 13 peak.

🚀 Breaking the bounds of our solar system!
Astronomers have identified A/1I3pi-Z, a rare interstellar object speeding through space — only the third ever seen. What secrets does it carry from distant stars? 🌌🪐

Third Interstellar Object, Comet 3I/ATLAS, Is Traveling Through Solar System 3I/ATLAS, earlier known as A11pI3Z, is only the third interstellar visitor to be discovered passing through our corner of the galaxy.

🚨 Another cosmic record-breaker! Spotted just 280 million years after the Big Bang 😱
Something’s gotta give—📉 the age of the universe, or 🧠 our understanding of redshift and cosmic distances!

JWST breaks its own record with new most distant galaxy MoM-z14 Coming from just 280 million years after the Big Bang, or 98% of cosmic history ago, this new, massive galaxy is a puzzle, but not a mirage.

🧊☄️ The largest Oort Cloud comet ever observed just revealed some wild secrets!

Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) is:
✨ 140 km wide — 10× bigger than typical comets
🌀 Spewing CO gas jets — even 2.5 billion km from the Sun
🛰️ It was spotted by the ALMA Observatory in Chille, showing it's alive and active way out past Uranus!
This cosmic giant could help us unlock the origins of water & life in the solar system 🌍💫

Largest Oort Cloud comet ever observed reveals its secrets under ALMA's powerful gaze A team of astronomers has made a groundbreaking discovery by detecting molecular activity in comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein)—the largest and second most distantly active comet ever observed from the Oort Cloud.

🌌 The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has captured its first stunning images, marking a major milestone in our quest to map the universe in unprecedented detail. From dark matter to distant galaxies — Rubin is just getting started!

In ~10 hrs of commissioning, the world's largest 3.2 Gpixel Camera imaged nebulae (Trifid & Lagoon), the Virgo Cluster, and uncovered twinkles of light that are thousands of new asteroids in our Solar System! This is just the start of Rubin’s decade‑long mission to catalog ~20 billion galaxies, track transient events, and probe dark matter & energy!
🔭✨

Here are the first-ever images released by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Sweeping views of nebulae and dancing galaxies prove the telescope’s enormous field of view and ultra-high-res capabilities.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is dropping its first images on Monday, June 23rd. Join a watch party, and be among the first to see them!
https://buff.ly/LGD7FnR

🚀💥 SCHORCHIO!!!!

BepiColombo is set to arrive at Mercury by the end of the year!
After a 7-year cosmic road trip, this mission is finally reaching the solar system’s scorched innermost planet.
Get ready for stunning science and never-before-seen views of Mercury! 🪐🔥



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: BepiColombo Surveys Mercury

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission captured this beautiful view of Mercury’s rich geological landscape on 23 June 2022 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre.

Parts of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter can also be seen, notably the magnetometer boom running from bottom left to top right, and a small part of the medium-gain antenna at bottom right. The magnetometer boom roughly follows the ‘terminator’– the boundary between the night and day side of the planet.

This image's lighting conditions differ from those recorded by NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury for this region, enhancing the differences between smooth terrains and older rough terrains. Large impact craters, including a 200 km wide multi-ringed basin partly hidden by the magnetometer boom, can also clearly be made out, along with other geological features.

Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM

🌀 The oldest known galaxy formed just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
🤯 That’s the same amount of time between now and the first dinosaurs (240 million years ago)!
An entire galaxy… in that span?!
How is that even possible?

The James Webb Space Telescope has broken its own record, again! JADES-GS-z14-0 is now the most distant—and, therefore, the youngest—galaxy ever observed.

A Comet Visible in the Evening Sky

(Please respond with a quick "I got it" if you see this post, so others will be shown it too.) A newly discovered comet is now faintly visible in our skies right after sunset, if you have clear skies and a view low toward the west-southwest horizon. See our diagram from Sky & Telescope magazine, in which the yellow numbers show you the comet's location in the evening sky for dates in October.

Comet 2023 A3 (also known, after the two observatories that discovered it, as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is best seen with binoculars or telescopes, to reveal its faint tail. For the next few days, it will be visible close to the brightest night object, the planet Venus. The comet, like many, is falling around the Sun, and was closest to the Sun Sept. 27th and closest to Earth on Oct. 12.

A comet is a left-over from the process that formed the Sun and the planets -- a small chunk of icy material with lots of dirt frozen within the ices. When the comet comes near the Sun, the heat evaporates some of the gas and frees some of the dust, which is then left behind (and pushed outward by the Sun's wind) in a streamer called the comet tail.

Astronomers are not yet sure of its orbit, and are estimating its complete path around the Sun takes 80,000 years! In which case, the last appearance was before written records were made, and the next one may see a very different Earth from the one we have today.

A long exposure photo will show you more of the tail. Or just search for the comet's name in Google Image and you will see wonderful images from astronomical observers around the country and the world.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/your-guide-meteor-shower

The Perseid meteor shower 2024: How to watch Here's everything you need to know about the annual Perseid meteor shower and how to watch it.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-scientists-find-intriguing-mars-rock

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scientists Find Intriguing Mars Rock The six-wheeled geologist found a fascinating rock that has some indications it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago, but further research is needed.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_images_new_cold_exoplanet_12_light-years_away

Webb images new, cold exoplanet 12 light-years away An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. While there were hints that the planet existed, it had not been confirmed until Webb imaged it. The planet is one of the coldest exoplanets obse...