Aurora Timelapse Over Italian Alps

Aurora Timelapse Over Italian Alps

Video Credit & Copyright: Cristian Bigontina

Did you see last night's aurora? This question was relevant around much of the world a few days ago because a powerful auroral storm became visible unusually far from the Earth's poles. The cause was a giant X-class solar flare on Tuesday that launched energetic electrons and protons into the Solar System, connecting to the Earth via our planet's magnetic field. A red glow of these particles striking oxygen atoms high in Earth's atmosphere pervades the frame, while vertical streaks dance. The featured video shows a one-hour timelapse as seen from Cortina d'Ampezzo over Alps Mountain peaks in northern Italy. Stars from our Milky Way Galaxy dot the background while streaks from airplanes and satellites punctuate the foreground. The high recent activity of our Sun is likely to continue to produce picturesque auroras over Earth during the next year or so.

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2024 October 11

Ring of Fire over Easter Island

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

The second solar eclipse of 2024 began in the Pacific. On October 2nd the Moon's shadow swept from west to east, with an annular eclipse visible along a narrow antumbral shadow path tracking mostly over ocean, making its only major landfall near the southern tip of South America, and then ending in the southern Atlantic. The dramatic total annular eclipse phase is known to some as a ring of fire. Also tracking across islands in the southern Pacific, the Moon's antumbral shadow grazed Easter Island allowing denizens to follow all phases of the annular eclipse. Framed by palm tree leaves this clear island view is a stack of two images, one taken with and one taken without a solar filter near the moment of the maximum annular phase. The New Moon's silhouette appears just off center, though still engulfed by the bright disk of the active Sun.

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This Russian astronaut will rescue NASA's Sunita Williams from ISS: Meet Aleksandr Vladimirovich Gorbunov

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This Russian astronaut will rescue NASA's Sunita Williams from ISS: Meet Aleksandr Vladimirovich Gorbunov

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Gorbunov, born on May 24, 1990, in Zheleznogorsk, Russia, is a cosmonaut set to embark on his first space mission in

67 years ago, Laika was launched into space.

Laika, ′′Little Barker" but her real name was Kudrjavka, Russian for ′′curly." She was captured on the street, in Moscow.

Half Husky and half Terrier, she was around 3 years old at the time. She was chosen because she was calm, docile and perfectly adaptable to the Sputnik 2 capsule. Equipped for life support (food and water), the mission didn't involve return. For Laika, it was a death sentence.

The interior of the satellite was lined and the interior space was wide enough to allow Laika to lie or stand. The internal temperature was set to 15. and a refrigeration system had to protect the animal from excessive thermal surges.

On November 3rd at 2 AM, Sputnik 2 was launched into space. Laika probably survived for seven hours.

But some sources claim that agony was much longer: four days.

Alone, in space.

The satellite returned to atmosphere 5 months later, April 14, 1958, after turning 2.570 laps around Earth.

It disintegrated upon return to the atmosphere.

Every year, before Fall, I feel compelled to tell this story and possibly do it with new words. There's a deep guilt that all of us should feel reading what we did to Laika. Human progress has often been achieved at the expense of animals that had nothing to do with our desire for supremacy.

Many people believe this was an acceptable price for our conquests, but it seems obvious, even reading this story, that was really just a trivial form of prevarication.

We had a duty to choose another path.

We still have that duty today.

Sorry humanity has failed you, Laika 💔