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An annual accounting of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and land use change finds no sign emissions will peak this year

Eurasian reed warblers don’t just get a sense of direction from Earth’s magnetic field – they can also calculate their coordinates on a mental map

Filmmakers love New Zealand. Its landscapes evoke other worlds, which explains why so much of The Lord of the Rings was filmed there. The country has everything from long, subtropical sandy beaches to active volcanoes.

The country’s otherworldliness extends into its atmosphere, where a cloud nicknamed the “Taieri Pet” forms when conditions are right.

The Taieri Pet is a lenticular cloud, a stationary type of cloud that forms in certain circumstances. They form in the troposphere when the wind blows over an obstacle, typically a mountain range. There are three types: altocumulus standing lenticular (ACSL), stratocumulus standing lenticular (SCSL), and cirrocumulus standing lenticular (CCSL). Each type forms at a different altitude.

When the wind is forced to move up and over an obstacle, it creates a lower-pressure zone on the leeward side. As the wind moves, it creates standing waves. If conditions are right, these waves become visible when the moisture condenses.

The Taieri Pet forms over New Zealand’s Rock and Pillar Range in the Strath-Taieri region of Otago on New Zealand’s South Island.

The Otago region on New Zealand’s South Island is home to the Taieri Pet. Image Credit: Peetel, (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.)

The cloud is a common feature near the town of Middlemarch. It’s mentioned in newspapers as far back as the 1890s. Locals sometimes took Taieri Pet’s appearance as a signal that a storm was coming.

This page is from the Otago Witness, Issue 2226, 29 October 1896. It describes the Taieri Pet as “our old prognosticator,” because it forms before a wind storm. Image Credit: No Known Copyright.

The Operational Land Image (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this stunning image of the Taieri Pet in September. Landsat 8 follows a polar orbit that allows it to observe the entire surface of the Earth every 16 days.

This zoomed-in image shows the cloud and the surface in more detail. The image shows the Macraes Mine, New Zealand’s largest gold mine. Image Credit: NASA/Lauren Dauphin; USGS

The Landsat satellites have been monitoring Earth for over 50 years from their orbit 705 km above us. The images and data are widely used by scientists, but they’re also beautiful portraits of our extraordinary, once-in-a-solar-system planet.

Anybody can enjoy the Landsat galleries, found here.

The post An Otherworldly Cloud Over New Zealand appeared first on Universe Today.

The theory goes that black holes accrete material, often from nearby stars. However the theory also suggests there is a limit to how big a black hole can grow due to accretion and certainly shouldn’t be as large as they are seen to be in the early Universe. Black holes it seems, are fighting back and don’t care about those limits! A recent study shows that supermassive black holes are growing at rates that defy the limits of current theory. Astronomers just need to figure out how they’re doing it! 

Black holes usually form from the collapse of a massive star. The origin of their larger cousins, the supermassive black holes found at the centre of most galaxies, remains a mystery. Theories suggest they grew over billions of years by consuming stars, gas and maybe even other black holes. Others suggest they formed from the primordial conditions of the early Universe or maybe from dense clusters of hot young early stars. The immense gravity from them plays a significant part in shaping stellar formation and the evolution of their host galaxy. If a supermassive black hole is actively accreting material, they are often seen as quasars, extremely luminous objects that are visible across million, even billions of light years. 

Illustration of a powerful black hole and its magnetic field. Credit: L. Calçada/ESO

A recent discovery by a team of astronomers revealed a low-mass supermassive black hole that was devouring material at an extreme rate. The black hole is at a distance that means we are seeing light as it was 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. This means we can learn about the processes that govern these objects when the Universe was a lot younger. 

The black hole known as LID-568 was detected by a team of astronomers led by the International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh. It was detected in images from the James Webb Space Telescope following on from assessment of galaxies from the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS legacy survey. The galaxies observed are bright X-ray sources but not visible in optical or near-infrared surveys. The team used JWST’s NIRSpec instrument that is capable of getting a spectrum off each individual pixel in its field of view. 

The Gemini North telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea (Gemini Observatory/AURA)

The study allowed the team to make the rather unexpected discovery of immense flows of gas out from the region around the centre of the black hole.  Suh and team could infer from this that a significant fraction of the growth of LID-568  may well have occurred in one single rapid accretion event. They calculated that it must be feeding on matter at a rate which is 40 times the Eddington limit. The limit relates to the maximum luminosity it can achieve acknowledging there is a balance between the outward force of radiation and the inward force of gravity. When the two forces balance, it is known as hydrostatic equilibrium. If an object exceeds the limit then an immense outward force will result in it losing mass. When the luminosity of LID-568 was calculated it was much higher then should be theoretically possible. 

The discovery provides an excellent opportunity for astronomers to study black holes in the early Universe and in particular those that challenge the Eddington limit theory. It would however suggest that the outflows of energy are acting to release energy that has built up during extreme accretion periods. Follow up observations are required. 

Source : NSF NOIRLab Astronomers Discover the Fastest-Feeding Black Hole in the Early Universe

The post Early Black Holes Fed 40x Faster than Should Be Possible appeared first on Universe Today.

Eventually, every stellar civilization will have to migrate to a different star. The habitable zone around all stars changes as they age. If long-lived technological civilizations are even plausible in our Universe, migration will be necessary, eventually.

Could Extraterrestrial Intelligences (ETIs) use stars themselves as stellar engines in their migrations?

In broad terms, a stellar engine uses a star to generate work. A simple example is solar panels, which use the Sun’s radiation to generate electricity that we use to perform work. But the scaled-up idea is to use the star to produce thrust. That thrust could be used to move the star itself. An ETI capable of doing that would be a Type II civilization on the Kardashev Scale.

To most of us, it seems like a wildly improbable idea. But who knows what’s out there? If an ETI can survive long enough, it may become a Type II civ.

The stellar engine idea dates back to science fiction author Olaf Stapledon. A couple of decades after Stapledon, astronomer Fritz Zwicky also discussed manipulating stars with advanced technology, even turning them into spacecraft. In the decades since, the idea has persisted, and other researchers have delved into it. In 1988, Leonid Shakdov developed the first detailed stellar engine model called the Shakdov Thruster.

In new research, Clement Vidal, from Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Belgium, examines how an advanced civilization could use a binary star as a stellar engine. The paper is titled “The Spider Stellar Engine: a Fully Steerable Extraterrestrial Design?”

“Since about half the stars in our galaxy are in binary systems where life might develop too, we introduce a model of a binary stellar engine,” Vidal writes. “We apply the model to candidate systems, spider pulsars, which are binary stars composed of one millisecond pulsar and a very low-mass companion star that is heavily irradiated by the pulsar wind.”

Vidal is concerned with stellar engine technosignatures. Research has focused on hypervelocity stars as potential stellar engine technosignatures because they’re easily observable. Other researchers have also proposed other stellar engine concepts, but according to Vidal, they’re “poorly linked to observable technosignatures. ”

Vidal’s main goal in this work is to determine what types of technosignatures a binary stellar engine would emit. He discusses what potential signatures might be emitted by acceleration, deceleration, steering, and maneuvers such as gravitational assists or captures. However, unlike some other researchers, he focuses on a specific type of binary system: spider pulsars, which are a subclass of binary millisecond pulsars.

Pulsars are what remains of some massive stars. At the end of their lives, some massive stars collapse to form neutron stars. When these neutron stars spin rapidly, they produce beams of radiation from their poles. If the radiation is aimed at Earth, then we can observe the pulses of energy. These pulses have exquisitely precise timing, and astronomers use them to determine cosmic distances.

A spider pulsar is a pulsar with a companion, usually a red dwarf, a brown dwarf, or even a planetary-mass object. They’re called spider pulsars because it’s as if the pulsar spins a web of powerful beams of radiation that strips away the companion’s mass, eventually destroying it.

Artist’s impression of a so-called “Black Widow” pulsar PSR B1957+20 (seen in the background) through the cloud of gas enveloping its brown dwarf star companion. Credit: Dr. Mark A. Garlick; Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto

Vidal’s paper describes the payload as a pulsar with about 1.8 solar masses and the propellant as its low-mass companion star with between 0.01 and 0.7 solar masses.

In essence, the gravitationally bound binary system is the vehicle, and the smaller companion star is the propellant. The spider pulsar generates thrust by expelling propellant out of the gravitational system, and the propellant is the matter stripped from the companion.

The binary pair orbits a common center of gravity. The idea behind this binary stellar engine (BSE) is that as they orbit, the pulsar’s radiation strikes the companion or propellant star. A close binary is more effective because the closer the pulsar is to the propellant, the more thrust is generated. The assumption is that a Type II civilization would have the technology to moderate this thrust to serve their purposes by timing the radiation and heating the outer layers of the propellant star with X-ray or gamma radiation.

To decelerate, the BSE would produce active thrust in the opposite direction of travel. It could also use a passive magnetic sail deployed from the pulsar to transfer momentum to the interstellar medium.

The BSE steers by selectively evaporating the star during different orbital phases. “To choose a direction, it suffices to evaporate the companion star once per orbit, at a specific orbital phase, in order to create consistent thrust in one direction,” Vidal explains.

The top panels show the BSE in different configurations, with the top being the direction of travel. (a) The BSE is in acceleration mode. (b) the BSE is steering to the left. (c) the BSE is decelerating. (d) is a side view that shows changes in the orbital plane by asymmetric heating of the companion, which creates a lifting
force in relation to the orbital plane. The binary separation is not to scale. Image Credit: Vidal et al. 2024.

These various maneuvers and manipulations with the BSE would emit technosignatures. Have astronomers observed any candidate BSEs in the Milky Way? Possibly.

“Could our galaxy host a kind of fully steerable binary stellar engine that we proposed? This is a plausible hypothesis in the context of the stellivore hypothesis, which reinterprets some observed accreting binary stars as advanced civilizations feeding on stars,” Vidal writes.

A stellivore is a hypothesized type of civilization first proposed by Vidal that has the technology to consume its home star via accretion. They use the star’s energy to sustain their existence. Vidal writes that rather than consume the energy, they could use it to migrate to a more favourable location in the galaxy.

“For most of its time, a stellivore civilization would eat its home star via accretion. However, energy is never eternal, and instead of eating its star until the end and dying, a stellivore civilization would use its low-mass companion star as fuel not to be accreted but to be evaporated in order to create thrust and travel towards a nearby star,” Vidal explains.

This brings us to spider pulsars. Rather than accreting material, a spider pulsar appears to be evaporating its propellant companion.

There are two types of spider pulsars: Black Widows and Redblacks. The distinction is in the mass of the companion. In a black widow (BW), the companion is less than 0.1 stellar masses. In a redblack, the companion is between 0.1 and 0.7 stellar masses. Spider pulsars are different from other pulsar binaries because they evaporate their companions rather than accrete them. When pulsars accrete too much material, they can form black holes. Spider pulsars don’t tempt the same fate. Vidal calls these spider stellar engines (SSEs) rather than binary stellar engines (BSEs).

The panels in this figure show PSR J1959+2048, the original Black Widow pulsar. Left: the BW pulsar (in blue) is plotted in the RA-DEC plane, and its proper motion vector is displayed until it reaches a close encounter with a target star, in orange. Middle: a Chandra X-ray view of the BW pulsar, displaying a comet-like tail; the candidate target star is also visible in the bottom right (visualization with ESASky). Right: The composite image on the right shows the X-ray tail (in red/white) and a bow shock visible in the optical (green). Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/ASTRON/B. Stappers et al.; Optical: AAO/J.Bland-Hawthorn & H. Jones.

Previous researchers have studied the original BW, and Vidal writes, “… the 3D motion of the system appears to be nearly aligned with the spin axis of the MSP.” This fits in with the SSE interpretation because this perfect alignment is necessary to produce maximum thrust. A stellivore civilization would have a destination in mind, and Vidal says that he’s found a potential destination for the original Black Widow pulsar. He says that the pulsar will reach this target star in about 420 years while also acknowledging the uncertainty in this determination.

PSR J1959+2048, the original BW, also modulates itself, which could be interpreted as steering. However, it also displays other characteristics and moderation that call into question the ‘steering’ interpretation.

Ultimately, Vidal’s SSE may have a shorter duty cycle than other proposed stellar engines, limiting its usefulness. However, it has advantages in steering over others. “Transposing it on a smaller scale, it might also be an inspirational design for advanced propulsion solutions, or for planetary defence purposes such
as deflecting asteroids,” Vidal writes.

The idea may seem preposterous to some, but that’s incidental. Many ideas in history seemed preposterous until they weren’t.

Vidal isn’t claiming that we’re seeing the technosignatures of stellar engines. He’s arguing that it’s worth pursuing the idea of observing them. He sees these candidates and predictions of what their signals might look like as clues and as starting points for further investigation.

“Spider pulsars thus offer observable stellar engine technosignature candidates, with decades of data, active studies that discover, model and monitor these dazzling systems,” he concludes.

The post A Spider Stellar Engine Could Move Binary Stars Halfway Across a Galaxy appeared first on Universe Today.

Samantha Harvey has won the UK's top fiction prize for a novel that takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station

AI and Google Street View have created 'digital twins' of living trees in North American cities – part of a huge simulation that could help make urban tree planting and trimming decisions

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss484_Ben_Westhoff_2024_11_12.mp3 Download MP3

In 2023, 107,543 Americans died from an overdose—over 75 thousand of those overdosed from fentanyl. This is almost double the number of people who died in car accidents or from gun homicides that year.

Fentanyl has been cut into heroin for years, but now is often mixed into meth and cocaine, fueling rising death counts for those drugs, a troubling development, considering that Americans are much more likely to try meth and cocaine than heroin.

In Canada, the numbers are similarly astronomical, and fentanyl deaths have marched upward in Australia and many European countries as well. Ten years ago, fentanyl and its analogues overtook heroin to become the deadliest drug in Sweden.

“Fentanyl is the game changer,” Special Agent in Charge James Hunt of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told Vice News. “It’s the most dangerous substance in the history of drug tracking. Heroin and cocaine pale in comparison to how dangerous fentanyl is.”

Ben Westhoff is a best-selling investigative journalist focused on drugs, culture, and poverty. His book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic is the bombshell first book about fentanyl. Since its publication, Westhoff has advised top government officials on the fentanyl crisis, including from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the U.S. embassy in Beijing, and the U.S. State Department.

His new book Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth tells the story of his relationship with Jorell Cleveland, his longtime mentee in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. When Jorell was murdered at age 19, and the case went cold, Ben used his skills as an investigative journalist to find the killer. It’s a three-year investigation set in the northern suburbs of St. Louis that uncovers a heartbreaking cycle of poverty, poor education, drug trafficking, and violence. Follow him at benwesthoff.substack.com and benwesthoff.com.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Droplets of fluid have been known to hover above a hot surface, but a new experiment suggests the same can happen to tiny jets of liquid too

Researchers have developed PanoRadar, a new tool to give robots superhuman vision by transforming simple radio waves into detailed, 3D views of the environment.

Researchers have developed PanoRadar, a new tool to give robots superhuman vision by transforming simple radio waves into detailed, 3D views of the environment.

When active filaments are exposed to localized illumination, they accumulate into stable structures along the boundaries of the illuminated area. Based on this fact, researchers developed a model that can be used to simulate the self-organization of thread-like living matter. This model provides important insights for potential technical applications in the formation of structures.

Researchers have developed a patch for easier and more effective treatment of psoriasis. The method may also be used in treatment of other inflammatory skin diseases.

Researchers have combined two gene editing methods. This enables them to quickly investigate the significance of many genetic mutations involved in the development and treatment of cancer.

The standard model for how galaxies formed in the early universe predicted that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would see dim signals from small, primitive galaxies. But data are not confirming the popular hypothesis that invisible dark matter helped the earliest stars and galaxies clump together.

Inside cells, there exists an extensive system of canals known as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which consists of membrane-encased tubes that are partially broken down as needed -- for instance in case of a nutrient deficiency. As part of this process, bulges or protrusions form in the membrane, which then pinch off and are recycled by the cell. A study has examined this protrusion process using computer simulations. Its finding: certain structural motifs of proteins in the ER membrane play a central role in this process.

Research shows that a newly-developed wireless EKG patch is as accurate, if not more accurate, than results from traditional EKG machines. The device is known as the EKG Patch Solution.

Putting humans on Mars has been one of NASA’s driving missions for years, but they are still in the early stages of deciding what exactly that mission architecture will look like. One major factor is where to get the propellant to send the astronauts back to Earth. Advocates of space exploration often suggest harvesting the necessary propellant from Mars itself – some materials can be used to create liquid oxygen and methane, two commonly used propellants. To support this effort, a group from NASA’s COMPASS team detailed several scenarios of the infrastructure and technologies it would take to make an in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) system that could provide enough propellant to get astronauts back to a Mars orbit where they could meet up with an Earth return vehicle. However, there are significant challenges to implementing such a system, and they must be addressed before the 8-9-year process of getting the system up and running can begin.

To understand these challenges, it’s first essential to understand some of the requirements the team was trying to meet. The goal was to provide 300 tons of liquid oxygen and liquid methane to a Mars Ascent and Landing Vehicle (MALV) being developed at other parts of NASA. That much propellant is necessary to get a crew of astronauts back into orbit, where they can be met by an orbiting Earth return vehicle.

Creating liquid oxygen and methane requires many ISRU systems, such as pumps, electrolyzers, dryers, scrubbers, and significant power systems, to run all these machines. Some raw materials, such as CO2, can be pulled from the Martian atmosphere. However, the system will also require 150 tons of water, which could be trucked in from Earth or harvested from Mars.

Fraser discusses how ISRU can provide resources to use for exploration.

Designing the overall system architecture is the first step in determining the best method for getting enough propellant to get the astronauts back off of Mars. A paper from the group compares five different approaches to solving that problem and details three of them, focusing on three different methods of getting water to use in the creation of liquid propellants on the surface of Mars.

Let’s first look at the two options for extracting water locally on Mars. One architecture uses a borehole drill to melt subsurface ice and pump it back to the surface, which can be used in electrolysis. The other architecture uses surface harvesting techniques, where soil with a high frozen water content can be sorted, and the water itself melted to provide sufficient stockpiles for creating propellant.

Drilling a borehole deep enough to access subsurface ice has never been done before. It does have some advantages over other water collection methods, including taking less time and requiring one less MALV delivery of equipment (i.e., making it lower cost). However, it does require more power plants and some specialized equipment to be developed. 

Fraser speculates on how a real Mars mission could play out.

Collecting water from surface regolith utilizes some technologies already being developed at NASA – including the RAZZOR surface mining system that could be used on the Moon or Mars. However, it requires as much time and as many launches as shipping water from Earth, with many possible unknown failure points in the architecture. 

By comparison, sending 150 tons of water directly from Earth, while it might be expensive in terms of launch costs, simplifies the overall architecture significantly. There would still technically be ISRU in this scenario, as the water would still be used to create propellant from local Martian resources. However, the added step of getting that water locally would be eliminated.

Even that is a more complicated process than the other two options the team considered, without as much detail in the paper as the actual ISRU setups. Mission designers could send either the methane or both the methane and oxygen from Earth directly, bypassing the need for any ISRU to happen. While these options require potentially more MALV landers, their overall risk is minimized, as the necessary chemicals would be available for use at any point the astronauts would need them. However, they would take longer to set up – especially the option of sending all of the propellants directly from Earth, which could take upwards of 10 years to get set up.

Fraser interviews Dr. Michael Hecht, an expert in ISRU on Mars.

Other challenges abound for utilizing Martian resources to create propellants – including limited locations where the necessary water may be found. This geographical restriction might not overlap with where astronauts might be needed to do exciting science, so the architects would have to prioritize either scientific discovery or derisking the ISRU equipment – they likely couldn’t do both.

So, all things considered, if the purpose is to send people to Mars and back safely, it seems like the best, most reliable option is to send the total amount of propellant from Earth. However, in the long run, if humanity plans to make a sustainable presence on Mars, we will need to utilize local resources. The paper from the COMPASS team clearly defines a few strategies that could do that, and someday, it will become the better option – just maybe not quite yet.

Learn More:
Oleson et al – Kiloton Class ISRU Systems for LO2/LCH4 Propellant Production on the Mars Surface
UT – A Single Robot Could Provide a Mission To Mars With Enough Water and Oxygen
UT – Resources on Mars Could Support Human Explorers
UT – Mars Explorers are Going to Need air, and Lots of it. Here’s a Technology That Might Help Them Breath Easy

Lead Image:
Architecture Design of the water from Earth delivery option.
Credit – Oleson et al. / NASA

The post Scaling Propellant Production on Mars is Hard appeared first on Universe Today.

There are good reasons to keep an eye on the Leonid meteors this year.

It’s still one of the coolest things I ever saw. I was in the U.S. Air Force in the 90s, and November 1998 saw me deployed to the dark skies of Kuwait. That trip provided an unexpected treat, as the Leonid meteors hit dramatic storm levels on the morning of the 17th. Meteor came fast and furious towards local sunrise, often lighting up the desert floor like celestial photoflashes in the sky.

Once every 33 years or so, the ‘lion roars,’ as Leonid meteors seem to rain down from the Sickle asterism of the constellation Leo. And while the last outbreak was centered around the years surrounding 1999, there’s some interesting discussion about possible encounters with past Leonid streams in 2024.

The Leonids in 2024

To be sure, 2024 is otherwise slated to be an off year for the shower. The normal annual maximum for 2024 is expected to occur on Sunday, November 17th at around ~4:00 Universal Time (UT), with an expected Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) of 15-20 meteors per hour seen under ideal conditions. This favors Europe in the early dawn hours.

The Leonid radiant, looking east at 2AM local. Credit: Stellarium. A Leonid Outburst in 2024?

But there are also a few other streams that may arrive earlier this week and are worth watching for. Jérémie Vaubaillon of the Paris Observatory IMCCE notes that Earth may encounter three older streams from periodic comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. The comet is the source of the Leonids. On a 33.8 year orbit, a meteor shower occurs when the Earth plows headlong into the stream of dust and debris laid down by the comet.

The three suspect trails are:

-A trail laid down in 1633 (the source of the 2001 meteor storm). Earth is near this trail on November 14th at 16:37 UT, favoring northwestern North America in the early morning hours.

-A dust trail from 1733, peaking on November 19/20th at 23:53 to 00:54 UT, favoring north/central Asia.

-And finally, an encounter with a string of older (more than a millennium old) streams on November 14th at 16:37 UT, (the same time as the 1633 stream). It is worth noting that the 1733 stream was the suspected source of the 1866 Leonid meteor storm.

A bright green Leonid from 2023. Credit: Frankie Lucena.

Watching this Thursday morning on the 14th could be a harbinger as to whether or not we’re in for a show. Unfortunately, the Moon is waxing gibbous and headed towards Full this week on November 15th, meaning that it with provide increasing illumination and cut down observed meteor rates.

The Leonids on past recent years have held steady at predicted rates of about or so 20 per hour. It’s worth noting that another encounter with the 1699 stream and possible outburst is predicted for next year, 2025.

Leonid TEFF (Total Effective observation time) rate versus meteors over the years. Credit: the International Meteor Organization (IMO). Meteor Shower… or Storm?

Meteor storms occur when the zenithal hourly rate tops 500 or more per hour. Keep in mind, a ZHR of a thousand or higher means that you’re seeing a meteor every few seconds. The October Draconids and the December Andromedids are also prone to great outbursts, but the Leonids are the most notorious and well-known. The 1966 shower seen over the U.S. southwest topped an amazing ZHR of up to 150,000 per hour (!)

A depiction of the 1833 outburst over Niagara Falls. Credit: Mechanic’s Magazine/Popular Domain. Observing and Imaging the Leonids

Early morning hours are best to see meteors, as you’re standing on the swath of the surface of the Earth that’s turned forward in to the stream. Pinpoint meteors will occur near the shower radiant, while long streaks will stand out out in stark profile about 45 to 90 degrees away on either side of the radiant. I like to aim my tripod-mounted DSLR at these regions, set the lens to the widest field of view possible, and simply let it run taking auto-exposures and see what turns up. An intervalometer is a great device to automate this process. This allows me to just sit back with a steaming hot cup of tea (a must for cold November mornings) and simply watch the show, as meteors slide by.

A Leonid pierces the night sky over southern Arizona. Credit: Eliot Herman.

Perhaps, we’ll simply have to wait for 2030s to see strong activity from the Leonids again. But do you really want to risk missing a surprise show? To quote hockey player Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” The same holds true for missing versus catching meteor storms: you just have to show up and watch.

The post Is an ‘Off-Year’ Leonid Outburst in the Cards For November? appeared first on Universe Today.

An analysis of crystals in lava from the 2022 eruption of Mauna Loa has revealed an unknown magma reservoir within the volcano, which could extend forecasts of eruptions from minutes to months