| | November 5
Insights from Voyager 2 | | | |
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 | | View a larger, annotated image. | Look closely at the blue ball. Inside you'll see a yellow dot representing our sun, and some white ovals representing the orbits of the planets orbiting our sun, including Earth. The lighter blue oval outside the blue ball represents the heliosphere, or realm of the sun's influence, as our sun moves through the space of the Milky Way galaxy. In this artist's depiction, Voyagers 1 and 2 - launched from Earth in 1977 - are depicted just outside of the heliosphere, on the boundary of interstellar space. The image - not to scale - is via NASA. Both spacecraft are still heading outward ... Read more. | | |
| Voyager 2 sends back insights on interstellar space | | A year ago today, Voyager 2 left the realm of the sun's influence, becoming only the 2nd earthly craft ever to cross over into interstellar space. This week, the journal Nature Astronomy published 5 new papers describing what Voyager 2 has been seeing on its journey into the unknown. Read more. | | | NASA studies plan to send an orbiter to Pluto | | Remember when New Horizons swept past Pluto in 2015? That was exciting! Who knew that Pluto - a tiny world in the far outer solar system - had a heart? Now scientists are proposing a new Pluto orbiter mission. It would gather details on Pluto's heart and the rest of its youthful surface, its hazy bluish nitrogen atmosphere, and its system of 5 known moons. Read more. | | | | | What we're reading From the BBC … US notifies UN of intention to withdraw from Paris climate accords | | The U.S. has begun the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, as other countries expressed regret and disappointment at the move. The agreement committed the U.S. and 187 other countries to keeping rising global temperatures below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and attempting to limit them even more, to a 1.5-degree C rise. The decision to withdraw made the U.S. the world's sole non-signatory and prompted high-level efforts by the European Union to keep the agreement on track. Read more. | | | | | |
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|  | | Sky Bear comes to Earth in November | Every year, the Big Dipper (Great Bear) descends to its lowest point in the sky on November evenings. Read more. | | | | | |
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 | | Nature's art in Alberta, Canada | | View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Sheryl R Garrison of Alberta, Canada, caught this image on November 2 and wrote: "I felt like I'd stumbled across an installation by glass artist Dale Chihuly today, while on the shores of Waterton Lake. Wild weather created beautiful glass-like sculptures out of the shrubbery. With the mountains behind, it was nature at its best!" Thank you, Sheryl! | | |
