EarthSky News - Oct 14 - Top Stories This Week

October 14 Top Stories This Week by:

Penetrating the mystery of why we age Researchers in Germany call the aging process "a quirk of evolution". Red sprite over Oklahoma Red sprites are large-scale electrical discharges - high above thunderstorm clouds - flickering in the night. Click in for a video. Nobel winners shed light on circadian rhythms New insights on how our cells keep track of time. How gravitational waves attracted a Nobel Prize The detection of ripples in spacetime, aka gravitational waves.  5 new pairs of merging supermassive black holes     Merging black holes are the sorts of catastrophic events that produce the strongest gravitational waves. Forecast for Mercury: Morning micro-meteor showers Mercury has a continuous rain of micro-meteors wherever on the planet dawn is breaking. Did the moon once have air? Gases rising from lunar volcanoes might have accumulated around the moon to form a temporary atmosphere, 3 to 4 billion years ago. Sunday before dawn … Moon occults Regulus From most of the world, the waning moon shines near the bright star Regulus Sunday morning. From much of the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean and southeast Canada, the moon will pass in front of Regulus.

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Sunday before dawn … Moon occults Regulus On this map from the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA), everyplace in between the solid white lines sees the occultation in a nighttime (predawn) sky. Meanwhile, the short blue lines indicate where the occultation happens at dawn and the red dotted lines where the occultation occurs in daytime.

ISS over Puget Sound, Washington Photographer John Nelson used NASA's SpotTheStation website to learn when the International Space Station would make a high pass in his sky. This image is the result. Submit your photo to EarthSky here!

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EarthSky News - Oct 13 - Friday the 13th

October 13 Friday the 13th by:

2017 has 2 Friday the 13ths When a common year of 365 days starts on a Sunday, as it did this year, 2 Friday the 13ths are inevitable. The 1st one was in January and the 2nd in October. Peering to the Milky Way's far side Astronomers use parallax to directly measure the distance to a star-forming region on the opposite side of our Milky Way galaxy, nearly doubling the previous distance record. Star of the week: Schedar, heart of a Queen Cassiopeia the Queen is one of the easiest-to-recognize constellations. It has the shape of an M or W. Schedar is the Queen's brightest star. Tonight … Find constellations of the zodiac Constellations of the zodiac that are up after nightfall on these October evenings.

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Next few mornings … Moon near Regulus  Watch for the bright star Regulus near the moon in the next few mornings. And notice on this chart ... we're not showing a moon for October 15. That’s because, if we did, it’d hide the star Regulus from view. In fact, the moon will hide Regulus from view - seen from much of the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean and southeast Canada - on Sunday morning.  Read more.

Rainbow with anticrepuscular rays Karl Diefenderfer must have been looking east at sunset on October 9, in order to photograph this rainbow with anticrepuscular rays, caught "as the remnants of hurricane Nate left southeastern Pennsylvania." Submit your photo to EarthSky here!

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