Sci-tech
Caught on camera: Australian pilots fly into blood-red skies
The Home Office has advised employees to stay at home because of thick smoke blankets from Canberra bushfire. YWCA Canberra, which operates some childcare centers, opted to close all its children's services in the Australian Capital Territory and the rural New South Wales town of Murrumbateman on Monday due to "hazardous smoke conditions". [Full Article...]
Year’s first lunar eclipse on January 10
Reportedly, 2020 will have four penumbral eclipses . Nor is this a partial eclipse, where a small part of the Moon is inside the Earth's umbra. According to NASA's lunar eclipse chart, the January 10 event will be visible for around four hours. [Full Article...]
Falcon 9 Is Getting Ready for The First Launch
If you want to watch the launch and landing live (ladings are always thrilling), here's how you can do it. This batch of satellites will join more than 100 others that SpaceX deployed previous year. The launch will bring the constellation's satellite count to 180, making SpaceX the world's largest private satellite operator, ArsTechnica noted . [Full Article...]
Wildfires threaten unique critters on Australian 'Galapagos'
Camera IconReservists from the 10th/27th Battalion, Royal South Australia Regiment, in Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles arrive in Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island. Meanwhile, Heidi Groffen could do nothing, as all eight monitoring stations she and her partner had set up to keep track of the mysterious Kangaroo Island dunnart, the mouse-like marsupial, melted in the flames. [Full Article...]
NASA loses contact with satellite to study distant planets
Very few people would have guessed that the technologies needed for studying exoplanets can actually fit on such small satellites. ASTERIA was also used to test various software and capabilities to make CubeSats more autonomous while in orbit and paved the way for smaller satellites to be used in larger missions. [Full Article...]
Australia bushfires: Canberra suffers despite rain and cash boost
Australia's capital Canberra had the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Monday morning. The first tore apart the Blue Mountains, a popular tourist area, burning more than 64,000 hectares (158,147 acres) of land. He also committed $20 million Australian ($18 million Cdn) to lease fire-fighting aircraft from overseas. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said there was no r... [Full Article...]
The Surprising Possibility That There are Still Active Volcanoes on Venus
Venus may still harbor active volcanoes, with eruptions taking place as recently as a few years ago, a new study finds. So far, astronomers agree that Jupiter's moon Io is the only known place apart from Earth known to host active volcanoes that spew lava. [Full Article...]
New Year, New Space Visitor: Gigantic Asteroid Speeds Towards Earth
Looking at its speed and size, and its closeness to Earth, NASA has termed the asteroid to be PHA or potentially hazardous asteroid. NASA said: "Potentially hazardous asteroids are about 150 meters - nearly 500ft - or larger, roughly twice as big as the Statue of Liberty is tall". [Full Article...]