Daily News update on – Science

Space.com

May offers an unusual skywatching bounty: the possibility of two major celestial highlights occurring within the span of a single month. The first, a total lunar eclipse, is a certainty, but the second, a potentially strong meteor shower at month’s end …

Space.com

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower may generate as many as 50 shooting stars an hour during its peak on Thursday (May 5), weather permitting. The meteor shower is of medium brightness, meaning that darker skies will produce more visible meteors.

Space.com

But on the sun, the result is much more dramatic: Twisted magnetic fields carrying streams of hot charged plasma become entwined, then snap and rapidly reorganize. That so-called fast magnetic reconnection releases huge quantities …

Space.com

A new image captures two planets with ancient significance meeting up over the famous old city of Rome on Sunday (May 1). Venus and Jupiter shone together between the clouds in the image taken by Gianluca Masi, who runs astronomical livestreams for the …

Space.com

The moon will point the way to the usually elusive Mercury tonight (May 2). You can catch the two celestial bodies to the west, about 45 minutes after sunset, according to NASA. Mercury will be a full 10 degrees from the horizon, representing one of …

Astronomy Magazine

This stunning trick of perspective makes it look as if the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope is shouldering the weight of Earth’s eclipsed satellite. A longer-than-usual total lunar eclipse will delight skywatchers this month.

The Verge

Up until now, Electron — designed to launch batches of small satellites into low Earth orbit — has mostly been an expendable rocket. Most of these rockets fall back to Earth after each flight and are ultimately destroyed.

Phys.Org

We live in a world made and run by RNA, the equally important sibling of the genetic molecule DNA. In fact, evolutionary biologists hypothesize that RNA existed and self-replicated even before the appearance of DNA and the proteins encoded by it.

Phys.Org

There’s an old joke that the dinosaurs are only extinct because they didn’t develop a space agency. The implication, of course, is that unlike our reptilian ancestors, we humans might be able to save ourselves from an impending asteroid strike on Earth …

SpaceNews

TAMPA, Fla. — German startup Vyoma said April 28 it has partnered with European IT giant Atos to build a database of tiny space objects that it plans to track with its own satellites from next year. Their partnership aims to develop solutions for …