Morning Canary – ICYMI Space & Science News

Canary. Photo by 4028mdk09.

In case you didn’t know, Physics & Astronomy Zone via Diphotography (2016) reminds us that NASA makes their entire media library publicly accessible and copyright free.

That means their “entire collection of images, sounds, and video available and publicly searchable online. It’s 140,000 photos and other resources available for you to see, or even download and use it any way you like.”

They have both a GIPHY page and a Pinterest page.

You can type in the term you want to search for and browse through the database of stunning images of outer space. Additionally, there are also images of astronauts, rocket launches, events at NASA and other interesting stuff. What’s also interesting is that almost every image comes with the EXIF data, which could be useful for astrophotography enthusiasts.

When you browse through the gallery, you can choose to see images, videos or audio. Another cool feature I noticed is that you can narrow down the results by the year.

It’s also great that photography is an important part of their missions, and so it was even before “pics or it didn’t happen” became the rule. The vast media library they have now published is available to everyone, free of charge and free of copyright. Therefore, you can take a peek at the fascinating mysteries of space, check out what it’s like inside NASA’s premises, or download the images to make something awesome from them. Either way, you’ll enjoy it.


h/t to GretchensR for this heads up.

Unless he goes rogue, Sweet Meteor of Death will probably not be a 2020 candidate in the upcoming POTUS elections next year, nor 2024, nor 2028, once again abandoning and letting us down.

However, 2032 may be promising.

Forbes – Earth Is Now Approaching The Same ‘Meteor Swarm’ That Wiped-Out A Siberian Forest.

The “Taurid swarm” of meteors is a “theorized vast cloud of debris and possibly large objects, leftover from a massive comet’s disintegration, that is suspected of causing catastrophic collision events in the past,” writes Forbes’ science contributor Jamie Carter.

“According to Western Meteor Physics Group’s data analysis, Earth is now approaching within 30,000,000 km of its center, the closest encounter since 1975.”

Astronomers say there is no “imminent threat of bombardment by meteors for now,” though are starting to wonder if it could become a problem “when Earth passes directly through the meteor swam in November 2032.”

Earth passes relatively close to the Taurid swarm twice per year. The events produce the Beta Taurids meteor shower from June 5 to July 18, and then the North and South Taurids meteor showers in late October. These aren’t going to be dangerous events in 2019, but Earth’s closeness is critically important because our planet is predicted to pass directly through the “Taurid swarm” in November 2032. There are reasons to suggest that we need to be ready for something serious … meanwhile, the North and South Taurids in late October and early November could be worth watching for large fireballs.


Scientists have discovered a mysterious object under the moon’s largest crater and based on their best guesses, it is probably not cheese.

An unknown, mysterious mass has been found beneath a crater on the Moon, according to researchers at Baylor University—and it may give scientists clues into how the Moon was shaped.

Researchers discovered an unknown anomaly roughly five times the size of Hawaii’s largest island.

The mass is sitting beneath one of the largest preserved craters in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin.

A plausible guess by scientists: The mass is a piece of metal left behind nearly 4 billion years ago by the asteroid that formed the crater.

The mysterious mass sits more than 300 km (186 miles) under the solar system’s largest crater. The crater isn’t visible because it’s on the far side of the moon, which always faces away from Earth.
While the researchers who discovered the mass don’t know what it is or where it came from, computer simulations suggest that, under the right conditions, a large asteroid’s iron-nickel core could have been embedded inside the Moon upon impact almost 4 billion years ago.

Another possibility, according to researchers, is that the mass consists of oxides left over from when the moon was changing from a large ocean of molten magma to what it is today.

Forbes

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