SKY NIGHTLY - Space And Astronomy News

EARLY EARTH Dinosaurs 'already in decline' before asteroid apocalypse

Dinosaurs were already in an evolutionary decline tens of millions of years before the meteorite impact that finally finished them off, new research has found. The findings provide a revolution in the understanding of dinosaur evolution. Palaeontologists previ... more

TIME SPACE Golden rules for building atomic blocks

Moire patterns are formed when two identical periodic structures are overlaid with a relative twist angle between them or two different periodic structures but overlaid with or without twist angle. The twist angle is the angle between the crystallographic orie... more

IRON AND ICE ESA concludes observations of asteroid 2024 RW1

The asteroid was first spotted just 10 hours before it entered Earth's atmosphere. Despite the tight timeframe, astronomers worldwide sprang into action, rapidly coordinating observations. Their first priority was to calculate 2024 RW1's trajectory, time of im... more

SOLAR SCIENCE Multiple Spacecraft Tell the Story of One Giant Solar Storm

In fact, it was the first time such high-speed protons and electrons - called solar energetic particles (SEPs) - were observed by spacecraft at five different, well-separated locations between the Sun and Earth as well as by spacecraft orbiting Mars. And now t... more

EARTH OBSERVATION NASA targets coastal ecosystems with new space sensor

The selected Geosynchronous Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer (GLIMR) instrument, led by principal investigator Joseph Salisbury at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, will provide unique observations of ocean biology, chemistry, and ecology in t... more

EARTH OBSERVATION New portal improves forecasts of devastating storms in West Africa

Storms in the Sahel region, which can reach over 100km in size, have become more extreme since the 1980s due to global warming, with more intense rainfall.* Severe flooding during the monsoon from June to September causes human and livestock deaths, plus damag... more

SPACE TRAVEL NASA Uses Moonlight to Refine Satellite Earth Monitoring

Equipped with a precision spectroradiometer, the air-LUSI instrument recorded moonlight at multiple wavelengths and phases. By studying the Sun's reflected light from the Moon's surface, researchers are calibrating Earth-observing satellites with unprecedented... more

TIME SPACE LHC experiments bring new insight

Experiments using heavy ions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are advancing understanding of the primordial universe. The ALICE, ATLAS and CMS collaborations have made new measurements of the kind of matter that probably existed in the first instants of t... more