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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Sep 24, 2023
A Ring of Fire Sunrise Solar Eclipse
What's rising above the horizon behind those clouds? It's the Sun. Most sunrises don't look like this, though, because most sunrises don't include the Moon. In the early morning of 2013 May 10, however, from Western Australia, the Moon was between the Earth and the rising Sun. At times, it would be hard for the uninformed to understand what was happening. In an annular eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block the entire Sun, and at most leaves a ring of fire where sunlight pours out around every edge of the Moon. The featured time-lapse video also recorded the eclipse through the high refraction of the Earth's atmosphere just above the horizon, making the unusual rising Sun and Moon appear also flattened. As the video continues, the Sun continues to rise, while the Sun and Moon begin to separate. The next annular solar eclipse will occur in less than three weeks. On Saturday, October 14, a ring of fire will be visible through clear skies from a thin swath crossing both North and South America.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJfpqSj7cCs
OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return
Watch a spacecraft deliver an asteroid sample to Earth! Our OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft is approaching Earth, and on Sept. 24, 2023, it will release its sample return capsule into the atmosphere on a path to land at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range.
The touchdown will mark the end of a seven-year journey to explore asteroid Bennu, collect a sample from its surface, and deliver it to Earth as the U.S’s first pristine asteroid sample. Scientists around the world will study the sample over the coming decades to learn about how our planet and solar system formed, as well as the origin of organics that may have led to life on Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdwyqctp908
=EXCLUSIVE: NASA contractor will reportedly study 1,000-year-old 'alien corpses' presented to Mexico's Congress==
UPDATED: 14:17 EDT, 22 September 2023
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'They called us,' Mexican UFO reporter Jaime Maussan tells the DailyMail.com
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Maussan: the interested NASA contractor is 'dedicated to the reading of DNA'
A NASA contractor is reportedly looking to study 'alien bodies' that were presented to Mexico's Congress during a controversial UFO hearing.
Jaime Maussan, a veteran broadcast journalist and prolific ufologist who presented the corpses last week, told the DailyMail.com that an unnamed third-party contractor has been in contact with him about carrying out a 'DNA investigation' potentially on behalf of the US space agency.
The news comes just one week after NASA's top UFO investigator Dr David Spergel was pressed about the purported alien corpses - and did not shut them down entirely.
Dr Spergel told reporters: 'We don't know the nature of those samples. My recommendation is, if you have something strange, make samples available to the world scientific community, and we'll see what's there.'
Maussan had first unveiled the pair of alleged 1,000-year-old bodies, reportedly unearthed in a Peruvian cave, during UFO hearings held by the General Congress of the United Mexican States — unleashing an international firestorm.
While Maussan heralded the bodies' discovery as one of the most important in human history, his presentation has sparked an outcry from numerous scientists, anthropologists and even some dedicated UFO researchers.
This week, the temperature of the debate climbed higher, with Peru's Minister of Culture filing criminal charges accusing Maussan and his collaborators of robbing bodies from ancient graves.
As of 2022, Peru's Culture Ministry has designated approximately 26,000 protected archaeological sites across the country, but has faced budget constraints in its efforts to secure these valuable artifacts from black market antiquities dealers.
But, as Maussan told the DailyMail.com, 'I personally went to the Ministry of Culture, to ask them to do the investigation to get involved in this finding.'
'They never did,' according to Maussan. 'We tried many, many times. We sent letters.'
'And let me tell you something else,' Maussan asked rhetorically, 'You remember NASA saying that this should be investigated, and so on?'
'A contractor from NASA took the challenge,' Maussan answered. 'They are a laboratory dedicated to the reading of DNA.'
Despite several attempts by the DailyMail.com, via phone and email, NASA's office of public affairs could not yet be reached for comment.
For his part, Maussan expressed concern that too much transparency too early could upset the delicate investigations which, he says, are now underway.
When asked by the DailyMail.com, Mussaun declined to identify the NASA contractor by name.
'A contractor from NASA — it's all I can tell you,' he said.
'I won't tell you the name. I want to keep this private,' he said, 'until they can do their investigation.'
But, the Mexican broadcaster who was once chief investigative reporter and editor of 60 Minutos, the country's affiliate of the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes, was nevertheless willing to speculate on the NASA contractor's next steps.
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'I think they're going to Peru [then] they're coming to Mexico,' Maussan said, 'to check on the bodies to take samples. They want to do their own DNA investigation.'
'And we said yes! We are open, my friend.'
Maussan's efforts to garner professional scientific interest in the potential of 'ancient alien' specimens from Latin America has spanned years, with some setbacks and some success, but never before at the present level of international scrutiny.
At a May 5, 2015, event in Mexico City, Maussan and a coalition of US ufologists presented now infamous photographic slides purported to document a recovered alien body from the long-rumored 1947 flying saucer crash at Roswell, New Mexico.
Efforts by a coalition of skeptics and dedicated UFO researchers, however, quickly put forward compelling evidence that the images depicted a child mummy, museum placard included, as displayed at the Mesa Verde Museum in Colorado.
Undaunted, Maussan returned with his first Peruvian 'alien mummy' in 2017, for a documentary on Gaia TV, which included analysis by Konstantin Korotkov, a professor of computer science and biophysics at Saint-Petersburg University,
In the ensuing speculation, some scientists have taken a crack at determining the origin of these specimens, including researchers at the Cyprus University of Technology as well as the retired CEO of Western Paleontological Laboratories.
Debate continues on whether the specimens are truly alien, or were ritually made from human and llama remains by ancient indigenous populations, or were made more recently by the enterprising tomb-raiding huaqueros themselves.
To complicate matters, the numerous Peruvian mummies brought to the public by Maussan vary in size and several more key characteristics.
This week, Maussan's associate, Dr. Jose Zalce Benitez, the director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican Navy, detailed x-rays, 3-D reconstruction and DNA analysis which he said has been carried out on the remains.
According to Benitez, scans showed that the specimens of the two latest mummies are each 'a single skeleton' and 'complete organic being,' contrary to suggestions they were made up of 'different parts as some assumed.'
This analysis has its critics, including Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao, a respected Peruvian bio-anthropologist, who cited similar alleged finds that were found to be frauds.
'What we said before still stands, they are presenting the same rehash as always and if there are people that keep believing that, what can we do?,' she said.
Ultimately, Maussan maintains his conviction that the bodies merit deeper, professional scrutiny.
'We know — we're not stupid — that we need someone bigger than us, a university, or an institution, someone bigger, to investigate them,' Maussan told the DailyMail.com Thursday.
'Once that happens, everybody will realize this is the finding of the century or the millennium, or whatever you want to say,' Maussan said. 'I put my hands on the fire, to tell you that this is absolutely real.'
'This is physical evidence, it's not going to evaporate.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12546951/NASA-contractor-study-alien-corpses-presented-Mexicos-Congress-according-ufologist-brought-world.html
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