NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

November 29, 2024

Messier 4

Messier 4 can be found west of bright red-giant star Antares, alpha star of the constellation Scorpius. M4 itself is only just visible from dark sky locations, even though the globular cluster of 100,000 stars or so is a mere 5,500 light-years away. Still, its proximity to prying telescopic eyes makes it a prime target for astronomical explorations. Recent studies have included Hubble observations of M4's pulsating cepheid variable stars, cooling white dwarf stars, and ancient, pulsar orbiting exoplanet PSR B1620-26 b. This sharp image was captured with a small telescope on planet Earth. At M4's estimated distance it spans about 50 light-years across the core of the globular star cluster.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

NASA-Backed Study Uses Iron-Age Woods to Date Solar Superstorms

Thu 28 Nov 24

Scientists have narrowed the date of a solar superstorm—one of just six to occur in more than 14,500 years—using ancient rings found on Russian timber samples and fossils dating back to the Iron Age.

That is according to Irina Panyushkina and Timothy Jull, both from the University of Arizona, who backed with funding from NASA, the EU, and the Hungarian government, are using carbon dating to pinpoint the last time a burst of cosmic radiation was so powerful that if it happened today, it would destroy power grids, satellites, and communication networks.

Published in Communications Earth & Environment, the two led a team of researchers who analysed tree rings for carbon-14, a naturally occurring radioactive carbon variant – thus pinpointing the only extreme solar storm event whose timing had eluded researchers.

According to Associate Professor Panyushkina, lead author, determining the precise timing of a mass solar eruption provides important data for scientists who study and develop models of the sun’s activity over time.

She said Carbon-14 forms in the atmosphere due to cosmic radiation, which reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.

Wood Central understands that extreme solar storms, known as Miyake events, were discovered in 2012. That year, Fusa Miyake, a Japanese physicist and collaborator of Panyushkina’s team, published a paper reporting the storms’ telltale signature: spikes in radioactive carbon isotopes in tree growth rings.

Miyake events occur when the sun’s electromagnetic field weakens, allowing plasma from the sun’s surface to escape into space.

With the increased solar activity, protons bombard Earth’s atmosphere and trigger chemical reactions, leading to a spike in radioactive isotopes.

Panyushkina used surgical knives to dissect tree rings from ancient wood samples, including dead trees buried in riverbanks and timbers excavated during archeological digs.

Researchers then burned cellulose—the main component of wood—to determine the radiocarbon content.

To pinpoint whether solar storms caused the spikes, she compared tree-ring data to spikes other researchers found in a different isotope – known as beryllium-10 – locked in ice cores from glaciers and ice sheets, which, much like carbon-14, forms in the atmosphere due to an onslaught of particles from the sun:

“If ice cores from the North Pole and the South Pole show a spike in the isotope beryllium-10 for a year corresponding to increased radiocarbon in tree rings, we know there was a solar storm,” Panyushkina said.

Whilst tree rings can act like ‘archivists’ in recording Miyake events, the researchers have not found evidence of a pattern in events:

“Tree rings give us an idea of the magnitude of these massive storms, but we can’t detect any pattern, so it is unlikely we’ll ever be able to predict when such an event will happen,” Panyushkina said.

“Still, our paper will transform how we search and understand the carbon-14 spike signal of extreme solar proton events in tree rings.

The energy from this event changes the atmosphere’s radiocarbon content and chemistry. We are trying to figure out how those short-lived and powerful events affect the Earth system.”

More information about the samples excavated for the research

Researchers used dead trees to study ancient tree rings. One of the wood samples came from a well-preserved tree from a riverbank at the Polar Urals, a mountain range in Russia. Another was an archaeological timber from an ancient larch tree.

“The archaeological wood is from a small child’s [burial] chamber made of larch logs from the highlands of the Altai Mountains.

It belongs to the Pazyryk culture, associated with the Siberian Scythians,” Panyushkina said.

“I worked on an archaeological project to date these burials, known as kurgans, in 2003.

Local archaeologists from Novosibirsk [in Russia] excavated the cemetery, and I collected wood samples from the kurgans for dendrochronology and dating.”

https://woodcentral.com.au/nasa-backed-study-uses-iron-age-woods-to-date-solar-superstorms/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01618-x

Earth from Space: Agricultural patchwork, Romania

29/11/2024

A colourful patchwork of agricultural fields is pictured in this radar image captured by Copernicus Sentinel-1 over southeastern Romania.

Although satellites carrying optical, or ‘camera-like’, instruments are often used to map crop types from space, radar satellites also offer a valuable source of information for crop classification and growth patterns to help assess health and productivity.

Sentinel-1’s radar is instrumental in monitoring changes in land cover, providing critical insights for regions with intensive agriculture, as shown here.

This image combines three radar acquisitions taken at different times to show changes in crop development and land conditions.

Radar images are naturally black and white, but here each image has been assigned a colour: blue for the first image from 28 October 2024, green for the second from 9 November, and red for the third from 21 November.

When the images are overlapped to obtain a single composite, the resulting colours highlight the various crop types and stages of growth.

In radar images, built-up areas like cities and towns are visible in grey or white, while bodies of water appear in black.

The Danube – the longest river in the EU – can be seen as a black, winding line in the right of the image.

The city of Brăila, capital of the county and Romania’s second largest port, is visible in white next to the river at the top of the image.

Flowing northward, the Danube splits here into smaller channels that form two main islands. The bigger, Great Brăila Island, is mainly covered by agricultural fields, whose geometrical shapes are clear to see.

The smaller island, Small Brăila Island, is visible in light blue and hosts the Balta Mică a Brăilei Natural Park, a protected wetland area of international importance.

Providing all-weather, day-and-night radar imagery for the global monitoring of Earth’s land and oceans, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission supports a diverse range of applications, such as environmental management, disaster response and climate change research.

After Sentinel-1B’s working life ended in 2022, the upcoming launch of Sentinel-1C will restore the mission to its full strength as a two-satellite constellation.

Once in orbit, Sentinel-1C will not only continue the mission’s legacy, but, notably, will also introduce enhanced capabilities for monitoring maritime traffic, further expanding the mission’s utility.

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/11/Earth_from_Space_Agricultural_patchwork_Romania

'Fireball' meteor discovered hours before exploding above Niagara Falls was the smallest asteroid ever seen

November 28, 2024

An asteroid that fell to Earth in 2022 and exploded in a stunning green fireball above Canada was the smallest space rock ever properly measured, a new study suggests.

The diminutive asteroid, which was only discovered a few hours before it blew up, was around the same size as an average domestic cat.

In the early hours of Nov. 19, 2022, asteroid 2022 WJ1 violently broke apart in the lower atmosphere due to intense friction from the air.

This briefly illuminated the skies above Niagara Falls, creating a bright flash of green light that streaked through the sky for around 10 seconds and triggering a loud sonic boom.

The explosion happened in southern Ontario but was also seen by some people in the Toronto area and farther south in states including New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, The New York Times reported at the time.

Astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona first spotted 2022 WJ1 around three hours before it entered Earth's atmosphere.

The team correctly predicted where it would end up, enabling equipment along the asteroid's path — including the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT), also in Arizona, and a meteor camera network at Western University in Ontario — to closely monitor the space rock as it passed overhead.

In a new study, published Nov. 22 in The Planetary Science Journal, researchers analyzed observations of the asteroid's brightness, collected by LDT and Western University's cameras, and determined that the space rock was somewhere between 16 to 24 inches (40 to 60 centimeters) wide.

This is the smallest confirmed size for any asteroid, researchers wrote in a statement.

Smaller space rocks than 2022 WJ1 hit Earth every single day. However, none of them have been properly measured because scientists never see them coming until it's too late.

While scientists are good at spotting the massive "potentially hazardous" space rocks circling our planet, it is very rare for astronomers to catch sight of an asteroid before it enters Earth's atmosphere — at the time, this was only the sixth to have ever been spotted.

Most other space rocks remain completely undetected or finally reveal themselves by triggering a fireball or falling to the ground, the researchers wrote.

Closely monitoring this impactor with both a telescope and a professional camera system enabled the team to compare data and make more accurate predictions about the meteor's composition and size.

This was the first time that astronomers had ever been able to do this, study co-author Denis Vida, an expert in meteor physics at Western University, said in the statement.

Study lead author Teddy Kareta, an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, added that "this first-ever comparison between telescopic and fireball camera data is extremely exciting, and means we'll be able to characterize the next asteroid to impact the Earth in even better detail."

This development is particularly intriguing because astronomers seem to be getting better at spotting space rocks as they approach our planet.

Scientists have now recorded a total of 10 early identified impactors, including three in 2024: an asteroid that exploded above Berlin in January; a fireball that lit up the skies of the Philippines in September; and a meteor that burned up off the Californian coast earlier this month.

Researchers can also learn more about fireballs by collecting the fragments that fall to Earth's surface as meteorites.

No fragments of 2022 WJ1 were ever recovered, largely because most were expected to fall into Lake Ontario, according to a NASA report. But that doesn't mean we won't find them in the future.

"Two years on, any meteorites that fell on land will have blended in with the landscape," study co-author Phil McCausland, a planetary scientist at Western University, said in the statement.

"That said, there are people in the area who are searching and know what to look for. We may still get lucky and find a meteorite or two from this fall in the coming months and years."

https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/fireball-meteor-discovered-hours-before-exploding-above-niagara-falls-was-the-smallest-asteroid-ever-seen

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ad8b22

Mysterious lights over Capitol Hill sparks fears of UFOs in Washington DC

Updated 06:05 EST, 29 Nov 2024

An ominous quartet of gleaming lights above the United States Capitol building have left some afraid the alien invasion has finally arrived.

The photo — taken at night just outside of Congress, with the dome of Capitol Hill in full view – was taken by US Air Force veteran Dennis Diggins who now works as a licensed tour guide in the Washington DC area, as well as a professional travel director.

The eerie triangular formation of lights that Diggins captured in his photo seems to hover just feet over the 'Statue of Freedom' at the top of the Capitol dome.

'That’s absolutely insane,' one spectator said of the strange glowing orbs, which looked like landing lights on some otherworldly craft.

The image comes just weeks after a pair of stunning public hearings in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives, where lawmakers probed current and retired Pentagon officials over the state of intelligence on what used to be called 'flying saucers.'

The House's hearing included a first look at a bizarre, unsettling report alleging that an illegal 'Unacknowledged Special Access Program' named 'Immaculate Constellation' had been set up to 'detect, quarantine, and transfer' UFO data away from public view.

But while some were clamoring for video that might link this new sighting to this wider UFO debate on the Hill, others pushed back on the speculative furor over these strange lights.

'The picture is clearly a glare reflection off of the lens of the camera of the street lights below it,' argued a former paranormal investigator, who now goes by the moniker Average Chris. 'Same spacing, just inverted pattern.'

Other eyewitnesses in the DC area, however, believed they had caught similar UFOs on video during the same evening, November 26, 2024.

'My partner and I have spotted a mix of multiple stationary/hovering and slow moving lights from her apartment rooftop in Washington DC,' the anonymous witness who taped this video said. 'Appears that they are hovering over [Capitol] Hill, Navy Yard, or south of there.'

The witness, who posted the UFO video to Reddit, stated that the 'hovering' lights had been appearing for over a week, since at least November 15.

A spokesperson replying on behalf of the Pentagon and its UFO-hunting unit, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told DailyMail.com that it has no idea what these UFOs over our nation's capital might be.

'I don’t have anything for you on this,' said Susan Gough with the military's Defense Press Operations via email. 'Have you checked with the DC Police Department or Arlington County Police Department?'

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While these recent cases above DC might have perfectly ordinary causes, Pentagon officials and the US intelligence community are nevertheless increasingly concerned about the troubling rise of 'drone swarm' UFOs encroaching on restricted US airspace.

Senior ex-Pentagon security official Chris Mellon told DailyMail.com that a 17-day wave of UFO sightings above Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia was 'part of a much larger pattern affecting numerous national security installations.'

'Two of the notable aspects,' he said, 'are the fact our drone signal-jamming devices have proven ineffective and these craft are making no effort to remain concealed.'

'In fact, in some instances,' Mellon took pains to emphasize, 'it is clear they want to be seen as though taunting us.'

And now, dozens of British troops are fanning out in cooperation with the US Air Force (USAF) in an effort to track down the parties responsible for still more UFO swarms spotted over three air bases in England, amid fears it all could be linked to a 'sinister' plot.

The craft, possibly unmanned drones, were spotted overnight above Royal Air Force (RAF) base Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk, USAF confirmed.

While Lakenheath is technically an RAF base, it currently houses mainly American aircraft and military personnel, officials noted.

A former British Army intelligence officer told DailyMail.com that these strange UFOs over England may prove to be Russian spy craft agency, although US military sources say the UAVs were 'not identified as hostile.'

Nevertheless, it remains unclear if the recent sightings in DC bear any relationship to the events over Langley, or over the USAF operations in the UK.

Average Chris made the case that the video posted to Reddit, shows nothing more than 'commercial airplanes lining up to land at the several airports in the area.'

But the witnesses who posted the video remain unconvinced: 'I don’t believe these are planes waiting to land at Reagan airport as many of them do not appear to be moving at all, and we watched for quite a while, maybe 15-20 minutes.'

'Also some of the lights seem to turn on and off,' the witness continued. 'Can anyone rule these out as police drones, military helos, balloons, or other mundane technology?'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14137567/Mysterious-lights-Capitol-Hill-sparks-fears-UFOs-Washington-DC.html

https://x.com/528vibes/status/1861608258282127645

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1952 Washington, D.C., UFO incident

From July 12 to 29, 1952, a series of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings were reported in Washington, D.C., and later became known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington.[1]

The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27.

UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident "the climax of the 1952 (UFO) flap"—"Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of (UFO) reports." [2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington%2C_D.C.%2C_UFO_incident

https://thedebrief.org/fragmented-facts-aaro-report-unearths-odd-claims-involving-u-s-recovery-of-material-from-1952-ufo-incident/

https://fox40jackson.com/alien-chasers-offer-hints-in-decades-long-quest-to-solve-longest-running-murder-mystery/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zf1D4F19aY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQl9I3BT_-o

Alien chasers offer hints in decades-long quest to solve ‘longest running murder mystery’

November 28, 2024

Colby Marshall, a former ranch manager, found five bulls missing their tongues and reproductive organs in July 2017. No trace of blood or evidence was found at the scene.

Slain cattle stripped of certain organs with surgical precision and found in pastures with no trace of blood or evidence have stumped ranchers and law enforcement in quiet farming communities nationwide since at least the 1970s, and potentially for over a century.

The animals are found in unnatural positions and drained entirely of blood by befuddled ranchers in Minnesota, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and elsewhere.

Sgt. Jeremiah Holmes of the Wheeler County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon, who has overseen five such cases over the past six years, told Fox News Digital that “there’s more questions in this thing than there are answers.”

It is a felony to kill a farmer’s livestock, Holmes said. But there have never been any substantive leads to follow in these cases.

The first time the lawman saw an animal die under these circumstances, he said, there was a dearth of tracks or blood in the newly fallen snow.

Colby Marshall is pictured in front of one of five bulls mutilated on the ranch he managed in 2017. Typically, he said, scavengers would pick apart the animals’ bodies, but they wouldn’t touch these bulls, leaving the corpses to “melt” into the ground. (Colby Marshall)

He’s spoken to numerous news outlets, researchers and documentarians on the phenomenon, desperate to finally solve the bizarre mystery.

“Why would someone take a reproductive organ unless it was a ritual or testing? I guess I don’t know,” Holmes said.

“Individuals will reach out and give their theory. Some think its aliens, some think it’s the government doing testing, some think it’s some rancher trying to get even – there are so many theories,” Holmes said.

“The only one I have minimized is predators – having grown up in the country . . . and being in the livestock industry, I’ve seen firsthand what a bear will do, a cougar will do, wild dogs will do, even what a man will do.

Having seen all that firsthand, there’s no way that I can…chalk this up to predators of any sort.”

Reports of the phenomenon – usually involving cattle, but sometimes involving other livestock animals – began making headlines en masse in the 1970s, with the Colorado Associated Press voting the mutilations the No. 1 story in the state.

But records of cow mutilations matching the same patterns date back to 1869, according to “Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery,” by Chris O’Brien.

The bulls had organs removed with surgical precision, and no blood was left at the scene, Marshall said. (Colby Marshall )

“Investigation Alien,” a Netflix docuseries released this month that follows UFO journalist George Knapp through his investigation of extraterrestrial influence on Earth, suggests that aliens are the culprits.

“Initially, I grew up very conservative – aliens were something that were scoffed at by my family and friends,” Holmes told Fox News Digital. “Automatically, I assumed they didn’t exist.”

“But what is an alien? If people believe that there is bigfoot or sasquatch, there are people who believe in life on another planet,” Holmes said.

“There would be some that would say, ‘if bigfoot is a viable belief, then maybe there are unidentified creatures, even on this earth, that are doing this that we haven’t identified yet.”

Former ranch manager Colby Marshall of Burns, Oregon, found five mutilated bulls over a period of two days in September 2017.

A cow found dead in an uncanny position with its tongue and reproductive organs removed in July 2020 in Wheeler County, Oregon.

Ranchers in the area were urged to “be extremely vigilant in watching over their cattle” after the incident. (Wheeler County Sheriff’s Office)

“One of the cowboys called me on one of our radios that we had and said, ‘I found a dead bull,’ which was a unique situation, because it was uncommon for a perfectly healthy young range bull weighing 2,000 pounds to just be found dead,” Marshall recalled.

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The Hereford bull was lying on its side, with its front legs sticking out at an uncanny angle. Its tongue and entire reproductive organs had been carefully removed – but there was “not a drop” of blood.

“They had not punctured the abdominal cavity. . . . I’ve harvested a lot of animals myself over the years and butchered a lot of cattle for processing meat, and I’d never seen anything like that at all,” Marshall said.

The cattle phenomenon has baffled police and ranchers in Oregon. (Courtesy of Mt. Hood Village Resort)

The second bull was found with the same organs missing, as were three more bulls found the next day.

“I’ve seen lots of animals dead in a variety of different situations from injuries or diseases or what have you,” Marshall said. “It was just the most surreal, weird situation for livestock that I had ever experienced.”

Holmes told Fox News Digital that, because ranches are sprawling, and cattle mutilations typically take place in remote areas, necropsies and other forms of investigative work are no longer viable, because the animals’ bodies have become degraded by the time they are found.

But in Marshall’s case, the corpse was relatively fresh.

“We tried to collect the forensic evidence the best we could, and we necropsied the bull,” Marshall said. “There were no signs of liver damage or heart damage or lung damage.

There was no missing internal organs. The [stomach] of the animal was full. They had been eating. They had been drinking. They had not been any stress to them at all.”

The bulls who weren’t transported to a lab just “melted into the ground” – scavengers wouldn’t touch them, Marshall said.

“In a normal situation, the scavengers, the coyotes, the bears, you know, it would just sort of tear the animal apart, drag it all over. Bones would be spread all over, hides would be missing, heads would be gone,” he said.

A $25,000 reward was levied for any information that led to the capture of the person or persons who mutilated the bulls – but no information ever came, Marshall said.

Like Holmes, Marshall is willing to speak to anyone on the topic in the hopes that “the longest-running murder mystery in the history of the world” is solved, including other puzzled ranchers throughout the country.

Rather than extraterrestrials, Marshall thinks a sophisticated network of humans – likely cultists or a group using the animal parts for ritualistic purposes – is to blame.

“I believe that there is a big galaxy out there. . . . And there’s an extremely high probability that we’re not the only sentient life forms in the galaxy. I believe that, yes, there probably is aliens out there.

And, you know, they’ve probably visited Earth,” Marshall told Fox News Digital. “Now, do I think they’re using their technology to come after free-range bulls in eastern Oregon? No, I don’t – I think they would have better uses of their technology than that.”

Cattle in states such as Oregon have been mysteriously mutilated. (Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office)

“But hey, if they are coming across the galaxy to come and get beef in eastern Oregon, that means we’ve got pretty darn good beef and maybe the best in the galaxy,” Marshall quipped.

“I don’t mind talking about it and telling the story,” Marshall said. “I just want people to be aware that. . . there are other people out there that have experienced it.

And the thing that we need to do is we need to talk about it because maybe that’ll bring light to it, and maybe we could get some answers.”

The FBI investigated the phenomenon of animal mutilations between 1974 and 1978, according to its website, but was unable to find any answers.

“I’ve been advocating for the federal government to look into it more with the tools that we have now,” Holmes said.

“We have a lot more tools since the 1980s to investigate . . . the reason why I’m a little more vocal about this is because I want it solved . . . and I know we’re not going to be able to solve it on our own.”

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