TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
June 14, 2026
10 Days of Venus and Jupiter
Venus and Jupiter may have caught your attention lately. The recent close conjunction of the two brightest planets in recent evening skies has been hard to miss. With Jupiter at the top, starting on May 30 and ending on June 8, their close approach was chronicled daily, left to right, in the featured panels from Maharashtra, India. Near the western horizon, the evening sky colors and exposures used for each panel depend on the local conditions near sunset. At their closest on June 9, the celestial pair appeared to be only about three times the width of a full moon apart. Of course, on that date, the two planets were physically separated by over 600 million kilometers in their orbits around the Sun. In the coming days, Jupiter will slowly settle into the sunset glare, but Venus will continue to move farther from the Sun in the western sky to excel in its current role as the brilliant evening star.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR_KdTGxUrI
POLE SHIFT: Faster, Stronger, Approaching Now | S0 News and Flag Day Fight Night frens
June.14.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5QZ2GytX6E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XCCu_qNTNQ (Dutchsinse: 6/10/2026 STRANGE DISCOVERY Chichén-Itzá Pyramids to Florida Keys – Hidden Island + Starforts)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spZEd4wa60w (Stefan Burns: King Tides are Here, and This Could Be What's Sets It All Off…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHjqGqCvGe4 (On the Pulse with Silki: MEGA Earthquake MOVES ground UP in WAVES and BREAKS it OPEN !)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOl-A7EuEtM (EarthMaster: Cascadia Tremor counts up today. New Mexico Earthquake activity. Saturday Night)
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/strong-storms-south-southern-plains-rain-flooding
https://www.weatherbug.com/news/Severe%20Storms%20To%20Strike%20The%20Northeast%20Down%20Into%20The%20Southeast?source=news
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/nature_and_travel/2026/06/14/400_earthquakes_recorded_at_bardarbunga/
https://watchers.news/2026/06/14/bardarbunga-volcano-aviation-color-code-raised-earthquake-swarm-iceland-june-2026/
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-06/pope-leo-xiv-appeal-prayers-philippines-earthquake.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/14/philippines-earthquake-raised-seabed-costal-uplift-coral-exposed
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49052842/england-kansas-city-world-cup-base
https://chicago.suntimes.com/weather/2026/06/13/tornadoes-illinois-indiana-confirmed-storms
https://meteoagent.com/schumann-resonance-forecast
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news.html
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/
cranking up the auspicious
https://spacedaily.com/t-in-2017-the-first-confirmed-visitor-from-another-star-system-tumbled-through-the-solar-system-on-a-path-that-should-have-been-simple-to-read-then-accelerated-slightly-as-it-left-without-showing-the/
extra space objects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJnFewqSaWw (Dobsonian Power: MASSIVE 1KM ASTEROID LIVE (1997 NC1))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBTNbvUS78k (Dobsonian Power: TOO MANY ASTEROIDS! WTH IS HAPPENING?)
In 2017, the first confirmed visitor from another star system tumbled through the solar system on a path that should have been simple to read, then accelerated slightly as it left without showing the coma or tail of an active comet — a gap that let Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb argue it might be alien technology, a claim most astronomers reject but one that has never quite gone away.
June 14, 2026
In October 2017, astronomers using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii detected a small object moving through the inner solar system on a hyperbolic path, too fast for the Sun to hold.
It had been found on 19 October, after its closest approach to the Sun in September, so it was already on its way out when it was spotted. It was the first confirmed interstellar object detected in our solar system.
They named it ʻOumuamua, a Hawaiian term NASA renders as a messenger from afar arriving first.
Its path should have been simple to read. Then, as it receded from the Sun, it sped up very slightly, by an amount gravity alone could not account for.
What made that strange was the absence of the obvious cause. A comet accelerates this way when it vents gas and dust, but ʻOumuamua showed no coma and no tail.
That gap, between a measured push and a missing exhaust, is where the whole argument lives.
What was actually observed
The non-gravitational acceleration was reported by Marco Micheli and colleagues in a 2018 paper in Nature.
It was small, and it faded with distance from the Sun in roughly the way sunlight or outgassing would predict, which is part of why it drew attention rather than being dismissed as measurement error.
The other oddities were the shape and the silence.
ʻOumuamua tumbled as it went, and its brightness varied so much as it rotated that its light curve implied an extreme shape, though whether that meant a cigar-like body or a flattened, pancake-like one depends on the model.
And despite searches with large telescopes, no one detected gas or dust coming off it. Those searches set upper limits on how much material it could be shedding, and the limits were low.
The argument for technology
This is where Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard, made the case he is now known for.
With his colleague Shmuel Bialy, he showed in a 2018 paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters that solar radiation pressure could in principle supply the extra acceleration, but only if the object had a very low mass-to-area ratio, equivalent to a sheet less than a millimetre thick.
Since nature is not known to make objects like that, they went on to discuss a possible light-sail origin, and Loeb later argued, in follow-up work and his book Extraterrestrial, that ʻOumuamua might be the product of an extraterrestrial technology.
The shape of that argument is an inference from absence. The push was real and the usual explanation was missing, so an unusual explanation was put on the table.
That is not the same as evidence of manufacture, and Loeb has generally framed it as a hypothesis worth taking seriously rather than a settled conclusion. Most astronomers have not accepted it.
The natural explanations, including the leading one
The reason most astronomers reject the technology reading is not that they find it offensive.
It is that natural explanations kept arriving, and none of them required anything new about the universe.
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Several were floated early: a body made largely of hydrogen ice, whose outgassing would be nearly invisible; a fragment of nitrogen ice chipped off a Pluto-like world; an extremely porous, fluffy structure that sunlight could push.
The most prominent recent natural explanation came in 2023, when Jennifer Bergner and Darryl Seligman published a model in Nature in which ʻOumuamua began as a water-rich icy body bombarded by cosmic rays during its long passage through interstellar space.
That processing could split water and trap molecular hydrogen inside the ice. Warmed by the Sun, the ice could then release hydrogen, giving the object a small push without carrying off enough dust to form a visible coma.
Bergner and Seligman presented this as a natural and economical account.
Seligman and colleagues have since identified, in work published in PNAS, several other small bodies in the solar system that show non-gravitational acceleration without any visible coma, now called dark comets.
That does not prove ʻOumuamua was a dark comet, but it does show that small bodies can behave in this awkward middle ground between asteroid and comet.
Why it has not fully settled
The honest complication is that the leading natural explanation is itself disputed. Loeb, with Thiem Hoang, responded that the 2023 model miscalculated the object’s surface temperature, which would undercut the hydrogen mechanism.
Separately, the chemist Niels Ligterink argued, in a formal response to the paper, that it is unlikely enough hydrogen could be produced to do the job unless the object had an unusual composition or was far older than assumed.
None of this means ʻOumuamua was artificial. It means the most popular natural account is strong but not airtight, which is a different and more ordinary kind of uncertainty.
The deeper problem is that the object is gone. ʻOumuamua left the solar system within months of discovery and is now too far and too faint to study.
There is no prospect of new data on it. Whatever it was, the case has to be argued from the limited observations gathered during a short window in late 2017, and limited evidence is exactly the soil in which a claim like Loeb’s stays alive.
What to watch
The way this gets resolved is not by re-litigating ʻOumuamua but by finding more of its kind.
The second confirmed interstellar object, 2I/Borisov, turned up in 2019 and behaved like a perfectly ordinary comet, with an obvious tail, which told us interstellar visitors are not all strange.
A third, 3I/ATLAS, was found on 1 July 2025 and showed clear cometary activity, with Hubble imaging dust coming off its icy nucleus.
More are coming.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, built for a decade-long survey of the sky, should sharply increase the rate at which these objects are found, on Seligman’s estimate something like one to three ʻOumuamua-like bodies a year, and more with visible comae.
If a future object with a faint coma and a small non-gravitational push can be caught early and tracked closely, the questions left hanging by ʻOumuamua become answerable.
The first interstellar visitor arrived before we were ready to study it. The next ambiguous one may not.
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NASA briefing on Moon's 'alien starbase' revealed in UFO files
14 Jun 2026
The Donald Trump administration has released numerous files about reported UFO sightings as well as bizarre claims and reports about the surface of the Moon
Comments
NASA briefings mention an apparent "alien star base" on the Moon, the latest trove of UFO files has revealed.
Audio from a previously classified NASA meeting following the Apollo 16 mission in the 1970s was released as part of the third dump of UFO files on Friday. The Apollo 16 mission flew around the Moon from April 16 to April 27, 1972.
Astronauts John Young and Charles Duke were the first humans to explore the Moon's highland region as Thomas "Ken" Mattingly remained in orbit around the lunar rock. In the 55-minute audio, teams discussed gravity, laser measurements as well as abnormalities found during the exploration.
But nestled in the audio is a discussion about a "great big hole" close to the Van de Graaff crater, an area known for unusual features. One speaker said: "In the backside of the moon around Fendi graph, that's where we get our big hole."
Just moments later, a bizarre suggestion was made. The speaker continued: "It could be an alien star base or something. Anyway, the next slide shows the front side of the moon."
The comment was said extremely casually and after there had been some laughter following a comment about the "big hole."
Friday's document dump involved some 72 files collected from the FBI, CIA and Pentagon that includes video, testimony as well as artistic interpretations of objects described.
Some files date to as far back as the 1940s and cover other countries in addition to the US. President Donald Trump released the first two batches on May 8 and May 22, respectively.
Previous files refer to bizarre sightings of orbs in some areas of the US. One redacted file made mention of two people who saw a bright light in their back garden one evening.
The report of one person's account "described the red colour as being brilliant and beautiful, and that [redacted] had never seen anything that colour of red before." It added the red sphere was about 3ft wide and contained a "white plasma sun" about the size of a basketball in its centre.
The pair then reported seeing numerous white orbs some weeks later that flew over the house at a higher altitude. Another suspected UFO sighting was also said to have been recorded at Zimbabwe's Harare International Airport in July 2008.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/nasa-briefing-moons-alien-starbase-37293495
https://x.com/UAPLuigi/status/2065537946347044889
Chinese scientists identify critical vulnerability in NASA’s single-engine lunar landing system
Jun 13, 2026 09:36 PM EST
The design philosophy behind the American lunar architecture depends heavily on a single high-performance main engine responsible for critical mission phases. During descent, that engine governs the entire journey from lunar orbit down to the Moon’s surface.
On ascent, the same single-point system becomes the only means of returning astronauts to lunar orbit. The lack of redundancy means that a malfunction would eliminate any backup option, a concern highlighted in a peer-reviewed study published in Chinese Space Science and Technology in March, which argues the system “contains some glaring weaknesses.”
By contrast, China’s proposed lunar lander adopts a multi-engine approach. Developed by a Shanghai-based national laboratory team, it uses four variable-thrust engines producing over 30 kilonewtons collectively.
Even if one engine fails entirely, the remaining three would still deliver thrust comparable to the main engine of NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
Lunar ascent safety debate centers on redundancy versus mass constraints
Beyond the primary propulsion system, the design includes an additional safeguard layer intended to improve mission resilience.
If the main engines were to become inoperative, six smaller orbit-control thrusters can still be activated on the lunar surface, providing an alternative pathway for a rapid ascent.
This redundancy raises a broader engineering question: if multiple engines offer greater safety than a single one, why are they not universally adopted, the South China Morning Post writes.
The constraint is mass, as additional engines typically increase overall vehicle weight, reducing efficiency and payload capacity.
The Chinese engineering team addressed this trade-off through a structural optimization known as a common bulkhead tank, which integrates fuel storage more efficiently and reduces excess mass while still enabling a multi-engine configuration.
China introduced a new tank design in a crewed deep-space vehicle that uses a pressure-fed system, where fuel and oxidiser are separated by a shared wall, often called a “common bottom.”
In earlier lunar lander designs, the two propellants were stored in completely separate tanks, which added extra structural weight and took up more space inside the vehicle.
By combining them into a single structure with a shared barrier, the system reduces unnecessary duplication in the tank framework.
According to the researchers, this change cuts weight at the “hundred-kilogram level,” making the overall design more efficient without sacrificing capacity or performance.
Hot-fire tests validate new lightweight tank architecture for space missions
The reduction in mass created by this design enables the use of four engines instead of a single main unit, increasing redundancy without exceeding launch constraints.
Built from composite materials, the tank achieves more than a 20 per cent weight reduction compared to traditional metal alternatives.
Beyond storing propellant, the structure also serves a dual purpose as a load-bearing component of the spacecraft, effectively becoming part of the vehicle’s frame and improving overall mass efficiency.
The approach is backed by experimental validation, with the paper drawing on results from full-system hot-fire tests. These tests provide real-world performance data under operating conditions, confirming the feasibility of the integrated structural and propulsion design.
Test results indicate that the four variable-thrust engines can be closely coordinated, keeping thrust variation within less than 100 Newtons.
This level of precision is crucial for preventing unstable motion that could cause the lander to tumble during critical flight phases. The experiments also suggest that pressure challenges within the common bulkhead tank can be effectively managed.
Replicating this kind of system would be difficult for any other space programme. It requires highly precise autonomous control of pressure inside a shared-tank structure operating with very narrow safety margins.
In addition, it demands tightly synchronised performance across multiple throttling engines, a task that becomes significantly more complex as each additional engine is introduced.
https://interestingengineering.com/space/chinese-scientists-vulnerability-nasa-landing-system
extra NASA
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2066149136416510012
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/artemis-ii-crew-captures-rare-100000136.html
United States Space Force
@USSpaceForce
Happy Birthday to the United States Army! Since 1775, our brave Soldiers have courageously stood on the front lines of freedom, safeguarding our nation and upholding our cherished values.
Quote
U.S. Army
@USArmy
251 years of defending America's freedom, and we're just getting started.
From the first musket shots in 1775 to the high-tech, multi-domain force of today, our Soldiers have always been, and always will be, ready to answer the call.
8:00 AM · Jun 14, 2026
https://x.com/USSpaceForce/status/2066173927051670000
Zelensky not on Trump’s G7 meeting list – Bloomberg
14 Jun, 2026 12:31
The Ukrainian leader can reportedly only hope for a behind-the-scenes audience with the US president
US President Donald Trump has not scheduled an official bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky at the upcoming G7 summit in France, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, citing senior US administration officials.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has held several formal and informal meetings with Zelensky in an effort to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Zelensky has reportedly sought to use the encounters to finalize pre-negotiated agreements on Ukraine’s post-conflict economic recovery and “security guarantees.” However, repeated contacts between the two leaders have so far failed to produce an agreement.
Trump will hold bilateral meetings with the leaders of France, Qatar, the UAE, Egypt, and India during the summit, which will be held from Monday through Wednesday in the town of Evian-les-Bains, officials familiar with the plans told the news agency.
One official said the Ukrainian leader would take part in a working session with G7 leaders. Earlier this week, Western media, citing US administration sources, reported that Trump and Zelensky “may meet on the sidelines” of the summit.
As part of his stated effort to end the Ukraine conflict, the US president met with the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office in February 2025. The televised talks descended into a heated clash after Zelensky criticized Trump’s neutral approach to settling the conflict.
He was accused of showing insufficient respect and gratitude to Washington as Kiev’s top benefactor, as well as resisting peace and “gambling with World War III.”
Since then, relations between Zelensky and Trump seem to have improved and the two have met on various occasions.
Zelensky has repeatedly called for a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, he has ruled out traveling to Moscow and rejected the idea of withdrawing Ukrainian troops from the Donbass region, which Putin has said would be sufficient for Russia to declare a ceasefire.
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum earlier this month, Putin said Russia remains committed to a peaceful settlement based on compromises reached with Trump in Alaska last year.
He said the main obstacle is persuading Kiev to accept the terms, particularly withdrawing from Donbass, not joining NATO, and carrying out demilitarization and denazification.
https://www.rt.com/news/641521-zelensky-not-on-trump-g7-list/
extra RT
https://www.rt.com/news/641500-us-funded-biolabs-focus-russia/
https://www.rt.com/news/641519-starmer-tankers-uk-problems-dmitriev/
Azot chemical plant catches fire in Tula Oblast of russia following drone attack
June 14, 2026
A fire broke out at the Azot chemical plant in Novomoskovsk, Tula Oblast, russia, following a drone attack.
Governor Dmitry Milyaev claims that debris from Ukrainian UAVs fell on the plant’s grounds.
The Azot chemical plant is russia’s largest producer of ammonia and nitrogen fertilizers.
On the night of June 14, following a drone attack in russia’s Tula Oblast, a fire was reported at the Azot plant. Local residents are posting videos showing flames and smoke, and a service that tracks temperature anomalies is also indicating a fire.
It was reported by, Exilenova+, and Tula Oblast Governor Dmitry Milyaev.
An OSINT analyst for the publication identified the fire at the Azot plant in Novomoskovsk, Tula Oblast, russia, based on a video showing flames and smoke filmed from the city cemetery, approximately 4 km away from the chemical plant.
The fire at Azot is also being detected by NASA FIRMS, a satellite service that tracks temperature anomalies.
Meanwhile, the Tula Oblast's governor, Dmitry Milyaev, claims that debris from Ukrainian UAVs allegedly fell “onto the territory of one of Novomoskovsk’s industrial enterprises.” The governor did not specify the name or type of the enterprise.
The company’s website states that “Novomoskovsk Joint-Stock Company ‘Azot’ is russia’s largest producer of ammonia and nitrogen fertilizers, as well as one of the industry leaders in terms of product variety and volume.
The enterprise produces mineral fertilizers, ammonia, organic plastics and resins, chlorine, caustic soda, calcium chloride, concentrated and high-purity nitric acid, argon, and methanol. Since 2002, NJSC Azot has been part of the EuroChem holding company.
Exilenova+ also reported that local residents claim that the Novomoskovsk Chemical Plant 'AZOT' in Novomoskovsk, Tula Oblast, is under fire.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on the night of Friday, June 12, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces attacked the TANECO and TAIF-NK oil refineries in Nizhnekamsk, Republic of Tatarstan (aggressor country: the russian federation).
The destruction of targets and fires on the premises of both facilities have been confirmed.
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4133602-one-of-russias-largest-chemical-plants-on-fire-following-drone-attack.html
https://ukranews.com/en/news/1157540-the-azot-chemical-plant-caught-fire-in-the-tula-region-of-russia-following-a-drone-attack
other Russia and Ukraine
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/14/8039257/
https://www.stl.news/ukrainian-drone-attack-on-russian-apartment-building/
https://united24media.com/world/russia-may-be-developing-orbital-nuclear-weapon-german-space-commander-says-19805
https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-uses-floating-drone-aircraft-carrier-to-hit-russian-forces-on-the-dnipro-river-video-19807
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/ukraine-ai-drones-entered-terminator-093000061.html
Happy Birthday, Sir!