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Posts tagged "space"

Image description: The Hubble Space Telescope captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a show, lit only by the flashbulbs of the audience’s cameras. Learn more about these stars.
Photo by ESA/NASA

Image description: The Hubble Space Telescope captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a show, lit only by the flashbulbs of the audience’s cameras. Learn more about these stars.

Photo by ESA/NASA

Image description: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft resumed the kind of orbits that allow for spectacular views of Saturn’s rings. This view, from Cassini’s imaging camera, shows the outer A ring and the F ring. Learn more about Cassini’s new view of Saturn.
Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Image description: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft resumed the kind of orbits that allow for spectacular views of Saturn’s rings. This view, from Cassini’s imaging camera, shows the outer A ring and the F ring. Learn more about Cassini’s new view of Saturn.

Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Image description: This full-circle photo of Mars’ surface is made of 817 images taken by the panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter. Learn more about the Martian features in the photo.
The explorer Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004. NASA’s next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, landed on Mars in August.
Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University

Image description: This full-circle photo of Mars’ surface is made of 817 images taken by the panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter. Learn more about the Martian features in the photo.

The explorer Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004. NASA’s next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, landed on Mars in August.

Image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University

Image description: Erin Wilson, a NASA engineer, adds aluminum tape to electrical cables to protect them from the cold during environmental testing of special optical equipment. These tests will verify the alignment of flight instruments that will fly aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Photo by Chris Gunn, NASA

Image description: Erin Wilson, a NASA engineer, adds aluminum tape to electrical cables to protect them from the cold during environmental testing of special optical equipment. These tests will verify the alignment of flight instruments that will fly aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Photo by Chris Gunn, NASA

‘Once in a blue moon’ happens tonight

When people say something occurs just once in a blue moon, they mean it’s very rare. These days, the speaker is often referring to the modern folklore that, whenever there are two full moons in a calendar month, the second one should be called “a Blue Moon.” Going by this definition, the United States will experience a Blue Moon on the evening of August 31. The first full moon of the month already happened on August 1.

Most months have only one full moon. The 29.5-day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28 to 31-day length of calendar months. Indeed, the word “month” comes from “moon.”

Occasionally, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks down when two full moons squeeze into a single month. This happens on average about once every 2.5 years, which…. is actually not all that rare, really.

Will the moon truly appear blue in color tomorrow? Smoke from volcanoes and forest fires can cause a change to blue from the usual pale gray, but it’s unlikely, despite all of the wildfires burning in the hot, dry United States this month. The amount of smoke to create the effect has to be unusually massive. Some kinds of blue moons are rarer than others, it turns out.

Learn more and watch a video about the facts and myths of blue moons from NASA.