Cyprus Astronomy Organisation

Out in the depths of space, there are radio signals that astronomers don't understand. Now a Canadian research team has found a repeating signal, only the second of its kind to be discovered.In a new paper published Wednesday in Nature, researchers reveal that a recently unveiled radio telescope in British Columbia the "Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment" (CHIME) captured 13 more FRBs, but more importantly, it caught a second repeating FRB.

About 2.6 million years ago, an oddly bright light arrived in the prehistoric sky and lingered there for weeks or months. It was a supernova some 150 light-years away from Earth. A few hundred years later, after the new star had long since faded from the sky, cosmic rays from the event finally reached Earth, slamming into our planet. Now, a group of researchers led by Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas believes this cosmic onslaught is linked to a mass extinction of ocean animals roaming Earth’s waters at the time.

One of the sky’s largest asterisms a recognizable pattern of stars separate from a constellation’s form occupies center stage on winter's evenings.

The Winter Hexagon is a collection of stars that make up a pattern in the sky. It's not an official constellation, but it is made up of the brightest stars of Gemini, Auriga, Taurus, Orion, Canis Major, and Canis Minor. It's also often called the Winter Circle.

In the distant past, people were both awed and alarmed by comets, perceiving them as long-haired stars that appeared in the sky unannounced and unpredictably. Chinese astronomers kept extensive records for centuries, including illustrations of characteristic types of comet tails, times of cometary appearances and disappearances, and celestial positions.

The Cyprus Astronomy Organisation
wishes all of you a Happy New Year full of joy and health!

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Earth is a pretty wild place to live. Not only does our home planet orbit the sun at the perfect distance to sustain life, it even has its own magnetic force field that keeps us from being deep fried by our star’s radiation.