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What was the glowing blue spiral seen in the night sky above Europe?

A glowing blue spiral was spotted in European skies on Monday evening, causing a stir on social media. The swirls were seen across Europe with reports of sightings from the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Germany, Ukraine, Denmark, and Poland. The spiral was visible for several minutes before it faded.

The phenomenon was likely caused by the aftermath of a SpaceX rocket launch in the United States, according to the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological and climate agency. "The rocket's frozen exhaust plume appears to be spinning in the atmosphere and reflecting the sunlight, causing it to appear as a spiral in the sky," it said on X.

As the Falcon 9 is a reusable two-stage rocket, it releases its payload into space, such as a satellite, before returning to Earth. As the first stage comes back, it ejects leftover fuel, which forms a swirl pattern because of the rocket’s movements and freezes due to the altitude. It is then visible on Earth as light reflects off the frozen fuel.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... r-AA1BCuiK

A new study reports the first direct observation of merging star clusters in the nuclear region of dwarf galaxies. This detection confirms the feasibility of this formation route for nuclei in dwarf galaxies, which has long been debated. The study was published in Nature, and led by Postdoctoral Researcher Mélina Poulain from the University of Oulu, Finland.

Dwarf galaxies are the most abundant type of galaxy that populate the universe. Composed of 100 times fewer stars than the Milky Way, or even less, they are the building blocks of more massive galaxies. Thus, understanding their formation is key to comprehending galaxy evolution.

A notable fraction of dwarf galaxies host a compact star cluster at their centers, typically made of hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of stars. Known as nuclear star clusters, these are the densest type of stellar system in the universe. The formation of such extreme objects has been under debate for several decades.

In dwarf galaxies, they are believed to form from the merger of smaller star clusters, called globular clusters, after they migrate to the galaxy center. However, no such merger of globular clusters has been directly observed to confirm the theory, until now.

First celestial image unveiled from revolutionary telescope

A powerful new telescope in Chile has released its first images, showing off its unprecedented ability to peer into the dark depths of the universe. In one picture, vast colourful gas and dust clouds swirl in a star-forming region 9,000 light years from Earth.

The Vera C Rubin observatory, home to the world's most powerful digital camera, promises to transform our understanding of the universe. It should detect killer asteroids in striking distance of Earth and map the Milky Way. It will also answer crucial questions about dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up most of our universe.

In a press conference on Monday, the observatory revealed that in 10 hours, the telescope detected 2,104 new asteroids and seven space objects close to Earth. All other space and ground surveys combined usually find about 20,000 asteroids in a year.

This once-in-a-generation moment for astronomy is the start of a continuous 10-year filming of the southern night sky.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3rmjjgx6xo

The Mysterious Object Cruising Toward Mars Is Doing Something Very Peculiar

A mysterious object from interstellar space is screaming through our solar system right now, and is expected to rip past Mars and Jupiter over the coming months before exiting back into the void between stars.

Astronomers have been fascinated by the unusual visitor, dubbed 3I/ATLAS after its discovery in July, and have broadly come to the conclusion that it's a comet comprised of ice and dust particles. As the object approaches its closest point to our Sun, its activity is steadily picking up as it's believed to be shedding gases and dust, giving it a growing tail.

And intriguingly, according to images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the object isn't just growing one tail — it's also sprouting a separate "anti-tail," pointing in the direction of the Sun, as Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb suggests in a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/mys ... 00900.html