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Category: space – Page 852

Mosque, synagogue and church being built together in Abu Dhabi

On September 20, the initial designs for the complex were presented at an event at the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan. British firm Adjaye Associates won the contract to design the center, which will consist of three large buildings arranged around a central garden, under which will sit a museum and education center.

“We were led towards these powerful plutonic forms with a clear geometry, three cubes sitting on a plinth — though not aligned, they each have different orientations,” Sir David Adjaye told designboom. Each of the three buildings share a similar silhouette, but the facades have different architectural design and detailing, communicating the shared origins of the three religions, as well as their cultural and historical differences.

Adjaye, who also designed the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo and the National Museum of African American History in D.C., says he saw the garden, “as a powerful metaphor, this safe space where community, connection and civility combine.”

Watch The Sun Turn Into a Ring of Fire Here Tonight

The last solar eclipse of the decade—and the only annular solar eclipse of the year—will be visible in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa starting just a few hours after this article’s publication.

Annular solar eclipses, like total solar eclipses, occur when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. However, the Moon doesn’t totally cover the Sun during annular solar eclipses, leaving behind an annulus, or bright ring.

A Real-Life Deluminator for Spotting Exoplanets

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Supriya Chakrabarti, Professor of Physics, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Perhaps you remember the opening scene of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” that took place on Privet Drive. A bearded man pulled a mysterious device, called a deluminator, from his dark robe and one by one the lights from the street lamps flew into it.

Incredible sights from space as astronauts celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah

Astronauts may be far from home, but they still celebrate the holidays.

Residents of the International Space Station posted an incredible photo and video for the holidays, celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas far above the world.

Astronaut Jessica Meir posted a stunning picture from the station’s cupola, the small, panoramic, ESA-built observatory module of the station. It allows for observation of activities like spacewalks and shuttle approaches, but also provides the perfect place to celebrate Hanukkah.

Scientists mapped Titan’s awe-inspiring terrain for the first time

Navigating Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is a challenge. Just getting close is hard enough — it’s hundreds of millions of miles away, after all. But let’s suppose either a robot or a human lands on the surface of the only other body in the Solar System known to have liquid on its surface. They’d need a map — and fortunately, NASA has one ready to go should the occasion ever arise.

In November 2019, scientists made the first ever map detailing the moon’s complicated — and terrifying — terrain. It reveals a moon filled with weird and wonderful geography, including dunes, liquid methane lakes, plains, labyrinthine canyons, and craters.

This is #10 on Inverse’s 20 wildest space discoveries of 2019.

Scientists Gene-Edited Tomatoes to Make Them Grow Like Grapes

It’s 2050, and you’ve just arrived on Mars. Your first meal awaits: a plate of spaghetti marinara made from fresh vine-ripened tomatoes. Tough to imagine, right?

The idea that astronauts might enjoy the fresh, cherry-red fruits has seemed borderline absurd. Tomato plants, with their sprawling vines and bulbous fruits, take up space—valuable space. And they’re extremely finicky.

But now, scientists have developed a way to genetically modify cherry tomatoes so they grow in tighter bunches and take up less space. This could be a game changer as the push to grow vertical, rooftop gardens increases and as humanity stretches out past low-Earth orbit toward the moon, and eventually, Mars.

Mars Has Auroras of Its Own Which Could Explain Why the Planet Lost Its Water

Here on Earth, you can see the aurora of the Northern Lights, when solar winds interact with the planet’s magnetosphere. It turns out that Mars has its own auroras too, called proton auroras, but they give off ultraviolet light which makes them invisible to the naked eye.

NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft, however, currently in orbit around Mars, is able to detect these auroras using its Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument. Using data from this instrument, scientists have been investigating the relationship between the proton auroras and the fact that Mars lost its water over time. The Martian aurora is indirectly created by hydrogen in the atmosphere, which comes from water being lost into space.

The animation below shows how the proton aurora is formed. First, solar winds send protons toward Mars, where they interact with a cloud of hydrogen surrounding the planet. The protons take electrons from the hydrogen atoms to become neutrons. These neutral particles can then pass through a region of the planet’s magnetosphere called the bow shock. When the hydrogen atoms enter the atmosphere and collide with gas particles, they give off the ultraviolet light that we call an aurora.

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