ASTRONOMY - Jupiter and the Geminid

 2023 December 28

Jupiter and the Geminid
Image Credit & Copyright: Gaurav Singh

Explanation: For a brief moment, this brilliant fireball meteor outshone Jupiter in planet Earth's night. The serendipitous image was captured while hunting meteors under cold Canadian skies with a camera in timelapse mode on December 14, near the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. The Geminid meteor shower, asteroid 3200 Phaethon's annual gift, always arrives in December. Dust shed along the orbit of the mysterious asteroid causes the meteor streaks, as the vaporizing grains plow through our fair planet's upper atmosphere at 22 kilometers per second. Of course Geminid shower meteors appear to radiate from a point in the constellation of the Twins. That's below and left of this frame. With bright Jupiter on the right, also in the December night skyview are the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters.

BIOMIMETISME - Innovations inspirées par la Nature - Ecrans inspirés des ailes transparentes d'un petit papillon

Le papillon Greta oto, que l'on retrouve en Amérique du Sud, est une merveille de la nature. Ses ailes sont transparentes, c'est-à-dire qu'elles ne reflètent pas la lumière plus précisément. Un moyen efficace d'échapper aux prédateurs. La partie transparente des ailes du Greta oto est en réalité composée de nanostructures en forme de colonne dont la taille varie entre 400 et 600 nm de haut. Grâce à cela, seulement 2 à 5 % de la lumière incidente qui frappe les ailes est réfléchie, les faisant apparaître transparentes.

Cette capacité a évidement éveillé la curiosité des ingénieurs, qui ont vu dans ces ailes une inspiration pour créer des surfaces antireflets, comme des écrans ou un traitement spécifique pour les lunettes.

© O. Schneider, Wikimedia Commons, CC by-sa 3.0

ASTRONOMY - Rainbow Aurora over Icelandic Waterfall

2023 December 27

Rainbow Aurora over Icelandic Waterfall
Image Credit & Copyright: Stefano Pellegrini

Explanation: Yes, but can your aurora do this? First, yes, auroras can look like rainbows even though they are completely different phenomena. Auroras are caused by Sun-created particles being channeled into Earth's atmosphere by Earth's magnetic field, and create colors by exciting atoms at different heights. Conversely, rainbows are created by sunlight backscattering off falling raindrops, and different colors are refracted by slightly different angles. Unfortunately, auroras can’t create waterfalls, but if you plan well and are lucky enough, you can photograph them together. The featured picture is composed of several images taken on the same night last month near the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland. The planning centered on capturing the central band of our Milky Way galaxy over the picturesque cascade. By luck, a spectacular aurora soon appeared just below the curving arch of the Milky Way. Far in the background, the Pleiades star cluster and the Andromeda galaxy can be found. 

ASTRONOMY - IC 443: The Jellyfish Nebula

 2023 December 26

IC 443: The Jellyfish Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: David Payne

Explanation: Why is this jellyfish swimming in a sea of stars? Drifting near bright star Eta Geminorum, seen at the right, the Jellyfish Nebula extends its tentacles from the bright arcing ridge of emission left of center. In fact, the cosmic jellyfish is part of bubble-shaped supernova remnant IC 443, the expanding debris cloud from a massive star that exploded. Light from the explosion first reached planet Earth over 30,000 years ago. Like its cousin in astronomical waters, the Crab Nebula supernova remnant IC 443 is known to harbor a neutron star -- the remnant of the collapsed stellar core. The Jellyfish Nebula is about 5,000 light-years away. At that distance, the featured image would span about 140 light-years across.

BIOMIMETISME - Innovations inspirées par la Nature - Les feuilles autonettoyantes du lotus

Le lotus (Nelumbo spp) est une plante aquatique. Pourtant l'eau, ce n'est pas vraiment son truc, surtout sur ses feuilles. En effet, ces dernières sont superhydrophobes, c'est-à-dire que leur surface repousse l'eau, elle glisse littéralement sur les feuilles. Les propriétés superhydrophobes des feuilles de lotus sont dues à une rugosité nanométrique, des petites pointes de l'ordre du nanomètre. Lorsqu'une goutte d'eau tombe sur les petites pointes, elle n'y adhère pas et emporte avec elle les impuretés présentes sur la plante.

Cette propriété physique intéresse bon nombre de domaines et cela depuis sa découverte dans les années 70. Des tissus déperlants, des parois de douche autonettoyantes ou encore des revêtements utilisés en aéronautique sont basés sur la rugosité nanométrique.

© William Thielicke, Wikimedia Commons, CC by-sa 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

FuturaSciences

ASTRONOMY - Cathedral - Mountain - Moon

 2023 December 25

Cathedral, Mountain, Moon
Image Credit & Copyright: Valerio Minato

Explanation: Single shots like this require planning. The first step is to realize that such an amazing triple-alignment actually takes place. The second step is to find the best location to photograph it. But it was the third step: being there at exactly the right time -- and when the sky was clear -- that was the hardest. Five times over six years the photographer tried and found bad weather. Finally, just ten days ago, the weather was perfect, and a photographic dream was realized. Taken in Piemonte, Italy, the cathedral in the foreground is the Basilica of Superga, the mountain in the middle is Monviso, and, well, you know which moon is in the background. Here, even though the setting Moon was captured in a crescent phase, the exposure was long enough for doubly reflected Earthlight, called the da Vinci glow, to illuminate the entire top of the Moon.

ASTRONOMY - NGC 2440: Cocoon of a New White Dwarf

 2023 December 24

NGC 2440: Cocoon of a New White Dwarf
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: H. Bond (STScI), R. Ciardullo (PSU), Forrest Hamilton (STScI)

Explanation: What's that in the center? Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon of gas that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a caterpillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest cocoon of all. In the featured cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440 contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright orange dot near the image center. Our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf butterfly, but not for another 5 billion years.

ASTRONOMY - A December Summer Night

 2023 December 23

A December Summer Night
Image Credit & Copyright: Ian Griffin (Otago Museum)

Explanation: Colours of a serene evening sky are captured in this 8 minute exposure, made near this December's solstice from New Zealand, southern hemisphere, planet Earth. Looking south, star trails form the short concentric arcs around the rotating planet's south celestial pole positioned just off the top of the frame. At top and left of center are trails of the Southern Cross stars and a dark smudge from the Milky Way's Coalsack Nebula. Alpha and Beta Centauri make the brighter yellow and blue tinted trails, reflected below in the waters of Hoopers Inlet in the Pacific coast of the South Island's Otago Peninsula. On that short December summer night, aurora australis also gave luminous, green and reddish hues to the sky above the hills. An upper atmospheric glow distinct from the aurora excited by collisions with energetic particles, pale greenish bands of airglow caused by a cascade of chemical reactions excited by sunlight can be traced in diagonal bands near the top left.

ASTRONOMY - 183 Days in the Sun

 2023 December 22

183 Days in the Sun
Image Credit & Copyright: José Zarcos Palma

Explanation: A single 183 day exposure with a pinhole camera and photographic paper resulted in this long-duration solargraph. Recorded from solstice to solstice, June 21 to December 21, in 2022, it follows the Sun's daily arcing path through planet Earth's skies from Mertola, Portugal. On June 21, the Sun's highest point and longest arc represents the longest day and the astronomical beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere. The solstice date with the fewest hours of daylight is at the beginning of winter in the north, corresponding to the Sun's shortest and lowest arc in the 2022 solargraph. For 2023, the northern winter solstice was on December 22 at 3:27 UTC. That's December 21 for North America time zones.

ASTRONOMY - Geminids over China's Nianhu Lake

 2023 December 17

Geminids over China's Nianhu Lake
Image Credit & Copyright: Hongyang Luo

Explanation: Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December is known as the Geminids -- because shower meteors all appear to come from a radiant toward Gemini. Three dimensionally, however, sand-sized debris expelled from the unusual asteroid 3200 Phaethon follows a well-defined orbit about our Sun, and the part of the orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the constellation of Gemini. Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris appears in Gemini. Featured here is a composite of many images taken a few days ago through dark skies from Nianhu Lake in China. Over 100 bright meteor streaks from the Geminids meteor shower are visible.