MUSIQUE - Camille Saint-Saens - Danse macabre

"Danse macabre"

ASTRONOMY - A Rocket in the Sun

2025 September 27

A Rocket in the Sun
Image Credit & Copyright: Pascal Fouquet

Explanation: On the morning of September 24 a rocket crosses the bright solar disk in this long range telescopic snapshot captured from Orlando, Florida. That's about 50 miles north of its Kennedy Space Center launch site. This rocket carried three new space weather missions to space. Signals have now been successfully acquired from all three - NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) - as they begin their journey to L1, an Earth-Sun lagrange point. L1 is about 1.5 million kilometers in the sunward direction from planet Earth. Appropriately, major space weather influencers, aka dark sunspots in active regions across the Sun, are posing with the transiting rocket. In fact, large active region AR4225 is just right of the rocket's nose. 

ASTRONOMY - A SWAN, an ATLAS, and Mars

 2025 September 26

A SWAN, an ATLAS, and Mars
Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block

Explanation: A new visitor to the inner Solar System, comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) sports a long ion tail extending diagonally across this almost 7 degree wide telescopic field of view recorded on September 21. A fainter fellow comet also making its inner Solar System debut, C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), can be spotted above and left of SWAN's greenish coma, just visible against the background sea of stars in the constellation Virgo. Both new comets were only discovered in 2025 and are joined in this celestial frame by ruddy planet Mars (bottom), a more familiar wanderer in planet Earth's night skies. The comets may appear to be in a race, nearly neck and neck in their voyage through the inner Solar System and around the Sun. But this comet SWAN has already reached its perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on September 12 and is now outbound along its orbit. This comet ATLAS is still inbound though, and will make its perihelion passage on October 8.

OCEANOGRAPHIE - Les vagues scélérates - Le jour où l'océan a riposté

Le jour de l'An 1995, une vague scélérate de 24 mètres (80 pieds) s'est abattue sur la plate-forme pétrolière Draupner en mer du Nord, tordant les garde-corps en acier et projetant du matériel lourd à travers le pont.

©Getty Images

ASTRONOMY - Saturn Opposite the Sun

 2025 September 25

Saturn Opposite the Sun
Image Credit & Copyright: Jin Wang

Explanation: This year Saturn was at opposition on September 21, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. At its closest to Earth, Saturn was also at its brightest of the year, rising as the Sun set and shining above the horizon all night long among the fainter stars of the constellation Pisces. In this snapshot from the Qinghai Lenghu Observatory, Tibetan Plateau, southwestern China, the outer planet is immersed in a faint, diffuse oval of light known as the gegenschein or counter glow. The diffuse gegenschein is produced by sunlight backscattered by interplanetary dust along the Solar System's ecliptic plane, opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. Like a giant eye, on this dark night Saturn and gegenschein seem to stare down on the observatory's telescope domes from their antisolar perspective. Strong, atmospheric airglow forms a colorful background along the horizon.

ASTRONOMY - GW250114: Rotating Black Holes Collide

 2025 September 24

GW250114: Rotating Black Holes Collide
Illustration Credit: Aurore Simonnet (SSU/EdEon), LVK, URI; LIGO Collaboration

Explanation: It was the strongest gravitational wave signal yet measured -- what did it show? GW250114 was detected by both arms of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington and Louisiana USA earlier this year. Analysis showed that the event was created when two black holes, each of mass around 33 times the mass of the Sun, coalesced into one larger black hole with a mass of around 63 solar masses. Even though the event happened about a billion light years away, the signal was so strong that the spin of all black holes, as well as initial ringing of the final black hole, was deduced with exceptional accuracy. Furthermore, it was confirmed better than before, as previously predicted, that the total event horizon area of the combined black hole was greater than those of the merging black holes. Featured, an artist's illustration depicts an imaginative and conceptual view from near one of the black holes before collision.

OCEANOGRAPHIE - Les vagues scélérates - Hollywood versus la réalité (2/29)

Dans le film catastrophe "Poséidon" sorti en 2006, un paquebot de luxe est renversé par une énorme vague scélérate, obligeant les passagers à lutter pour leur survie. Si Hollywood exagère le côté dramatique, ces vagues géantes représentent un danger bien réel en pleine mer.

©NL Beeld

ASTRONOMY - NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars

2025 September 23

NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JWST; Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI);
Rollover: NASA, ESA, HST, & J. M. Apellániz (IAA, Spain); Acknowledgement: D. De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

Explanation: How massive can a normal star be? Estimates made from distance, brightness and standard solar models had given one star in the open cluster Pismis 24 over 200 times the mass of our Sun, making it one of the most massive stars known. This star is the brightest object located in the central cavity near the bottom center of the featured image taken with the Webb Space Telescope in infrared light. For comparison, a rollover image from the Hubble Space Telescope is also featured in visible light. Close inspection of the images, however, has shown that Pismis 24-1 derives its brilliant luminosity not from a single star but from three at least. Component stars would still remain near 100 solar masses, making them among the more massive stars currently on record. Toward the bottom of the image, stars are still forming in the associated emission nebula NGC 6357. Appearing perhaps like a Gothic cathedral, energetic stars near the center appear to be breaking out and illuminating a spectacular cocoon. 

SANTé/MEDECINE - La grossesse mois par mois

Lors du premier mois de grossesse, la formation de l'embryon commence. Ici, un embryon à huit cellules. © Deva Studio, Shutterstock

Les quatre premières semaines de grossesse

Le premier mois de grossesse correspond à la phase de développement embryonnaire, durant laquelle a lieu la segmentation puis la nidation. À la troisième semaine, l'œuf mesure 3 millimètres. Il s'installe sur la muqueuse utérine.

L'embryon commence à se former, notamment le cœur, qui commence à battre vers la quatrième semaine. C'est lors de cette quatrième semaine que le développement s'accélère. Le cordon ombilical se forme.

Les signes de la grossesse

Du côté de la maman, les œstrogènes et la progestérone, des hormones qui l'accompagneront durant toute la grossesse, ont déjà commencé leur travail. Très vite la poitrine va prendre du volume et devenir plus ferme, les mamelons vont se foncer et s'élargir. Il est possible de ressentir une somnolence et des nausées.

FuturaSciences

ASTRONOMY - Equinox at Saturn

 2025 September 22

Equinox at Saturn
Image Credit & Copyright: Imran Sultan

Explanation: On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth, today marks an equinox, the time when the Earth's equator tilts directly toward the Sun. Since Saturn's grand rings orbit along the planet's equator, these rings appear most prominent -- from the direction of the Sun -- when the spin axis of Saturn points toward the Sun. Conversely, when Saturn's spin axis points to the side, an equinox occurs, and the edge-on rings are hard to see from not only the Sun -- but Earth. In the featured montage, images of Saturn between the years of 2020 and 2025 have been superposed to show the giant planet passing, with this year's equinox, from summer in the north to summer in the south. Yesterday, Saturn was coincidently about as close as it gets to planet Earth, and so this month the ringed giant's orb is relatively bright and visible throughout the night.