Timelapse of the auroras from Space
Check out this timelapse video of the auroras from space that was captured by NASA astronaut Jonny Kim.
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CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
CTV National News: Meteor shower set to light up night sky
Watch A dazzling meteor shower peaks tonight and tomorrow morning. Kathy Le shows how and when to catch this celestial spectacle.
CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
Satellite images reveal conditions that contributed to ‘catastrophic' wildfire season
The use of images from space and artificial intelligence can help in detecting areas that may be prone to extreme wildfires, researchers suggest. A fire burns as fire crews continue to fight wildfires around Lac du Bonnet, Man., Thursday, May 15, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/David Lipnowski WINNIPEG — Images from space and artificial intelligence can help detect areas prone to extreme wildfires, researchers suggest, after satellite photos showed dry parts of Manitoba ahead of its devastating wildfire season. Scientists from the University of Ottawa and Université Laval in Quebec used data collected by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Drought Monitor to review areas hit by fast-moving blazes in late spring. They found various climate anomalies, including a lack of winter snowfall and spring rain, contributed to 'cumulative vegetation stress,' or drier soil and vegetation. 'Canada is often seen as a land of endless water with countless lakes, rivers and wetlands, but ... right now we face the situation of the drought. Drought is more than just no rain,' said project lead Hossein Bonakdari, an associate engineering professor at the University of Ottawa. In early May, severe wildfires broke out in various parts of Manitoba and spread rapidly due to hot, dry and windy conditions, leading to the province's worst wildfire season in 30 years. Flames also claimed the lives of two people near Lac du Bonnet, northeast of Winnipeg. The researchers used the data to track irregularities in snow coverage, precipitation, temperature and soil moisture. 'While each anomaly alone appeared moderate, the observed spatial and temporal overlap of moderate anomalies suggests a potential synergistic effect that significantly preconditioned the environment for ignition,' says the study published in the journal Earth. Researchers have said wildfire seasons are expected to become worse each year. The intensity of fires this year is a 'consequence' of drought conditions and the last few fire seasons, said Bonakdari. His team says the study underscores the importance of integrating climate and biosphere anomalies into wildfire risk monitoring, in order to be better prepared for wildfire seasons accelerating under climate change. They say using satellite imagery can help determine which areas are at risk of early-season fires. 'This is particularly important in a changing climate, where such compound conditions are expected to become more frequent, subtle and hazardous,' says the study. A spokesperson for the Manitoba government said in an email that the province 'already uses satellite data and drought monitoring when it prepares for each wildfire season.' However, Canada doesn't have its own satellite system to monitor active forest fires across the country, and instead relies on partners to access images from space. That's expected to change in 2029, when the federal government said it plans to launch seven satellites into orbit under the WildFireSat program. It's to collect daily data on active forest fires, allowing officials to determine which are the most dangerous and predict their behaviour. That information would help officials make better use of firefighters and equipment — and ultimately save lives, the president of the Canadian Space Agency said earlier this year. Infrared sensors are to be installed on the satellites to produce thermal imaging, allowing officials to assess the intensity of fires and track their progress. However, with Canada's current wildfire season now the second-worst on record, Bonakdari said governments need to act now. 'The conditions are ready to again have a type of catastrophic event.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 12, 2025. Brittany Hobson, The Canadian Press
CBC
7 hours ago
- CBC
One of the biggest black holes ever was discovered — with a mass of 35 billion suns
Astronomers have discovered what they say is among the most massive black holes ever detected. The cosmic behemoth is close to the theoretical upper limit of what's possible in the universe, and is 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy. It's also 35 billion times as large as our sun, which makes it able to be classified as an ultramassive black hole. Carlos Roberto de Melo-Carneiro, who discovered the black hole, told CBC News it was "among the most massive black holes ever measured." He says it's also another key to understanding how black holes are formed and how they can be studied in the future. An ultramassive black hole This is actually Melo-Carneiro's first research involving black holes. The PhD student at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil is the lead author of the study about it published on Thursday, and found it when looking at dark matter in the galaxy. His initial plan was to learn about how dark matter and galaxies evolve in the Cosmic Horseshoe system five billion light years away. This black hole was likely created by galaxies containing supermassive black holes colliding and merging. Melo-Carneiro said researchers can usually estimate the mass of black holes based on the mass of the galaxies, but this one was more massive than they expected. He says this is important because it allows them to gain further insight into how other massive black holes will form and what might happen to them in the future. There are other massive black holes out there, such as TON 618, which NASA says is 66 billion times the sun's mass and about 10 billion light years away. Melo-Carneiro says he isn't claiming that what they found is bigger, simply that it's one of the biggest ever recorded, and another piece of the puzzle to understand ultramassive black holes and how they work. "Most of the other black hole mass measurements are indirect and have quite large uncertainties, so we really don't know for sure which is biggest," said University of Portsmouth professor Thomas Collett, Melo-Carneiro's supervisor and one of the paper's authors, in a media release. "However, we've got much more certainty about the mass of this black hole thanks to our new method." New methods, existing technology Melo-Carneiro said that, traditionally, black holes are measured using the motion of the stars. The more massive the black hole, the faster the stars move around it. However, this technique is more accurate for nearby galaxies, so he combined it with another method called gravitational lensing — looking at how the light from a distant galaxy is bent and distorted by the gravity of the black hole. "The new thing with our method and our work is that we use both to improve our measurements of the black hole," he said. "This is something very new that as far as I know no one else has done before." The research also used 2014 data from the Hubble Telescope and 2017 data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, meaning they had multiple ways of verifying their findings. "I really appreciate it when scientists use complementary methods like this to validate their findings and make their science more secure," said Daryl Haggard, an associate professor of physics at McGill University and a Canada Research Chair in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics, in an email to CBC news. "Not every 'biggest of' result merits our attention, but we have struggled for a long time to understand how supermassive black holes grow and, in particular, how they grow so quickly." Melo-Carneiro is far more confident in the research thanks to this new method. One benefit is that it can measure "dormant" black holes like the one he found — which aren't actively growing and colliding — and involves fewer assumptions about how galaxies operate. The Milky Way's black hole also considered dormant, but he says there are big size differences between ours and the Cosmic Horseshoe system. "I'll not say that we can learn about our future, but we can indeed learn about the future of other massive galaxies in the universe." Not surprising to some Priyamvada Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist and the Joseph and Sophia Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University. She said she was excited to hear about the recent discovery but wasn't all that surprised, since ultramassive black holes are something she predicted in her 2009 paper. Natarajan explained that there is a correlation between the size of galaxies and the size of the black holes within them. There are also typically two ways black holes get bigger, repeated collisions with other galaxies that merge the black holes or by being fed gas so they can grow. In that paper, she coined the term "ultramassive black hole," and says that this one fits within what is predicted in her research and the equations she developed during it. While she says it's not an outlier, Natarajan says the implications of this discovery for black hole research are that it might prove to be a powerful method to find black holes and measure their mass. "I think it tells us that we may want to start looking for more and more of these systems," she said. "They're powerful in terms of telling us more about how matter is heaped in the centre of these galaxies."
