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Metro
29-07-2025
- Science
- Metro
Here's how to see the Delta Aquariid meteor shower in the UK this week
Stargazers are in for a treat as a breathtaking meteor shower peaks across the UK this week. The Delta Aquariid, also known as the Southern Delta Aquariids, will light up the sky most brightly tomorrow night. While the meteor shower is more visible, as its name implies, in the Southern Hemisphere, the UK and the wider Northern Hemisphere can still catch a good show, experts told Metro. Some meteor showers are caused by comets, dirty snowballs made of the leftovers from the start of our solar system around 4.6billion years ago. Comets leave behind trails of ice and rock that linger in space years after they leave, said Dr Cyrielle Opitom, of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. She told Metro: 'Small dust particles left behind then enter the atmosphere and become meteors. This is usually the source of meteor showers. 'Other times, random small asteroids or pieces of rock not related to a comet enter the atmosphere and can also become meteors.' When the comet waste enters the atmosphere, it hits the sky at such speed that it bursts into flames, causing a celestial fireworks display. Scientists aren't 100% sure which comet is behind the Delta Aquariid, though they suspect it's from the 3.7-mile-wide Comet 96P Machholz, says Charlotte Bays, the secretary of the space rock monitoring group UK Fireball Alliance. The shooting stars case occurs as the Earth 'passes through the stream of debris shed' by the snowball, said Bays. 'It is also what we call a 'short-period' comet, completing an orbit every 5.24 years; this year,' she added. The debris you're seeing isn't from the comet passing by; it's just the trail it left behind years ago. The next time Comet 96P Machholz will glide past us is June 16, 2028. Astronomers named the shower after the constellation Aquarius and its brightest star, Delta Aquarii, which is the point of the sky from which the meteors seem to come. Typically, the Earth passes through the cosmic rubble from late July to early August. This year, the shower will peak on the night of Tuesday July 30, but remain visible until August 23. The peak, which is when Earth reaches the densest part of the cosmic debris, is the best chance to see the meteor shower, explained Charlotte Bays, the secretary of the monitoring group UK Fireball Alliance. Stargazers can expect up to 20 meteors an hour for days with a dark sky and no pesky Moon. About one in 10 Delta Aquariid meteors have persistent trains, glowing gassy trails that give these space rocks their iconic shape. While you might assume you need a fancy telescope or binoculars to see the meteors, the naked eye is best, as the tech limits your field of vision. To see a meteor shower you need to get to a place that has a clear view of the night sky, recommended Dr Edward Bloomer, senior astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Ideally, that's as far away as possible from cities, street lights and traffic. Planetariums, astronomy clubs or even maps like this one for light pollution and this for nighttime brightness can help. But stargazers have two other foes – the weather and the Moon. So, it's always best to check the weather report for that night as well as how visible the Moon will be. Be prepared for long stretches where nothing happens, Dr Bloomer half-joked, 'or little flurries of activity where you see several in quick succession'. 'The appearance is of a short-lived streak of light ('shooting stars' is pretty apt!) that will be radiating outwards from a point,' he added. 'Importantly, unless you've set up with recording equipment, a shooting star only lasts long enough for quite a personal experience: there's no time really to point it out to anyone before it will have disappears. 'It's always fun to go out and have a look with others, but you'll all have a unique encounter!' More Trending Dr Bloomer stressed, however, that the constellation Aquarius is fairly low on the horizon, which might make seeing the shower tricky. 'But it's not impossible,' he added. 'The number one thing is to give yourself time to adjust to the dark (put your phone away!) and be prepared to wait. 'The randomised arrival of the shooting stars means you need to have a little patience.' For those who might miss the shower, the International Meteor Organization lists all the meteor showers that can be seen this year. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Asteroid bigger than the Leaning Tower of Pisa to pass Earth in days MORE: We could get 'proof of aliens by Christmas' after 'interstellar visitor' flies past us MORE: Earth is spinning so fast that today will be shorter – but is time going faster?
Metro
07-07-2025
- Science
- Metro
Here's how to see the Delta Aquariid meteor shower just around the corner
As the Earth does laps around the Sun, it passes through all sorts of space dirt, ice and junk. While thinking of space as one big rubbish tip isn't nice, one perk of all this cosmic filth is meteor showers, which light up the night sky. The next shower you might be able to see is the Delta Aquariid, also known as the Southern Delta Aquariids. While the meteor shower is more visible, as its name implies, in the Southern Hemisphere, the UK and the wider Northern Hemisphere can still catch a good show, experts told Metro. Some meteor showers are caused by comets, dirty snowballs made of the leftovers from the start of our solar system around 4.6billion years ago. Comets leave behind trails of ice and rock that linger in space years after they leave, said Dr Cyrielle Opitom, of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. She told Metro: 'Small dust particles left behind then enter the atmosphere and become meteors. This is usually the source of meteor showers. 'Other times, random small asteroids or pieces of rock not related to a comet enter the atmosphere and can also become meteors.' When the comet waste enters the atmosphere, it hits the sky at such speed that it bursts into flames, causing a celestial fireworks display. Delta Aquariid is a 'moderately strong, but fairly long duration meteor shower', said Dr Edward Bloomer, senior astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Scientists aren't 100% sure which comet is behind the Delta Aquariid, though they suspect it's from the 3.7-mile-wide Comet 96P Machholz. The snowball orbits the Sun every 5.3 years but tends to be close to Mercury's orbit, with some dust left behind about 20,000 years ago. The debris you're seeing isn't from the comet passing by; it's just the trail it left behind years ago. The next time Comet 96P Machholz will glide past us is June 16, 2028. Dr Bloomer adds: 'Because we complete a yearly orbit, it means we hit it again in pretty much exactly the same way each year, so its appearance in our skies is predictable and regular.' Astronomers named the shower after the constellation Aquarius and its brightest star, Delta Aquarii, which is the point of the sky from which the meteors seem to come. Typically, the Earth passes through the cosmic rubble from late July to early August. This year, the shower will be active between mid-evening to dawn from July 12 to August 23, peaking on the night of July 30. The peak, which is when Earth reaches the densest part of the cosmic debris, is the best chance to see the meteor shower. Stargazers can expect up to 20 meteors an hour for days with a dark sky and no pesky Moon. About one in 10 Delta Aquariid meteors have persistent trains, glowing gassy trails that give these space rocks their iconic shape. While you might assume you need a fancy telescope or binoculars to see the meteors, the naked eye is best, as the tech limits your field of vision. To see a meteor shower you need to get to a place that has a clear view of the night sky, recommended Dr Bloomer. Ideally, that's as far away as possible from cities, street lights and traffic. Planetariums, astronomy clubs or even maps like this one for light pollution and this for nighttime brightness can help. But stargazers have two other foes – the weather and the Moon. So, it's always best to check the weather report for that night as well as how visible the Moon will be. Be prepared for long stretches where nothing happens, Dr Bloomer half-joked, 'or little flurries of activity where you see several in quick succession'. 'The appearance is of a short-lived streak of light ('shooting stars' is pretty apt!) that will be radiating outwards from a point,' he added. 'Importantly, unless you've set up with recording equipment, a shooting star only lasts long enough for quite a personal experience: there's no time really to point it out to anyone before it will have disappears. 'It's always fun to go out and have a look with others, but you'll all have a unique encounter!' More Trending Dr Bloomer stressed, however, that the constellation Aquarius is fairly low on the horizon, which might make seeing the shower tricky. 'But it's not impossible,' he added. 'The number one thing is to give yourself time to adjust to the dark (put your phone away!) and be prepared to wait. 'The randomised arrival of the shooting stars means you need to have a little patience.' For those who might miss the shower, the International Meteor Organization lists all the meteor showers that can be seen this year. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Uranus enters Gemini for the first time since 1949 — this is the epiphany it brings your star sign MORE: Trump says he will 'look' at deporting Musk and 'might have to put DOGE on' him MORE: SpaceX Starship explodes again leaving Elon Musk's dream of reaching Mars in ruins
STV News
03-07-2025
- Science
- STV News
Watch meteor blaze across sky and explode with 'sonic boom'
Stargazers across Scotland had a front row seat as a bright meteor was spotted in the night sky. On Wednesday night, a bright orange light was seen shooting across the sky, and a loud bang was also heard. People have reported seeing the meteor in Argyll and Bute as well as on the Isle of Lewis, Stirling, and Glasgow. Adrian Coll The object was seen by Adrian Coll while searching for his friend's missing dog at the roadside at Loch Long at Coulport Naval Base on Wednesday night. Meteors are bits of rock that burn up when they enter the Earth's atmosphere, creating streaking light across the sky. Hundreds of Scots took to social media to share pictures of the bright light, with some reporting hearing a loud bang they assumed was an 'earthquake'. Adrian Coll The object was seen by Adrian Coll at Loch Long at Coulport Naval Base. STV meteorologist Sean Batty said for a bang to be heard, the meteor was probably a piece of space rock bigger than a golf ball. Dr Cyrielle Opitom from the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Astronomy said the meteor looked 'fairly big' in nature. Norma Macleod The object, thought to be a meteor, was caught by Norma Macleod's CCTV on Wednesday night. Norma Macleod The object, thought to be a meteor, was caught by Norma Macleod's CCTV on Wednesday night. While meteors are not uncommon in Scotland, Dr Opitom said this one looks 'quite special' because of how bright it burned. 'We don't know if there are any meteorites that have landed on the ground yet, but it would be really exciting as we could recover the rock from space and analyse it,' she told STV News. Adrian Coll The object, thought to be a meteor, left a trail that was still visible on Thursday morning. 'All over Scotland and the UK, there are cameras from the Fireball Network, so I'm sure footage analysis is well under way. If there are meteorites, we can find them and work back their trajectory.' For a light streak and a bang (sonic boom), it's probably been a piece of space rock that was bigger than a golf ball. These bits of rock, which drift around space pepper planets occasionally when drawn in by their gravitational pull, but luckily, Earth has a protective layer (the atmosphere), which means many of these small rocks burn up and disintegrate on entry. However, sometimes the bigger ones, say bigger than a bowling ball, will burn up on entry, but because of it's size, some of it will survive the journey and reach the ground. With this one spotted last night, it's difficult to say exactly how big it may have been and whether any of it survived to reach the ground. The only way of knowing would be if someone found a piece, although it may have fallen into the sea. The big boom is the sonic boom created because of the speed the meteor enters the atmosphere. It's travelling at speeds way over the speed of sound, compressing the air and creating the boom we hear as it enters the atmosphere. It's the same sound we used to hear when Concorde entered the speed of sound as it headed out over the Atlantic. These sonic booms can sometimes be so intense that windows can shatter, although there have been no reports of that, so it's possible the most intense boom has been over the sea. There was a meteor in 2013 over Russia, which was estimated to be around 20 metres in size which created such a massive shock wave that thousands of buildings were damaged. A great spectacle for those who spotted it, but also thankfully, by the looks of it, something small enough to just put on a bit of a show. Larger meteors are the ones to worry about, which could cause immense damage were they to hit Earth, but the good news is most of the bigger ones are monitored and tracked, although occasionally one can pop up which has been hidden. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Economic Times
09-06-2025
- Science
- Economic Times
The biggest explosion since the Big Bang; Star ripped apart by a Black Hole unleashes history's most powerful and brightest known explosion
TIL Creatives Astronomers discover new class of extreme outbursts shining 25 times brighter than the strongest supernovae Imagine a star, more than three times the mass of our Sun, straying too close to a supermassive black hole. Instead of quietly fading, it's torn apart, and what follows is one of the most powerful explosions ever witnessed. Astronomers now call these titanic outbursts Extreme Nuclear Transients, or ENTs, and they may be the most energetic cosmic phenomena since the universe's inception. ENTs stand apart from regular tidal disruption events (TDEs) and supernovae by a staggering margin. The largest event recorded, named 'Gaia18cdj', unleashed 25 times more energy than the most powerful supernova ever found, equivalent to what 100 Suns would emit over their entire lifetimes, concentrated in a year. The discovery was led by Jason Hinkle, a doctoral researcher at the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy. While combing through data from ESA's Gaia mission, Hinkle noticed something odd: smooth, long‑lasting flares from galactic centers that looked nothing like typical cosmic fireworks. 'Gaia doesn't tell you what a transient is, but when I saw these smooth, long‑lived flares… I knew we were looking at something unusual,' Hinkle said Two such flares were traced to 2016 and 2018, with a third dubbed 'Scary Barbie' detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2020. Follow‑up observations from the WM Keck Observatory and other telescopes confirmed their extraordinary brightness and behave differently from more common cosmic explosions. Typical TDEs brighten and fade within weeks, but ENTs linger for months or even years, shining nearly ten times brighter than any previously studied events For co‑author Benjamin Shappee, ENTs offer something deeper than just fireworks.'ENTs provide a valuable new tool for studying massive black holes in distant galaxies, and we gain insights into black‑hole growth when the universe was half its current age,' he rare, estimated to be ten million times less frequent than supernovae, these cosmic giants offer a powerful way to study black holes in action. With upcoming telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA's Roman Space Telescope, astronomers expect to find more ENTs, painting a richer picture of how black holes shaped our cosmos. As Hinkle puts it, 'This was the final piece of my doctoral work… thrilling to think we're opening a new chapter in understanding how stars die and how black holes shape the universe.'
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Just Discovered The Biggest Explosions Since The Big Bang
A never-before-seen type of giant space explosion – the biggest bangs since the Big Bang – has been accidentally captured by the Gaia space telescope. From the hearts of distant galaxies, the mapping telescope recorded sudden, extreme increases in brightness – colossal flares of light that lingered far longer than any such flares had been known to previously. These blasts were calculated to release as much energy as 100 Suns would over the course of their combined lifetimes. Analysis of that light revealed something that was both new and familiar at the same time: stars being torn apart by black holes, but on a scale we hadn't observed before. Each star was a large one, at least three times as massive as the Sun; and each black hole was a supermassive beast lurking in the center of the star's host galaxy. Such events are usually known as tidal disruption events, or TDEs. Astrophysicists are calling these new ones 'extreme nuclear transients' – ENTs for short. "We've observed stars getting ripped apart as tidal disruption events for over a decade, but these ENTs are different beasts, reaching brightnesses nearly 10 times more than what we typically see," says astrophysicist Jason Hinkle of the University of Hawaiʻi's Institute for Astronomy (IfA). "Not only are ENTs far brighter than normal tidal disruption events, but they remain luminous for years, far surpassing the energy output of even the brightest known supernova explosions." The rather tame term 'tidal disruption' is used to describe what gravitational forces do to an object that gets too close to a black hole. At a certain point, the power of the external gravitational field surpasses the gravity holding an object together, and it comes apart in a wild scream of light before at least partially falling into the great unknown beyond the black hole's event horizon. There are telescopes trained on the sky to catch these screams, applying a wide field of view to take in as much of the sky as possible, waiting for those unpredictable flares that denote the death throes of an unlucky star. Astronomers have managed to observe a good number of TDEs, and know roughly how they should play out. There's a sudden brightening in a distant galaxy, with a light curve that rises to a rapid peak before gradually fading over the course of weeks to months. Astronomers can then analyze that light to determine properties such as the relative masses of the objects involved. Gaia was a space telescope whose mission was to map the Milky Way in three dimensions. It spent a great deal of time staring at the sky to capture precise parallax measurements of the stars in the Milky Way. On occasion, however, it managed to exceed its mission parameters. When combing through Gaia data, Hinkle and his colleagues found two strange events: Gaia16aaw, a flare recorded in 2016; and Gaia18cdj, which the telescope caught in 2018. Both events bore a strong similarity to an event recorded by the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2020. Because that event was so insanely powerful, and because it was given the designation ZTF20abrbeie, astronomers nicknamed it "Scary Barbie". Hinkle and his team determined that Gaia16aaw and Gaia18cdj are the same kind of event as Scary Barbie, and set about trying to figure out what caused them. They ruled out supernova explosions – the events were at least twice as powerful as any other known transients, and supernovae have an upper brightness limit. A supernova, the team explained, typically releases as much light as the Sun will in its entire, 10-billion-year lifespan. The output of an ENT, however, is comparable to the lifetime output of 100 Suns all rolled together. Rather, the properties of the ENT events, the researchers found, were consistent with TDEs – just massively scaled up. That includes how much energy is expended, and the shape of the light curve as the event brightens and fades. ENTs are incredibly rare – the team calculated that they are around 10 million times less frequent than supernovae – but they represent a fascinating piece of the black hole puzzle. Supermassive black holes are millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, and we don't have a clear idea of how they grow. ENTs represent one mechanism whereby these giant objects can pack on mass. "ENTs provide a valuable new tool for studying massive black holes in distant galaxies. Because they're so bright, we can see them across vast cosmic distances – and in astronomy, looking far away means looking back in time," says astrophysicist Benjamin Shappee of IfA. "By observing these prolonged flares, we gain insights into black hole growth during a key era known as cosmic noon, when the universe was half its current age [and] when galaxies were happening places – forming stars and feeding their supermassive black holes 10 times more vigorously than they do today." The research has been published in Science Advances. Titan's Atmosphere 'Wobbles Like a Gyroscope' – And No One Knows Why A 'Crazy Idea' About Pluto Was Just Confirmed in a Scientific First A Giant Mouth Has Opened on The Sun And Even It Looks Surprised
