Science
How to watch Mars shine bright during opposition on Tuesday night – CNET
Forget Halloween. October 2020 is all about the glory of Mars, as the glimmering red planet puts on a show in the night sky. We passed Mars’ close approach to Earth on Oct. 6 and now we’re pumped for Oct. 13, when it will be in opposition.
Spotting Mars
Mars has a reputation as the “red” planet, but its color in the night sky is a little more on the Halloween side of the spectrum. It appears as a bright orange-red dot to the naked eye, like a little spot of glittering rust.
Mars’ distinctive color is one clue you’ve found it in the dark. Look to the eastern sky to catch it rising at night. This is a great time for viewing the planet, partly because spotting it is so simple. It should be visible for most of the night. As NASA says, “Simply go outside and look up and, depending on your local weather and lighting conditions, you should be able to see Mars.”
Check out our list of stargazing apps if you want some extra help with locating the planet.
Opposition: Oct. 13
When Mars and the sun line up with Earth in the middle, the red planet is said to be in opposition. This is a perfect time to track Mars’ movement across the sky. It will rise in the east as the sun goes down, move across the sky and then set in the west as the sun comes up.
NASA describes opposition as “effectively a ‘full’ Mars.” Tuesday, Oct. 13 is the time to enjoy opposition. You’ll have to wait over two years for it to happen again.
The Virtual Telescope Project, which brings us live feeds of celestial events, will stream a Mars opposition viewing starting at 1 p.m. PT. on Oct. 13. It’s a perfect way to enjoy the action without weather worries. For people in the US, it will give you a preview of what to look for after sundown.
The project expects this to be “the best observing conditions since July 2018.”
“The racetrack model of planetary orbits explains why. Earth and Mars are like runners on a track. Earth is on the inside, Mars is on the outside,” NASA said in its What’s Up blog for October. “Every 26 months, speedy Earth catches up to slower Mars and laps it. Opposition occurs just as Earth takes the lead.”
Mars isn’t the only show-off in the sky for October. You can also look forward to a rare Halloween blue moon when our lunar neighbor is full on Oct. 31. It’s not spooky; it’s boo-tiful.
Rewind to the close approach on Oct. 6
Tuesday, Oct. 6 marked the close approach of Mars to Earth, but this entire month is still a good time to grab a telescope and get a little better look. Give a wave to NASA’s Perseverance rover while you’re at it. The vehicle is on track to reach the planet in February 2021.
NASA shared an artist’s view of the Tuesday, Oct. 6 close approach compared with the last time it snuggled up in July 2018. The apparent sizes look very similar. This year, Mars had a minimum distance of 38.6 million miles (62 million kilometers), which is about 3 million miles farther away than in 2018.
Close approach may be over, but the planet is still plenty bright in the night, so get out and take a gander, or tune into the Virtual Telescope Project’s live feed from the comfort of your computer.
Science
Giant prehistoric salmon had tusk-like teeth for defence, building nests
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The artwork and publicity materials showcasing a giant salmon that lived five million years ago were ready to go to promote a new exhibit, when the discovery of two fossilized skulls immediately changed what researchers knew about the fish.
Initial fossil discoveries of the 2.7-metre-long salmon in Oregon in the 1970s were incomplete and had led researchers to mistakenly suggest the fish had fang-like teeth.
It was dubbed the “sabre-toothed salmon” and became a kind of mascot for the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon, says researcher Edward Davis.
But then came discovery of two skulls in 2014.
Davis, a member of the team that found the skulls, says it wasn’t until they got back to the lab that he realized the significance of the discovery that has led to the renaming of the fish in a new, peer-reviewed study.
“There were these two skulls staring at me with sideways teeth,” says Davis, an associate professor in the department of earth sciences at the university.
In that position, the tusk-like teeth could not have been used for biting, he says.
“That was definitely a surprising moment,” says Davis, who serves as director of the Condon Fossil Collection at the university’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
“I realized that all of the artwork and all of the publicity materials and bumper stickers and buttons and T-shirts we had just made two months prior, for the new exhibit, were all out of date,” he says with a laugh.
Davis is co-author of the new study in the journal PLOS One, which renames the giant fish the “spike-toothed salmon.”
It says the salmon used the tusk-like spikes for building nests to spawn, and as defence mechanisms against predators and other salmon.
The salmon lived about five million years ago at a time when Earth was transitioning from warmer to relatively cooler conditions, Davis says.
It’s hard to know exactly why the relatives of today’s sockeye went extinct, but Davis says the cooler conditions would have affected the productivity of the Pacific Ocean and the amount of rain feeding rivers that served as their spawning areas.
Another co-author, Brian Sidlauskas, says a fish the size of the spike-toothed salmon must have been targeted by predators such as killer whales or sharks.
“I like to think … it’s almost like a sledgehammer, these salmon swinging their head back and forth in order to fend off things that might want to feast on them,” he says.
Sidlauskas says analysis by the lead author of the paper, Kerin Claeson, found both male and female salmon had the “multi-functional” spike-tooth feature.
“That’s part of our reason for hypothesizing that this tooth is multi-functional … It could easily be for digging out nests,” he says.
“Think about how big the (nest) would have to be for an animal of this size, and then carving it out in what’s probably pretty shallow water; and so having an extra digging tool attached to your head could be really useful.”
Sidlauskas says the giant salmon help researchers understand the boundaries of what’s possible with the evolution of salmon, but they also capture the human imagination and a sense of wonder about what’s possible on Earth.
“I think it helps us value a little more what we do still have, or I hope that it does. That animal is no longer with us, but it is a product of the same biosphere that sustains us.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2024.
Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press
Science
Giant prehistoric salmon had tusk-like spikes used for defence, building nests: study
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A new paper says a giant salmon that lived five million years ago in the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest used tusk-like spikes as defense mechanisms and for building nests to spawn.
The initial fossil discoveries of the 2.7-metre-long salmon in Oregon in the 1970s were incomplete and led researchers to suggest the fish had fang-like teeth.
The now-extinct fish was dubbed the “saber-tooth salmon,” but the study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One today renames it the “spike-toothed salmon” and says both males and females possessed the “multifunctional” feature.
Study co-author Edward Davis says the revelation about the tusk-like teeth came after the discovery of fossilized skulls at a site in Oregon in 2014.
Davis, an associate professor in the department of earth sciences at the University of Oregon, says he was surprised to see the skulls had “sideways teeth.”
Contrary to the belief since the 1970s, he says the teeth couldn’t have been used for any kind of biting.
“That was definitely a surprising moment,” Davis says of the fossil discovery in 2014. “I realized that all of the artwork and all of the publicity materials … we had just made two months prior, for the new exhibit, were all out of date.”
Science
SpaceX sends 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit
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April 23 (UPI) — SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit Tuesday evening from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Liftoff occurred at 6:17 EDT with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sending the payload of 23 Starlink satellites into orbit.
The Falcon 9 rocket’s first-stage booster landed on an autonomous drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean after separating from the rocket’s second stage and its payload.
The entire mission was scheduled to take about an hour and 5 minutes to complete from launch to satellite deployment.
The mission was the ninth flight for the first-stage booster that previously completed five Starlink satellite-deployment missions and three other missions.
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