The sky is not the limit | A lunar eclipse is coming, there is an asteroid around it and more!

The longest lunar eclipse of this century will happen next week, but we are already preparing for the observations – and you can check out the details about the event in the next few lines now. In addition, we will receive a “mini visit” from an asteroid that will pass close to Earth soon. The week also saw discoveries about the core of our galaxy and new mergers of black holes and neutron stars. The bad news is the postponement of the Artemis program that will bring astronauts back to the Moon.

Check out these and other top space news for the week below:

The next partial lunar eclipse will occur on November 19 and will be the longest in the century — it will be 3:28:23 in length, according to NASA. If we also take into account the partial eclipse, which is when the Moon enters the “weakest” shadow cast by the Earth, before entering darkness, this will be 6 hours and 2 minutes.

This eclipse will be so long that in South America we will not be able to see the entire event, because the day will rise before the moon leaves the shadow of the Earth. Country weather conditions can interfere a bit with seeing the eclipse, but if you can’t see it in your area, you can still catch the stream online.

Asteroid 2004 UE, discovered in 2004, passes relatively close to Earth. In fact, using the “visit” analogy, it’s more of a wave out of the gate, because it doesn’t get close enough to pose any danger. The space rock is estimated to have a diameter of 160 meters and is approaching our planet this Saturday (13), at a distance equal to more than 30 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Although the road is a long way off, the 2004 UE made it onto the list of potentially dangerous things as it might come close in the future. The question is when this could happen, and there is no expected impact of this (or any other of the 2,000 potentially dangerous asteroids) over the next 100 years.

The prediction above is also valid for asteroid (163899) 2003 SD220, which will also pass relatively close to Earth in December. Space rocks will pass at a rate of 14 times the distance between Earth and the Moon, and have a diameter of 800 meters and a diameter Astronomers have already taken a picture of him.

The Sun is 4.6 billion years old and it is estimated that it is still in its middle age. But there is some doubt about what will happen to him when it’s time to become a red giant. It is possible to get an idea by looking at similar stars already present in these last breaths. A new Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 2438, a globular planetary nebula formed by large clouds of gas ejected by a “dying” star.

The stage that NGC 2438 reached should take no more than 10,000 years (the blink of an eye on the astronomical scale) and is the result of a process similar to what awaits our star: the hydrogen used in nuclear fusion has run out, the core will begin to cool and contract, affecting the delicate balance of pressure and gravity, and eventually A kind of armor would envelop the chassis. A great deal of energy will then be released, causing the outer layers of the Sun to expand, followed by eruptions, and eventually all that remains is just a white dwarf.

Cosmic rays, the atomic nuclei from which their electrons are ripped off and flow through space at nearly the speed of light, cannot reach the nucleus of the Milky Way, but they should. This is because, apparently, there is some kind of “barrier” that prevents these particles from reaching the galactic core, and no one yet knows how to explain how this happens.

It is true that there is a very dense cloud in this region, but it is not dense enough to block the particles. The energy in these electron-free nuclei produces light with wavelengths that can pass through dust, so the scientists concluded that something more mysterious was working. What will happen? We don’t know yet.

We were treated to the strongest aurora borealis on the entire expedition, over North America and Canada. Stunning heights above our orbit, we flew right above the center of the ring, fast waves and pulsations everywhere. #MissionAlpha https://t.co/5rdb08ljhx pic.twitter.com/0liCkGvRCh

– Thomas Bisquet (@Thom_astro) November 6, 2021

The solar flares in the past few weeks have been intense and created fairy auroras, which impressed even astronauts who were on the International Space Station (ISS). Someone filmed the phenomenon from there, from Earth’s orbit, and said that the lights of dawn exceeded the height of the International Space Station.

Coronal mass ejections have become a little more intense since late October, releasing bubbles of plasma into space. The deadliest CMEs occurred on November 1 and 2, from a sunspot called AR2887, both of which were “disassembled” by a third CME at the end of Tuesday (2). There was no danger to our planet or the electronics orbiting it.

The gravitational-wave observatories LIGO, Ligo, and KAGRA have announced the latest set of detected events, bringing together 35 astonishing collisions between the two most dense objects in the universe: black holes and neutron stars. The most important of these data is that gravitational waves have detected some objects that may be intermediate-mass black holes, a rare category that astronomers have long sought.

This black hole would have a mass of about 87 times the mass of the Sun, and it merged with a smaller companion, 61 solar masses. The result was a massive 141 solar masses, a size greater than that considered a stellar mass. The last merger resulted in a black hole with a mass of 104 times the mass of the Sun, which is also in the expected median range.

The news isn’t exactly a surprise at this point, but NASA has officially postponed the Artemis program. According to information from NASA officials, the moon landing will need to be postponed for at least a year and will not take place until 2025. The space agency was already “working against time” and setbacks had hampered plans.

One of the main “culprits” was the lawsuit brought by Blue Origin against NASA. Other political and technical obstacles also affected the schedule, but the US presidential transition team acknowledged that the timeframe proposed by former President Donald Trump was not very realistic.

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