Winter begins this Saturday in Whitewater with partly sunny skies and a high of 19. Sunrise is 7:22 and sunset is 4:24, for 9 hours, 1 minute of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 62.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world’s first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.
Fall and Winter are may favorite seasons (in that order), but for those preferring warmer weather, there’s a place offering consolation. It’s winter here on Earth,but on springtime on Mars:
Mars scientists have recently marked a new year on the Red Planet, a milestone that occurs every 687 days. Because the Martian new year coincides with spring in the planet’s northern hemisphere, it’s a time of lots of activity — avalanches, exploding jets of gas, and more. JPL research scientist Serina Diniega explains some of the changes to the Martian surface that scientists can track with spacecraft like NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Christmas number 1 song? Top of the Xmas UK music chart? East 17. Mariah Carey. Wham!… Bobby and the Baubles? With the help of East 17’s John Hendy, music mogul Fred Casimir, and a bunch of Fiverr musicians, Great Big Story’s Bob Fletcher attempts to make this dream a reality.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 5:35 and sunset 8:26 for 14h 50m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1832, during the Black Hawk War, Black Hawk leads approximately 700 Sac, Fox, and Kickapoo Indians through the juncture of the Yahara River and Lake Monona (then known as the Third Lake Passage) in present-day Madison. Black Hawk was fleeing the pursuing military.
On this day in 1969, Apollo 11‘s crew successfully made the first human landing on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquility. Six and a half hours later, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon.
On July 20, 1969, humans walked on another world for the first time in history, achieving the goal that President John F. Kennedy had set in 1961, before Americans had even orbited the Earth. After a landing that included dodging a lunar crater and boulder field just before touchdown, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the area around their lunar landing site for more than two hours.
When the lunar module landed at 4:17 p.m EDT, only 30 seconds of fuel remained. Armstrong radioed “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Mission control erupted in celebration as the tension breaks, and a controller tells the crew “You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we’re breathing again.”
Thursday, Pi Day, in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset 7:01 for 11h 55m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 23.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is a United StatesNational Wildlife Refuge (NWR), and part of the Everglades Headwaters NWR complex, located just off the western coast of North Hutchinson Island in the Indian River Lagoon east of Sebastian, Florida. The refuge consists of a 3-acre (12,000 m2) island that includes an additional 2.5 acres (10,000 m2) of surrounding water and is located off the east coast of Florida of the Indian River Lagoon. Established by an executive order of PresidentTheodore Roosevelt on March 14, 1903, Pelican Island was the first National wildlife refuge in the United States.[3] It was created to protect egretsand other birds from extinction through plume hunting. The oldest government wildlife refuge of any kind in North America is the Lake Merritt Bird Refuge in Oakland, California. Oakland Mayor Samuel Merritt declared it a wildlife refuge for migrating birds in 1869. In 1870, the state of California designated Lake Merritt a state game refuge.
SpaceX launched Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, on a journey part of the way around Earth. It was the rocket’s third test flight.
The nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle is being built to carry astronauts to the moon for NASA, and perhaps someday to send humans to Mars.
The vehicle flew twice last year from a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Both flights ended within minutes, resulting in explosive events, providing useful data for SpaceX’s engineers as they aim to complete a full mission.
During this third trip, SpaceX is hoping to achieve a better performance for the rocket, reaching higher altitudes and perhaps even speeds that would be capable of carrying the vehicle to orbit.
Here’s what else you need to know about the flight:
The launch began at 9:25 a.m. Eastern time, more than an hour into a 110-minute launch window that started at 8 a.m. Later starts during test flights are not uncommon. The company said it needed to clear boats from a safety zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and weather conditions did not prevent a liftoff.
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The Starship system consists of two stages — the Super Heavy rocket booster and the upper-stage spacecraft, which is also called Starship. The company intends both to be fully reusable in the future.
The ship was likely lost well after launch, but for today, it was the launch and higher altitude that mattered (as they were the key hurdles of this phase of the project).
Christina Koch recently returned from 328 days in space, and was reunited with her family, including her dog, LBD (Little Brown Dog). As one can imagine, LBD was faithfully excited — See Dog Could Not Possibly Be Happier About This Astronaut’s Return to Earth After a Year in Space.
“It was a feeling that went throughout the world, almost like an electric bolt,” one woman remembers of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The lunar landing, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on July 20, is collectively remembered in the film by a handful of the 530 million people who watched the event live on national…
At Caltech, they’ve published a video simulation of the Milky Way: Animation of our Milky Way galaxy based on a detailed supercomputer simulation. The movie zooms in and out of the galaxy, showing what it would look like in visible wavelengths. Blue regions are young star clusters which have blown away the gas and dust…
NASA enjoyed a successful test of a heavy rocket, and both the federal agency and private enterprise are pushing ahead with rockets powerful enough to support a mission to Mars. A booster for the most powerful rocket in the world, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), successfully fired up Tuesday for its second qualification ground test…
