A Sharjah observatory has detected "rare sequential impacts" on the Moon.

Detected by the Sharjah Astronomical Observatory, the team has analysed the time of impacts and their relative positions. Based on this, it has been determined that they are a series of meteorite impacts. They resulted from the disintegration of the meteoroid due to the gravitational pull of the Moon as it approaches its surface.
It appears from preliminary analyses that these impacts have created new craters on the surface of the Moon ranging in diameter from 5 to 10 metres.

What comes to mind when you think of an "astronomer"? Perhaps a scientist peering through a telescope, contemplating the origins of the Universe? Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.

These days, a vast majority of professional astronomers spend their time behind computers instead. Modern telescopes are computer-controlled and hooked up to an array of high-precision instruments used to record vast quantities of high-precision data, far beyond the capabilities of the human eye. Astronomy is an exciting job, but only about 10,000 people work as professional astronomers today.

The work of an astronomer is one of the oldest skilled professions in the world. In ancient times, people observed the Sun, Moon and stars to navigate across land and sea, to understand the cycles of nature, and to predict seasonal changes, weather patterns, and the behaviour of plants and animals. This science is something that First Australians developed long ago. Knowledge of the stars is also used as a guide for informing traditional Law, social behaviours, kinship systems, and marriage classes - a practice that continues today.

Some of this knowledge is known communally, but the role of astronomer is usually the responsibility of highly knowledgeable individuals who observe the rising and setting of particular stars throughout the year, and keep track of the motions of the Sun, the phases of the Moon, and movements of the planets. "Indigenous astronomy" is more than the star knowledge of Indigenous people: it is the First Astronomy - the science of the stars that existed before, and independently of, the development of Western science.

The body of knowledge developed and maintained by traditional astronomers is rich and complex. Every single object in the night sky has a name, a meaning, and a link to the land. This body of knowledge is committed to memory through a powerful and enduring system of oral tradition. This utilises the power of story, song and dance to teach new generations, who memorise the information using the "method of loci". This technique involves associating a memory or bit of information to a place or object, such as a feature in the land or sky. This is why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people talk about the importance of the stars and maintaining a close connection to Country. Laws, kinship and travel routes are all encoded in the stars. This idea is encapsulated in the title of Warwick Thornton's 2017 film about the Southern Cross, We Don't Need a Map - it's already there, in the stars.

You know that feeling where your balance isn't quite right and you find yourself falling over very slowly, but with seemingly no power to stop? Saturn knows it too - or would if only it was a sentient being. Saturn's fall from uprightness is taking hundreds of millions of years, some scientists conclude, laying the blame on its moons.

The gas from which the planets formed swirled in the plane of their orbits. Without anything to change them, each should point straight up at right angles to their path around the Sun. The reality is messier. The angle between a planet's equator and its orbital plane is called its obliquity. Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter behave as expected, with obliquity values of just a few degrees, making their seasons almost undetectable. Mars and Neptune have values a little greater than the Earth's 23.4º, while Uranus has flopped over entirely and is rotating sideways, and a little backward, its obliquity an improbable 98 degrees.

The reasons for each tilt are as individual as the planets themselves, and sometimes all is not as it seems. Saturn's obliquity of 26.7º - neatly fitting between Mars and Neptune - isn't unusual, but still requires an explanation. Most astronomers believe the cause lies more than four billion years ago when the Solar System was young and resonance with Neptune's orbit tilted Saturn over. Dr Melaine Saillenfest of Sorbonne Université has challenged that, arguing it's actually happening before our eyes.

High above the Arctic Circle in Lofoten, Norway, citizen scientist Rob Stammes operates a space weather monitoring station. His sensors detect ground currents, auroras, radio bursts, and disturbances in Earth's magnetic field. Yesterday, he says, "I received a musical note from the magnetosphere."

"Around 05.30 UTC on Jan. 18th, our local magnetic field began to swing back and forth in a rhythmic pattern," he says. "Electrical currents in the ground did the same thing. It was a nearly pure sine wave--like a low frequency musical note. The episode lasted for more than 2 hours."

Stammes has received such notes before, but they are rare. "I see a pattern like this only about once a year," he says.

In 2008, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency gave $22 million to the exotic science division of Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow's space startup — Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, or BAASS — to study "breakthrough technologies" and UFOs. A Debrief investigation, including new unredacted internal documents, illuminates some of the odd history of this secretive program and reveals that some of the government's money was directed to even stranger things than they had in mind.

The Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program

In 2008, at the behest of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, then the majority leader, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) funded the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP). According to the solicitation bid, the purpose was to explore "potential breakthrough technology applications employed in future aerospace weapon systems." Though the Pentagon told The Debrief earlier this year that the DIA was not investigating UFOs, significant evidence exists that seems to contradict their position. The confusion may stem from the fact that the project's solicitation document purposefully left out mention of the controversial topic altogether.

"The people putting out the bid thought it would be better that it didn't say flying saucers or unidentified flying objects," former Sen. Reid told The Debrief in an interview. "It was thought by many that it would just draw too much attention, and by it being phrased the way it was, we had somebody from the Defense Intelligence Agency draw out the specs of it. It covered that anyway."

Reid told The Debrief that Bigelow Aerospace applied for the $22 million contract and won because the company had facilities that met the requirements for the project. When asked if Bigelow had been pre-selected for the contract due to his connection to Reid, as well as his preexisting public interest in UFOs, Mr. Reid stated flatly, "No. It was like any other government contract."

"It was put out for bid. And he did the best. He was willing to do more than others. He supplied, for example, a facility... So we put out the bid, but his response to it was the best, and that's how he got it," Reid explained. "He was not pre-selected."

Pasadena, CA — In a case of cosmic mistaken identity, an international team of astronomers revealed that what they once thought was a supernova is actually periodic flaring from a galaxy where a supermassive black hole gives off bursts of energy every 114 days as it tears off chunks of an orbiting star.

Six years after its initial discovery — reported in The Astronomer's Telegram by Carnegie's Thomas Holoien — the researchers, led by Anna Payne of University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, can now say that the phenomenon they observed, called ASASSN-14ko, is a periodically recurring flare from the center of a galaxy more than 570 million light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor.

Their findings — based on 20 instances of regular outbursts — will be published in The Astrophysical Journal and presented by Payne at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting.

Active galaxies, such as the host of ASASSN-14ko, have unusually bright and variable centers. These objects produce much more energy than the combined contribution of all their stars. Astrophysicists think this is due to gravitational and frictional forces heating up a swirling disk of gas and dust that accumulates around the central supermassive black hole. The black hole slowly consumes the material, which creates low-level, random changes in the light emitted by the disk.

Surprising forecasters, an interplanetary shock wave hit Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 11th. The impact just after 08:30 UT did not trigger a geomagnetic storm. However, strong magnetic fields downstream of the shockfront opened a crack in Earth's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in to fuel a nice display of Arctic auroras.

"I was running around my apartment like a maniac, looking for pants and camera equipment," says photographer Markus Varik of Tromsø, Norway. " I didn't have enough time to go to completely dark location--but I didn't need to. The auroras were so bright."

They're back. Noctilucent clouds (NLCs), recently missing, are once again circling the South Pole. And, in an unexpected twist, they've just appeared over Argentina as well.

"This is a very rare event," reports Gerd Baumgarten of Germany's Leibniz-Institute of Atmospheric Physics, whose automated cameras caught the clouds rippling over Rio Grande, Argentina (53.8S) on Jan. 3rd:

Last night, STEVE visited Finland. The purple ribbon of light, which is not an aurora, appeared over Utsjoki in the Finnish Lapland. "This is very unusual," says Rayann Elzein, who photographed the apparition.

"I've been chasing auroras in Arctic Finland for nearly a decade, and this is only the second time I have seen STEVE here at 70 degrees N," says Elzein.

A pioneering new study helps shed light on the chances of extreme cold, and potentially snow in the UK in the next fortnight.

A dramatic meteorological event, known as a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), is currently unfolding high over the Arctic. SSW events are some of the most extreme of atmospheric phenomena, occurring in only about 6 of every 10 winters, and see polar stratospheric temperature increase by up to 50°C over the course of a few days.

The usual strong westerly winds of the stratospheric polar vortex also break down and reverse in direction.

The new study, by experts from the universities of Exeter, Bristol and Bath, involved the analysis of 40 observed SSW events which occurred over the last 60 years. Researchers developed a novel method for tracking the signal of an SSW downward from its onset in the stratosphere to the surface.

These events are linked to severe weather events, such as the infamous 2018 "Beast from the East" which covered the UK in swathes of snow.

The study is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere from around 10-50km above the earth's surface.