You know your crazy relative who’s always suspicious of black SUVs? Quick—block him on Facebook. NASA is scheduled to launch a suborbital rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, on Wednesday night, and as one of its experiments, it will eject colorful clouds of vapor more than a hundred miles above the ground in order to study ions and neutral particles in the upper atmosphere.
The most famous image of Earth is one taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the Moon in 1972. Not only is it a beautiful picture, but it was the first time many people had ever seen an actual photo of our full planet. Fast forward a few decades, and we can see that view every day. Here’s your world today—as seen by satellites floating around in orbit—in all of its watery wonder.
There’s going to be a blue moon on Friday. The moon will do nothing new or exciting, but your Facebook feed will drown in moon drama anyway. Anything’s better than Minion memes, I suppose.
That’s you. That’s me. It’s one giant group photo. Every sucky thing that’s ever happened, is happening, or ever will happen is right there, to loosely paraphrase some brainy guy a few decades ago. Kinda makes you want to fly out there and escape it all, but then you wouldn’t have Auntie Anne’s pretzels, and what’s the point of living then?
What goes up must come down, and sometimes the ways in which gravity wins aren’t pretty. A SpaceX rocket sending supplies to the International Space Station exploded in the skies off the coast of Florida this morning, and weather radar was able to track what was left of the rocket as it fell into the Atlantic Ocean.
BEHOLD THE SECOND COMING OF SUPERMOON. BOW TO ITS EMINENCE, FOR WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THE MOON THIS BIG.
LOOK AT IT.
Around this time every year in the higher latitudes, looking up to the sky after sunset might get you one of the most beautiful sights nature can provide. If you're lucky, you can catch these electric blue clouds looming dozens of miles up in the atmosphere, and they are downright incredible.
A man in Edneyville, North Carolina found a hole in his ceiling the size of a bowling ball after this chunk of metal crashed through the roof and into his bedroom.
If you're willing to stay up into the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday April 15th, you will be able to see a total lunar eclipse if you live in North or South America and the sky is clear. The eclipse will begin around 1:00 AM and totality is set to occur between 3:07 AM and 4:25 AM Eastern Time, according to a report by CBS.
A meteor exploded in the skies over Yellowknife, Canada yesterday morning in a spectacular fireball that lit up the night sky like day and produced a sonic boom over the city several minutes later.
