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Well, we did it. We took my Spanish 12ga shotgun with the 27.5" barrel and cut it off. Now, it has a 19" barrel and the end has been filed and finished and it is ready to go. The intended purpose is for home defense, or in a still rare case, if some group of people are causing a problem/rioting out in society as a secondary weapon. In some literary circles, such is called a "Coach Gun". It appears some characters in history over 100 years ago determined that a cut down shotgun would be an effective weapon a close...

The peak of the summer's best meteor shower – the Perseids– peaks overnight tonight (Aug. 12), but you'll need good weather to see it. Just in case your night sky cloudy or hazy, you can check out the annual meteor shower on webcasts online by Slooh, NASA and the Virtual Telescope Project. You can watch the Perseid meteor shower webcast here, courtesy of the astronomy broadcast service Slooh. The 6-hour webcast begins at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) and you can watch it directly on Slooh.com. During the broadcast, viewers can use the hashtag #Slooh on social media to share...

Solar eclipses are ideal for reflection, releasing things that no longer serve you, and for setting intentions. They are not a time for action. No matter how tempted you are to begin something new today, don't. Am I saying that nothing that begins on an eclipse can go well?

The new moon of August comes on Saturday the 11th this year, perfectly timed to bring dark, moonless nights around the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Indeed, 2018 is an excellent year to watch for these meteors; such moonless-sky conditions are ideal for observing the Perseids. Moreover, Earth should pass through the shower's richest part around 9 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, Aug. 12 (0100 GMT on Aug. 13). So, late that night into the predawn hours of Monday, Aug. 13, viewers in North America and Europe should have the best seats in the house. Late-summer campers should put...

Astronomers using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) have examined a small group of five galaxies in the southern hemisphere. The results will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. The NGC 5018 galaxy group lies in the constellation of Virgo, approximately 130 million *light-years from Earth.*[one light year, the distance light travels in a year, at its fixed speed of 186,000 miles per second, works out to about 5.9 trillion miles -etl] It consists of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 5018, the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5022, the spiral galaxy MCG-03-34-013, and two face-on dwarf, gas-rich spirals.NGC 5018 (the milky-white galaxy...

The spacecraft will launch on a ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 3:33 AM EDT on Saturday morning; the launch window will last for 65 minutes. You can watch it happen at the NASA TV live stream link below. Programming starts at 3 AM and will continue through the launch. A post-launch press conference will occur after the event, but of course if the launch doesn't happen, then it will be delayed. NASA has through August 23rd to get Parker Solar Probe off the ground. This spacecraft, which will travel faster...

So, the continuation of my business training trip is sending me to Phoenix Arizona for a week. My road trips include Meteor Crater, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Phoenix Natural History museum. Does anybody (espically rock hounds/astronomy nuts) have any suggestions for science/space attractions? I will be there during peak viewing for the Perseid Meteor shower and would love to do some meteor watching or visit an observatory.

Next time you eat a blueberry (or chocolate chip) muffin consider what happened to the blueberries in the batter as it was baked. The blueberries started off all squished together, but as the muffin expanded they started to move away from each other. If you could sit on one blueberry you would see all the others moving away from you, but the same would be true for any blueberry you chose. In this sense galaxies are a lot like blueberries. Since the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding. The strange fact is that there is no single place from...

A massive glowing "rogue" planetary-mass object has been discovered, surprising scientists with not only its size, but also the fact it's not orbiting a star. The object, named SIMP J01365663+0933473, has a magnetic field more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter’s and is nearly 13 times the size of the gas giant. At its size, it's right between the size of a planet and a failed star, so scientists will need to study it further to determine exactly what it is. “This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is...

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft surprised scientists when it revealed that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede generated its own magnetic field. But new research shows Ganymede also creates incredibly powerful waves that rocket particles to enormous energies. Scientists revealed these huge electromagnetic waves while studying old data from Galileo, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. The observations show another wild way that a moon can interact with the magnetic field of its planet. Jupiter’s radius is around 11 times that of Earth, but it is perhaps 20,000 times more magnetic. This generates an intense radiation environment around the planet. Typically, these waves around...

Viewing the Incredible Hulk with the naked eye may be a little tricky. Because the comet got so close to the sun and broke up from solar heat, it's rapidly fading from view. Also, thunderstorms and clouds in various parts of the country may impede vision of the comet. However, experts don't rule out another eruption in the coming days, which could make the comet brighter in the night sky. Additionally, Paul Chodas, the manager for the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Live Science the comet may be visible later in August ― around...

Marking the anniversary of New Horizons’ historic flight through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, NASA released high-resolution natural-color images of Pluto and Charon. These color images result from refined calibration of data gathered by New Horizons’ Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC).The processing creates images that would approximate the colors that the human eye would perceive, bringing them closer to ‘true color’ than the images released near the encounter.The image of Pluto was taken as New Horizons zipped toward the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14, 2015, from a range of 22,025 miles (35,445 km).The striking features...

A rogue, planet-size object 20 light-years away from Earth has stunned astronomers with its incredibly powerful magnetic field. The scientists found that the object's magnetic field is more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter's, which, in turn, is between 16 and 54 times stronger than Earth's, according to NASA. How the object, which scientists call SIMP J01365663+0933473, can maintain a magnetic field so strong, as well as generate spectacular auroras, is still unclear. "This particular object is exciting because studying its magnetic dynamo mechanisms can give us new insights on how the same type of mechanisms can operate in extrasolar...

A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthermore, it generates spectacular auroras that would put our own northern lights to shame. The new observations, made with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), not only are the first radio observations of a planetary-mass object beyond our solar system, but also mark the first time...

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have made the first radio-telescope detection of a planetary-mass object beyond our Solar System. The object, about a dozen times more massive than Jupiter, is a surprisingly strong magnetic powerhouse and a "rogue," traveling through space unaccompanied by any parent star. "This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or 'failed star,' and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets," said Melodie Kao, who led this study while a graduate...

An investigation by Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe concluded this week that high-profile astrophysicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss violated the university’s sexual harassment policy by grabbing a woman’s breast at a conference in Australia in late 2016. (Krauss is a prominent member of the skeptics movement, which disputes the existence of a god or supernatural powers.)

The Air Force said Friday that there was no damage to Thule Air Base in Greenland after a large meteor fell nearby last week. The fireball incident occurred just miles from the remote military base on July 25 and entered the atmosphere with a 2.1 kiloton force, according to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. The Air Force 21st Space Wing monitors missile launches and space activity via sensors at Thule, and directed any questions to NASA, which did not immediately provide a statement.

A meteor hit the earth and exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force last month, but the US Air Force has made no mention of the event. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed an object of unspecified size travelling at 24.4 kilometres per second struck earth in Greenland, just 43 kilometres north of an early missile warning Thule Air Base on the 25th of July, 2018. Director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists, Hans Kristensen, tweeted about the impact, but America’s Air Force has not reported the event.Mr. Kristensen argues it’s concerning there was no public warning...

Fiery chunks of rock are constantly bombarding the planetary bodies of our solar system, leaving behind long-lasting scars. These gouges, in the form of craters, can be used to learn about the history of our little nook in the vast universe, prompting scientists to study their features feverishly. Yet one pattern commonly found around craters has remained a puzzle. Sometimes, these craters contain radial rays of debris fanned out around the impact zone. In the lab, scientists have tried to reproduce these patterns by dropping balls into containers of sand or beads, yet have found little success. But in a...

Designated HD 26965b, the newly-detected alien world has a mass of 8.47 Earth masses and is located a mere 16 light-years away.This planet revolves around the bright K-class dwarf star HD 26965 once every 42.4 days.The host star is approximately 6.9 billion years old, has a mass about 78% of the Sun’s and a radius 87% as large.“HD 26965 is the primary of a very widely separated triple system. The other two companions are an M4 dwarf and a white dwarf,” said University of Florida astronomer Bo Ma and co-authors.“This star is a very bright metal poor star with an...