* Astronomy

The gamma-ray burst of 1993 January 31 (GRB 930131, the so-called Superbowl burst) was the highest peak count GRB recorded by BATSE [the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory] in the third catalogue (Kouveliotou et al. 1994a; Meegan et al. 1996). It was a rare GRB in which very high energy (GeV) photons w...

Fr. José Gabriel Funes, S.J. (born January 31, 1963 in Córdoba), an Argentine Jesuit priest and astronomer, is the current director of the Vatican Observatory. Read more

Dan Milisavljevic (born January 31, 1980) is a Canadian astronomer and postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. Milisavljevic specialises in observational work in supernovae and supernova remnants. He is also known for aiding in the discovery of Uranus's moon...

The earliest known pilot UFO sighting, of 1,305 similar sighting catalogued by NARCAP, took place in 1916. On January 31, 1916, a UK pilot near Rochford reported a row of lights, resembling lighted windows on a railway carriage, that rose and disappeared. Read more

A man from Morecambe believes his dog has found a rare piece of whale vomit while walking on the beach. Ken Wilman said when Madge the dog "started poking at a rather large stone" he realised it was unusual. He left the ambergris on the beach but "something triggered in my mind" an...

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved a new name for a crater on Mars. Lucaya for a 34.21-km-wide Martian crater located at -11.55°, 51.91°. The feature was named in honour of a town in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.

Title: The helium-rich cataclysmic variable SBSS 1108+574 Authors: P. J. Carter, D. Steeghs, E. de Miguel, W. Goff, R. A. Koff, T. Krajci, T. R. Marsh, B. T. Gänsicke, E. Breedt, P. J. Groot, G. Nelemans, G. H. A. Roelofs, A. Rau, D. Koester, T. Kupfer We present time-resolved spectroscopy and photom...

For decades, hundreds of people worldwide have been plagued by an elusive buzzing noise known as "the Hum". Some have blamed gas pipes or power lines, others think their ears are faulty. A few even think sinister forces could be at work. [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk/8056284....

Tonight's Sky: January 2013

Orbital elements: 2013 BE19 PHA, Earth MOID = 0.0462 AU Epoch 2012 Sept. 30.0 TT = JDT 2456200.5 MPC M 121.13146 (2000.0) P Q n 1.13219589 Peri. 311.81118 -0.07184936 +0.91359400 a 0.9117064 Node 309.27500 -0.69076801 -0.33503667 e 0.2985891 Incl. 31.13221 -0.71949790 +0.23042662 P 0.8...

LRO Sees Apollo 14's Rocket Booster Impact Site A distinctive crater about 35 metres in diameter was formed when the Apollo 14 Saturn IVB (upper stage) was intentionally impacted into the moon. The energy of the impact created small tremors that were measured by the seismometer placed on the Moon by...

Luna 9 (E-6 series), was an unmanned space mission of the Soviet Union's Luna program. On February 3, 1966 the Luna 9 spacecraft was the first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to Earth. Read more

Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2) was a rocket mission, launched at 16:55 UTC on January 31, 1961 from LC-5 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Read more

OSCAR is an acronym for Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio. OSCAR series satellites use amateur radio frequencies to facilitate communication between amateur radio stations. The first amateur satellite simply named OSCAR-1, was launched on December 12, 1961, barely four years after t...

The white dwarf orbiting Sirius started as a blue star with five times the Sun's mass. If this blue star still shone today, Sirius would be so bright it would cast shadows on Earth. Just 8.6 light-years away, Sirius is already the brightest nighttime star. It is double: a bright A-type main-...