Admiring the Beauty of Venus with Mobile Astronomy Apps and other top stories.

• Admiring the Beauty of Venus with Mobile Astronomy Apps

  

  From now through the end of winter, the eye-catching planet Venus will shine brilliantly in the western evening sky. It's been hugging the horizon for months, but the turn of the seasons will soon lift it higher, to an ideal observing location even in a small telescope. Venus' orbit between the Earth and the sun creates a number of interesting phenomena in the way it looks and moves. In this edition of Mobile Stargazing, we'll look at Venus' properties using planetary apps, explain the motio..

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• European Mars mission funding approved even after test lander's crash

  

  LUCERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - European space agency (ESA) member states have approved another 450 million euros ($479 million) in funding for the ExoMars mission to the Red Planet, even after a test lander that was part of the program crashed in October, ESA said on Friday. The European-Russian ExoMars program sent a gas-sniffing orbiter and the test lander to Mars this year to search for signs of past or present life on the Red Planet and to lay the groundwork for a rove..

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• The Electric Blue Polar Cloud Season Came Early This Year

  

  Each year, a glowing mass of clouds forms over the South Pole, high in the atmosphere, trapped between Earth and space. From the ground they look wispy and shimmery, like a blue-white aurora borealis. From space, they look like an electric-blue gossamer haze. Noctilucent clouds as viewed from the International Space Station in 2003. NASA/ISS/Don Pettit hide capti..

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• The man who stands between Earth and an asteroid Armageddon

  

  ASTEROIDS-QANDA,1558 The man who stands between Earth and an asteroid Armageddon ATTN: National, Science editors Eric Roston Bloomberg. Lindley Johnson spent 23 years in the U.S. Air Force keeping his eyes above the skies. He helped identify and tackle a growing risk to human space activity-the sheer volume of stuff orbiting the planet-in addition to helping manage and monitor military assets in orbit. In 1982, the Air Force set up a space command to coordinate its activities, not the leas..

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• Tornado Outbreaks On The Rise: Is Climate Change Cause For Blame?

  

  Frequent tornadoes and thunderstorms that kill people and destroy property have become a matter of grave concern. In the United States alone, the insured losses caused by severe thunderstorms have been put at $8.5 billion from the period between January to June 2016. A new study has tried a linkage between climate change and the increasing incidents of tornadoes. Calling for a deeper study on some meteorological factors, the paper zeroes in on vertical wind shear as an important variable in tri..

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• A dreaded carbon time bomb lurks beneath your feet

  

  There are many uncertainties when it comes to global warming, from how quickly the planet's ice sheets will melt to how global leaders will enact rapid emissions cuts. One nagging scientific uncertainty concerns a rather unsexy topic: the soil. As in, the ground beneath your feet. There is growing concern that terrestrial soils, which are the Earth's largest reservoir of carbon outside of the oceans, will switch from being a net absorber of greenhouse gases to a net source. This can happen as mi..

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• Astronaut Buzz Aldrin recovering in New Zealand hospital

  

  Buzz Aldrin's manager Christina Korp poses with the astronaut at a hospital in Christ Church, New Zealand. (Christina Korp via Twitter). BY Nicole Hensley. NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. Updated: Saturday, December 3, 2016, 5:29 AM. Buzz Aldrin made it to the ...

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• News Report on Global Temperatures Is Wrong, Scientists Say

  

  Photo A man suns on the beach in the Bronx in October. Scientists on Friday debunked a widely circulated report suggesting that recent temperature highs were unrelated to climate change. Credit Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Scientists on Friday debunked a widely circulated news media report suggesting that recent record-high global temperatures were unrelated to climate change.The report, which first appeared in the British tabloid The Daily Mail and was summarized in Breit..

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• NASA's Space Poop Challenge Offers $30000 To Solve Astronaut's Major Issue

  

  NASA has recently launched the "Space Poop Challenge" to solve one major issue that astronauts inevitably encounter in space: bowel movement. The announcement was made last week. U.S. News reported that the space agency is offering a $30,000 reward for the one who can solve this problem. The Space Poop Challenge was launched on crowdsourcing platform HeroX. NASA is looking for solutions for urine, fecal and menstrual management systems. The systems will be used in the crew's launch and entry su..

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