Explanation: On August 15, this perseid meteor streaked through night skies over the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The bright and colorful meteor trail was captured next to the central Milky Way, whose dark interstellar dust clouds and luminous starlight reach above the horizon. In the foreground of this tantalizing celestial scene is the 23 meter diameter mirror of the prototype Large-Sized Telescope (LST-1). LST-1 is the first telescope constructed at the northern hemisphere site of the innovative Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory. With 198 hexagonal mirror segments and a large, high-efficiency, pixelized camera, LST-1 is designed to detect extremely brief, atmospheric visible light flashes. Lasting about a billionth of a second, the visible light flashes are triggered by energetic gamma-rays from cosmic sources such as distant active galaxies and gamma-ray bursts. Of course, on that night some individual mirror segments of LST-1 also reflected the atmospheric flash of the bright perseid meteor.
Elephants are now being trained for bio-detection in South Africa. They are being tested to see if they can utilize their heightened sense of smell to look for poachers, land mines, and explosives. Elephants have 1,948 genes dedicated to smelling, whereas dogs only have 811 and humans have under 400.
In 2006, an analysis of cats’ tongues showed that they do not have the taste receptors that react to sweet-tasting things. Every feline from lions to tigers down to the domestic house cat cannot taste anything sweet.
The octopus, the squid, and the salmon all die soon after giving birth. For the most part, males die soon after fertilizing the females’ eggs, and the females only live long enough to birth their young before dying.
Baby hedgehogs are born with quills but they are soft and flexible.
Crocodiles can hold their breath underwater for up to two hours if they need to. The colder the water, the longer they can stay under because a cold crocodile uses less energy and oxygen than a warm one.
Explanation: Globular star cluster Omega Centauripacks about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of 15,000 light-years it’s the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. With a yellowish hue, Omega Centauri’s red giant stars are easy to pick out in this sharp telescopic view. A two-decade-long exploration of the dense star cluster with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed evidence for a massive black hole near the center of Omega Centauri.
