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Ten-Year Lease Extension Confirmed at Herstmonceux Observatory – Astronomy Now

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Astronomy

Ten-Year Lease Extension Confirmed at Herstmonceux Observatory – Astronomy Now

By Ian Whitely, chair of the Save Herstmonceux Observatory campaign Since the September issue of Astronomy Now went to press, we’ve heard that the lease to the Observatory Science Centre (OSC), Herstmonceux has been extended for 10 years. The announcement, on 18 August, follows a year of uncertainty after Queen’s University Canada declared that the lease to the current operators of the science centre, Science Projects, would not be renewed after December 2026. Now, a ten-year extended lease has been agreed between Science Projects and Bader College (for Queen’s University Canada). Wide field panorama of the Observatory Science Centre site with its telescopes. Credit: Herstmonceux Science Centre The site, at Herstmonceux Castle Estate, is an important UK science heritage location and forme...

New Results on the Extraterrestrial Mysterious Wow! Signal

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UFOs

New Results on the Extraterrestrial Mysterious Wow! Signal

Arecibo Wow! (AWOW) is a technosignature research project, which utilizes archived data from the Arecibo Observatory’s telescopes to investigate the nature of signals similar to the famous Wow! Signal detected in 1977 by Ohio State University’s ByThe UFO Chronicles8-26-2025 Big Ear radio telescope. The project aims to both identify these signals and provide robust astrophysical explanations for their origins, thereby contributing to the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence and clarifying the causes of technosignature false positives. The original Wow! Signal, characterized by pronounced intensity and narrow bandwidth near the 1420 MHz hydrogen line, has intrigued scientists for ...

Chancellor Valorum – ‘Star Wars’ Character Spotlight

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Star Wars

Chancellor Valorum – ‘Star Wars’ Character Spotlight

Chancellor Valorum is the subject of this week’s Star Wars Character Spotlight, the leader of the Galactic Republic before and during The Phantom Menace, portrayed by the late Terence Stamp in the film. Valorum was a good man but ultimately became the victim of Palpatine’s political machinations. George Lucas’ inspiration for the character was then-US President Bill Clinton. Early life Finis Valorum was born on Coruscant to House Valorum, one of the wealthy elite families in the Republic’s capital. The Valorums had a long and storied history in the Republic, as Finis’ direct ancestor Tarsus Valorum had been the first ever chancellor of the Republic roughly 800 years earlier (confusingly, the Republic had already existed for 200 years by that point). The Valorums had their own very succ...

Denise Crosby Talks Original Sela Pitch To Return To TNG, Sexism On The Star Trek Set, And More – TrekMovie.com

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Star Trek

Denise Crosby Talks Original Sela Pitch To Return To TNG, Sexism On The Star Trek Set, And More – TrekMovie.com

Denise Crosby played security chief Tasha Yar on Star Trek: the Next Generation for 22 episodes of season 1 before choosing to exit the series. At the STLV: Trek To Vegas convention in early August, I had the opportunity to moderate her panel on the main stage about her early days with the show and the changes she discovered when she returned a few seasons later. Gene, Rick, and stodgy Patrick Crosby talked at length about her time on season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, saying that watching episodes with The 7th Rule for the first time gave her renewed appreciation for it, saying she “fell back in love with the character of Tasha,” which took her by surprise. She said that in those early days, they used to do table reads of each script over lunch, a practice later abandoned by t...

NASA, NOAA prep spacecraft trio to study the Sun and its impacts – Spaceflight Now

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SpaceX

NASA, NOAA prep spacecraft trio to study the Sun and its impacts – Spaceflight Now

A group of technicians works to complete final inspections and checkouts of NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft inside a cleanroom at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Florida. Image: John Pisani / Spaceflight Now Technicians inside a pair of clean rooms at the Astrotech facility in Titusville, Florida, are busily readying a trio of spacecraft that will study the Sun and its effects on Earth and across the solar system. The primary mission among the trio is NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), which will use a suite of 10 instruments to study the Sun’s sphere of influence, referred to as the heliosphere. It’s joined by the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, another NASA mission, and the Space Weather Follow-On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO...