|  Aquarius Dawns: 'Water Boy' Constellation Appears This Week  | Aquarius, an easily overlooked star pattern with a storied history, will appear to the south during the evening this week. For almost 30 years, I've served as a guest lecturer and instructor at New York's Hayden Planetarium, and if there is one thing that I think has set me apart from my colleagues, it is the eclectic way that I give a constellation talk.
| Read More » New Horizons Pluto Probe Heads Toward 2nd Flyby Target  | NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has begun chasing down another distant, icy object. New Horizons, which in July performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto, fired up its engines yesterday (Oct. 22) in the first of four maneuvers designed to send the probe zooming past a small object called 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. The 16-minute engine burn changed New Horizons' trajectory by about 22.4 mph (36 km/h), mission officials said.
| Read More » NASA's SLS Rocket Sheds Saturn V Color Scheme in Design Review  | NASA's next-generation rocket has a new look. The space agency has revealed a reworked color scheme for the Space Launch System heavy-lift booster, removing the paint from one major component, while adding "racing stripes" to another. The new appearance was rolled out on Thursday (Oct. 22) with the announcement that a critical design review (CDR) had been completed.
| Read More » Hurricane Patricia: How Big Can Tropical Cyclones Get?  | Hurricane Patricia is currently churning in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and weather forecasters are calling it the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Hurricane Patricia is a Category 5 storm — the highest on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale that is used to gauge a storm's intensity — and is expected to have winds of nearly 200 miles per hour (325 km/h) with even higher gusts, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). According to the NHC, Category 5 hurricanes produce "catastrophic damage" that will destroy roofs and walls in framed homes.
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