A supermoon is the term used when a full moon happens while the moon is also within 10% of its perigee, or closest approach to Earth, The Guardian explains. This closeness causes the moon to look slightly larger and more luminous compared to typical full moons, The Guardian details.

The full moon on November 5, 2025, will be the closest one of the year, positioned just shy of 357,000km from our planet, The Guardian states. This proximity classifies it as the year's biggest supermoon. Observers will see it as 8% larger and approximately 16% brighter than an average full moon, as reported by The Guardian.

Witnessing the moon's bright edge emerge over the horizon during twilight provides a spectacular view. For those in London, the moon will ascend in the east at approximately 15:52 GMT, near sunset. This spectacle is enhanced by the "moon illusion," an effect causing the moon to seem bigger when near the horizon, using other objects for scale. Our perception changes as the moon ascends, making it look smaller, although its actual size remains constant, The Guardian concludes.

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NASA has announced that a rare stellar event, known as a nova, is expected to illuminate the night sky later this year. This celestial phenomenon, described by the space agency as a "once-in-a-lifetime" occurrence, is predicted to be visible without the need for telescopes or specialized equipment.

According to VOA News, astronomers anticipate the nova will likely occur by September 2024. The event will involve a binary star system located in the constellation Corona Borealis, approximately 3,000 light-years from Earth. This system, named T Coronae Borealis, consists of two gravitationally linked stars: a white dwarf and a red giant.

NASA explains that a nova results from dramatic changes in a star that cause it to release a significant amount of energy, temporarily becoming extremely bright. Unlike a supernova, which marks the final destruction of a star, a nova allows the white dwarf to remain active after the event.

The process leading to a nova in a binary system involves the transfer of hydrogen from the red giant to the white dwarf. Over time, this accumulation creates intense pressure and heat on the white dwarf's surface. "This buildup can cause a thermonuclear explosion large enough to blast away the material the white dwarf had collected," astronomers told AFP.

The upcoming nova has generated excitement within the scientific community. Sumner Starrfield, a professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University, expressed his anticipation to AFP: "It could be today... but I hope it's not," he joked while working on a paper to predict what astronomers might learn from the event.

This nova will mark at least the third time humans have witnessed such an event from the T Coronae Borealis system. AFP reports that Irish astronomer John Birmingham first discovered it in 1866, with a subsequent appearance in 1946.

Rebekah Hounsell, a research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, highlighted the potential impact of this celestial display. She told AFP, "This may create a lot of astronomers out there" as it can "fuel the next generation of scientists." She hopes that it could provide young people with "a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data."

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In the not-so-distant past, the discovery of a supernova – an exploding star – was considered a rare occasion. When Professor Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute's Particle Physics and Astrophysics Department was a doctoral student he located seven of them over the course of four years.

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Today, advanced measuring instruments and analysis methods make it possible to detect 50 such explosions on a daily basis. On the one hand, the improved means used by present-day astrophysicists to spot supernovae may have made these celestial events less of an attraction over the years. On the other hand, the greater number of observations of them has also increased the probability that researchers would be able to spot rarer types of explosions that have so far existed only as theoretical constructs. Gal-Yam and colleagues recently discovered a rare type of supernova that has never been observed before. Their findings are being published today in Nature.

The core of every star is fueled by nuclear fusion, wherein the nuclei of lighter elements fuse together to form heavier elements. The fusion of four hydrogen nuclei results in the formation of a helium atom, while several helium nuclei combined result in the formation of carbon, oxygen, and so on. The last element that will naturally form through nuclear fusion is iron, which is the most stable atomic nucleus. In normal circumstances, the energy produced at the star's core maintains extremely high temperatures that cause its gaseous matter to expand, thus preserving the fine balance with the force of gravity, drawing the star's mass toward its center. Once the star runs out of elements to fuse and stops producing energy, this balance is disrupted, leading either to a gaping black hole that tears open at the heart of the star, causing it to collapse in on itself, or to the star's explosion, which releases the heavy elements, fused during its evolution, into the universe.

The entire process is very lengthy. The life spans of massive stars – the kind that Gal-Yam, dean of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Physics Faculty, studies ¬– are considered relatively short, a few million years at most. The sun, in comparison, has a life expectancy of about 10 billion years. The subsequent processes of nuclear fusion at the core of massive stars lead to their stratification, in which the heavy elements are concentrated at the core, and gradually lighter elements compose the outer layers. Wolf-Rayet stars are particularly massive stars that are missing one or more of the external layers that are made up of lighter elements. In this way, instead of hydrogen – the lightest element – the star's surface is characterized by the presence of helium, or even carbon and heavier elements. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that strong winds blowing due to high pressure at the star's envelope, disperse its outermost layer, thus causing the star to lose one layer after the other over several hundred thousand years. When these stars are observed without the presence of the lighter elements in their envelope, it is akin to a still photograph capturing a moment in time during a long-winded process. Nonetheless, despite their relatively short life spans and their state of progressive disintegration, the supernova explosion of a Wolf-Rayet star has yet to have been definitely observed.

Analysis of the ever-growing number of supernova discoveries has led to the hypothesis that Wolf-Rayet stars simply don't explode – they just quietly collapse into black holes – otherwise, we would have been able to observe one by now. This hypothesis, however, has just been shattered owing to the discovery, made by the Weizmann group and their international team of collaborators, of a supernova originating from this type of star. Spectroscopic analysis of the light emitted from the explosion – the electromagnetic wavelengths of light emitted from the blast – led to the discovery of spectral signatures that are associated with specific elements. In this way, the researchers were able to show that the explosion contained carbon, oxygen and neon atoms, the latter an element that has not yet been observed in this manner in any supernova to date. Moreover, the researchers identified that the matter spouting cosmic radiation did not in itself participate in the blast but rather originated from the space surrounding the volatile star. This, in turn, strengthened their hypothesis in favor of strong winds that took part in stripping the star of its outer envelope.

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 Since this observation is the first of its kind, Gal-Yam states that it may be too early to unequivocally determine the fate of all such stars. "We can't say at this stage whether all Wolf-Rayet stars end their lives with a bang or not. It might be that some of them do collapse quietly into a black hole," he says. "We estimate that the mass that dispersed during the explosion is probably equal to that of the Sun or a slightly smaller star; the star that exploded was significantly heavier – having a mass at least ten times greater than that of the Sun. So where did the majority of mass end up?"

Gal-Yam suggests a midway scenario, in which both possible fates are fulfilled at the same time: once nuclear fusion is exhausted at the star's core, an explosion takes place that blasts some of the mass into space, while the remaining mass collapses in on itself, forming a black hole. "One thing's certain," says Gal-Yam.

"This is not the 'silent' collapse often referred to in the past. It is worth mentioning that since this discovery was first made, another similar explosion of a Wolf-Rayet star has been observed, implying that this phenomenon is indeed not a single occurrence. It is possible that the better our detection and measurement instruments become, the more this type of explosion – today considered rare and exotic – will become a common sight."

Supernovae may seem like colossal events happening far, far away that they have no direct impact on our lives. But, truth be told, they are at the heart of life itself. These cosmic explosions launch the elements that were forged at the star's core to the far reaches of the galaxy, where they serve as the bedrock for the birth of new stars. Planet Earth and all its various and diverse lifeforms (including us Homo sapiens) are the result of such an occurrence. "We study the origins of all matter, including that found on Earth, and search for explanations of many of the physical phenomena we tend to take for granted," concludes Gal-Yam. "This is what I am personally interested in – where did all of this come from – and I want to be able to answer this question as best and as accurately as I can."

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The ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah might have been destroyed, but it wasn't by human wickedness, a new study suggests.

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The work, co-published by 21 authors in the science journal Nature on Monday, presents evidence that a Middle Bronze Age city located in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea at a site now known as Tall el-Hammam, was razed by a cataclysmic "cosmic airburst."

In the Book of Genesis, the event is recounted as God's destruction of the cities for their wickedness.

Now, researchers think that the explosion at Sodom and Gomorrah was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, when an air burst of a stony meteoroid about 50 to 60 meters (160 to 200 feet) in size caused a massive 12-megaton blast.

The researchers involved in the study conclude that if the airburst hypothesis is true, it would make modern-day Tall el-Hammam the second-oldest known city or town believed to have been destroyed by an airburst. The oldest is Abu Hureyra in Syria, which scientists think was hit by a comet 12,800 years ago.

The authors warn that cosmic events are expected to recur every few thousand years, saying that "although the risk is low, the potential damage is exceedingly high, putting Earth's cities at risk and encouraging mitigation strategies."

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Thanks to advancements in technology and the ingenuity of researchers, great discoveries were made. On top of that, glass ceilings were broken as more and more women became front and center in our quest to understand the universe.

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Below is a compilation of the groundbreaking discoveries that brought the far-reaches of space closer than ever.

10. The Parker probe to the sun

There have been numerous missions to the moon, but what about the sun? NASA launched the Parker Probe to the sun in 2018, and it provided the public with surprising images of the sun's corona – the outer halo that is only properly seen during an eclipse. The probe measured intense magnetic fields, harsh solar winds, and revealed that the sun actually emits materials and gases into space. Parker became the first artificial object to ever be in such proximity to our sun and is scheduled to reach the closest-ever distance in 2024.

9. Voyager probes

Although the Voyager 2 Probe was sent into space in 1977, it was the first object to venture beyond our Solar System, and reach interstellar space in 2012. Voyager 2 is the only probe to have flown past both ice giants Uranus and Neptune. It measured magnetic fields, provided photographs, and chartered everything from Jupiter's storm patterns to Saturn's rings, along with the moons of Uranus and Neptune. So far, it's been traveling through space for over 40 years and is currently floating somewhere past the Solar System, some 11 billion miles away from us right now.

8. New Horizons Pluto

The New Horizons spacecraft was sent into space in 2006, but reached Pluto in 2015, photographing fine-detailed pictures of Pluto, and its moons, Charon, Nix and providing two blurrier shots of its moons, Hydra, Styx, and Kerberos. The probe even revealed that icy volcanoes and sharp mountain peaks exist on the icy dwarf planet's surface!

7. The Martian rovers: Curiosity and Opportunity

Both rovers landed on the red planet, the former in 2006, but the latter reached it only in 2016. Not only did the probes grace the worldwide public with depictions of the highly contrasted deserts and mountains, they also collected samples of red dust and other geological rock features for future analysis. Curiosity – a truck-sized rover – even has its own Instagram page, where it updates people of its travels.

6. Exoplanets

While once, many thought that planets solely existed within our Solar System, as research expanded, the discovery of exoplanets was made possible. Soon, the presence of such planets provided proof that perhaps life may exist outside of the Kuiper Belt. However, the possibility of extraterrestrial life was not exclusive to the far-reaches of space. In fact, within our Solar System, scientists have postulated that perhaps life may already exist in several locations, from Saturn's moon, Titan to Jupiter moon, Io, on Mars, and even on the icy bodies of Neptune and Pluto.

5. China and India's lunar missions

While Israel made headlines this past year with its launch of Beresheet into space in February 2019, other countries have made similar headlines this decade in their attempts to carry out lunar landings. Most notably was India's Chandrayyaan mission, which the Indian teams eventually lost contact with prior to its landing, and China's mission in 2018 to the far side of the moon.

4. Katie Bouman – the first image of a black hole

A young female scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Katie Bouman smashed headlines this year by writing algorithms that helped create the first computer-generated image of a black hole. Earlier last year, as well, researchers at Tel Aviv University were the first to calculate, discover, and spot a supermassive black hole, located hundreds of thousands of light-years away from our small blue planet.

3. All-female spacewalk

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch conducted the first all-female spacewalk aboard the International Space Station in September 2019. Not only did the duo fix a battery charging unit aboard the station, they spent some six hours floating above our Earth – taking pictures, and even receiving a phone call from US President Donald Trump.

2. NASA Astronaut Jessica Meir

The first female astronaut of Israeli and Mizrahi descent was sent into space this year. Jessica Meir, who recently posted an image of herself wearing Hanukkah-themed socks aboard the International Space Station, made history in September. Meir is a biologist by trade, and pursued numerous research studies the world over. She is the fourth Jewish female astronaut to ever fly in space, and is due to return sometime around April 2020.

1. Beresheet

Israel's first lunar mission blasted off into space this past February in an attempt to make Israel the fourth nation to land upon the lunar surface. Unfortunately, there was a technical malfunction that led to its crash upon the moon, but it still left a large crater in its midst. Either way, the Israeli blue-and-white flag made it to the moon, and that is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Who knows what the 2020s have in store for us humans in this potentially endless universe?

Landing humans on Mars? Clearer images of black holes? The discovery of new habitable planets?

And after that?

Only time will tell.

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