Well as of today this thread is 2 years old. In a way, very little has changed from when it first opened. There's new features, new viewers, but other than that, it's still the same at its core. I've somehow managed to get up every morning for the past 2 years, scour some information hubs about what is happening in space at any given day, and report the findings here without missing a beat, even if it meant I had to pass the torch onto someone else while I went on a camping / photography trip for a few days (looking at you Sky Kitten, thanks for all your help!) I would also like to thank all who have decided to take a glance at the thread whether regularly or just to see what the fuss is about. The thread has never been as popular as it is today. Having said that, I keep track of how people visit the thread throughout the years. Here is what I have found:
Visitors Per Day, Year 2:
Visitors Per Day, Since Inception:
Viewership Growth, Year 2:
Viewership Growth, Since Inception:
Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
March 10, 2014
What's in the sky tonight?
March 10, 2014
-The Moon forms a distorted rectangle with Jupiter, Castor, and Pollux this evening. In addition, the Moon and Jupiter form a bent line of three with Procyon to their lower left.
-Mercury (magnitude +0.2) is low above the east-southeast horizon during dawn, about 20° lower left of bright Venus.
-Saturn (magnitude +0.4, in Libra) rises around 11 p.m. and is highest in the south before dawn. By then it's far left of Mars and Spica, and less far to the upper right of Mars-colored Antares.
Astro Picture of the Day:
March 10, 2014
Source:
What is creating the gamma rays at the center of our Galaxy? Excitement is building that one answer is elusive dark matter. Over the past few years the orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has been imaging our Galaxy's center in gamma-rays. Repeated detailed analyses indicate that the region surrounding the Galactic center seems too bright to be accounted by known gamma-ray sources. A raw image of the Galactic Center region in gamma-rays is shown above on the left, while the image on the right has all known sources subtracted -- leaving an unexpected excess. An exciting hypothetical model that seems to fit the excess involves a type of dark matter known as WIMPs, which may be colliding with themselves to create the detected gamma-rays. This hypothesis is controversial, however, and debate and more detailed investigations are ongoing. Finding the nature of dark matter is one of the great quests of modern science, as previously this unusual type of cosmologically pervasive matter has shown itself only through gravitation. The hypothesis can be found here:
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/qua...l-strengthens/