Spectacular

The opening salvo of Lady Gaga’s Chromatica Ball is one almighty flex. After dabbling in pared-back soft-rock on 2016’s Joanne, and cementing her status as a credible actor via A Star Is Born and House of Gucci, this delayed, 20-date stadium tour – in support of 2020’s synth-pop opus Chromatica – is her chance to make a claim for pop’s crown once again. It certainly feels like it’s on her mind when the grinding synth riff of opener Bad Romance kicks in, only to be followed by a pulverising Just Dance – sent skywards by a…

In what promises to be the beginning of a veritable torrent of science, NASA has released the first batch of images from the James Webb Space Telescope, including a gravitational lens effect, the water signature of a distant exoplanet, the death throes of a star, a cluster of galaxies, and "cosmic cliffs" where stars are born.The four images and a spectrogram released by NASA demonstrate not only the advances in space telescope technology since NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, but also the tremendous…

The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured an image of a gravitationally lensed galaxy. The result was a spectacular picture that featured a mirror image of the galaxy in the centre. Such gravitational lensing takes place when huge celestial bodies like a galaxy cluster causes the light passing though it to bend. The body works as a lens by bending the light and hence it is called a gravitational lens while the object which appears distorted due to it is said to be lensed.Like the recent image released by the Hubble…

A moderately strong solar storm hit Earth recently and created a spectacular light show that was visible from New York. This event took place as Earth entered a period of heightened solar activity. On October 11, a massive solar flare was spotted on the Earth-facing side of the Sun and it reached the planet on Monday. Solar activity increases and decreases every 11 years. Solar storms of this magnitude, G2 category, can affect satellites in orbit around Earth and can also disrupt power grids. Usually, solar storms are not…

NASA has shared a stunning image of an “undersea world” from deep space. The image is of the Cosmic Reef and it comprises two different nebulae. The first nebula, with a hue of red and blue against a black backdrop dotted with sparkling lights, is a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Together with the second nebula seen in blue, the entire structure is called the Cosmic Reef. This Cosmic Reef spans some 600 light-years and it is some 160,000 light-years away from…

Image: Marvel EntertainmentSpider-Man is, at this point, just a constant force of nature who will outlive us all and possibly the heat death of the universe. While he’s plenty popular across films, comics, and video games, it’s animation—and more specifically, TV animation—where some of his most enduring work lies. Of the many shows to bear his name, it’s Spectacular Spider-Man that is one of, if not the absolute best. And it’s recently made its way over to Netflix, so it’s as good a time as any to discuss why it’s so…

Seen are six views of the Nili Fossae region of Mars captured by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHU-APLThe rainbow-colored map, to be released in batches over six months, covers the vast majority of the planet <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Mars</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Mars is the…

“Spectacular talent” Maddie Mortimer has won the Desmond Elliott prize for her “incredibly inventive” novel Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies.Mortimer was announced as the winner of the prize, which is given for a debut novel published in the UK and Ireland, at a ceremony in London this evening.Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies was inspired by Mortimer’s mother, who died of cancer in 2010, and focuses on the character of Lia and the shapeshifting cancer inside her body. Moving between Lia’s past and present, the book is a look…

The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Mercury on June 23, 2022, as the spacecraft flew past the planet for its second of six gravity assist maneuvers at Mercury. This image was taken at 09:51:07 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 3, when the spacecraft was 1406 km (874 miles) from the surface of Mercury. Closest approach of 200 km (124 miles) took place shortly before, at 09:44 UTC. In this view, north is up. Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOThe ESA/<span…

Left: A photograph of the rocks retrieved by Hayabusa2 from the asteroid Ryugu. Right: a zoomed-in image of the structure of one of the pieces, taken by an electron microscope. Credit: JAXA/Yokoyama et al.Asteroid Ryugu samples suggest it’s leftover from the formation of the sun billions of years ago.Hayabusa2, an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div…