Latest news with #Mimas
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
You can see a giant 'hole' shoot across Saturn this summer — and it won't happen again until 2040
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Over the next few months, there will be several chances to see a giant "hole" shoot across the surface of Saturn, as the shadow of its largest moon passes across the ringed planet's Earth-facing surface. The rare spectacle will not be visible again until 2040 — and we'll tell you how to see it from your backyard. Every 15 years, Saturn and Earth become perfectly aligned so that the gas giant's rings face our planet head-on. In March, this alignment was so perfect that the planet's super-thin rings completely disappeared from view, Live Science's sister site previously reported. In 2032, the opposite will occur, and we will be able to see the entirety of the dusty disks in a perfect circle around the fifth planet from the sun. Saturn's current orientation also means that the planet's largest moon, Titan, circles it in a way that causes its large shadow to repeatedly transit the planet's surface, similar to how the moon's shadow races across Earth during a lunar eclipse. The same phenomenon also happens to some of Saturn's other major moons, including Mimas and Rhea. However, their respective shadows are smaller and lighter than Titan's, making it harder to see them. Titan orbits Saturn roughly every 16 days, meaning that there will be a total of 10 transits visible while Earth is still aligned with the ringed gas giant. Three of these transits have already happened, most recently on June 16. But there are still seven more occasions when the spectacle could be visible between now and mid-autumn, depending on your location and weather conditions at the time. The remaining transits will occur on July 2, July 18, Aug. 3, Aug. 19, Sept. 4, Sept. 20 and Oct. 6, according to Sky & Telescope. For exact times, check the table below. Related: Saturn gains 128 new moons, giving it more than the rest of the solar system combined Titan will also be visible during these transits, although its position relative to the shadow changes with each viewing, as Saturn continues to circle the sun. But it will be slightly smaller than the shadow it casts. To see the spectacular transits for yourself, you will need a good telescope with at least 200x magnification. From North America, most of the transits will start and end before sunrise. To find where Saturn will be in the night sky, you can use websites such as However, we recommend that you don't leave it to the last minute, because adverse weather conditions could completely obscure your view. As you can see from the table below, the length of transits will also decrease each time, which means you will have to be more precise with your timings later in the year; On Oct. 6, the shadow will only be momentarily visible when Titan is exactly at mid-transit. Date Transit start (EST) Mid-transit (EST) Transit end (EST) Transit duration (minutes) July 2 03:40 06:35 09:03 323 July 18 03:00 05:44 08:05 305 Aug. 3 02:25 04:52 07:04 279 Aug. 19 01:52 04:01 06:00 248 Sept. 4 01:25 03:09 04:50 205 Sept. 20 01:09 02:20 03:34 145 Oct. 6 N/A 01:32* N/A 1 But even if you miss the impressive shadow over the next few months, you will still be able to see Titan pass in front of Saturn every 16 days, up until January 2026, when it will stop transiting the planet until 2040. RELATED STORIES —There's liquid on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. But something's missing and scientists are confused. —Saturn's 'Death Star' moon Mimas may have an underground ocean scientists never believed could exist —There's a weird, disappearing dark spot on Saturn's moon Enceladus If you are lucky enough to see the stunning celestial spectacle, be sure to keep in mind that Titan is the second-largest moon in the solar system, behind Jupiter's behemoth satellite Ganymede. At more than 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) across, it is also slightly bigger than the planet Mercury and 50% wider than Earth's moon. It is also the only one of the solar system's moons, other than Earth's, that has been visited by a human-made spacecraft. The European Space Agency's Huygens probe landed on the Saturnian satellite in 2005 — and it is still there today.
New Straits Times
09-06-2025
- Politics
- New Straits Times
Homes smashed, help slashed: no respite for returning Syrians
AROUND a dozen Syrian women sat in a circle at a UN-funded centre in Damascus, happy to share stories about their daily struggles, but their bonding was overshadowed by fears that such meet-ups could soon end due to international aid cuts. The community centre, funded by the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR), offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war, with an economy broken by decades of mismanagement and Western sanctions. "We have no stability. We are scared and we need support," said Fatima al-Abbiad, a mother of four. "There are a lot of problems at home, a lot of tension, a lot of violence because of the lack of income." But the centre's future now hangs in the balance as the UNHCR has had to cut down its activities in Syria because of the international aid squeeze caused by US President Donald Trump's decision to halt foreign aid. The cuts will close nearly half of the UNHCR centres in Syria and the widespread services they provide - from educational support and medical equipment to mental health and counselling sessions - just as the population needs them the most. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees returning home after the fall of Bashar al-Assad last year. UNHCR's representative in Syria, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, said the situation was a "disaster" and that the agency would struggle to help returning refugees. "I think that we have been forced - here I use very deliberately the word forced - to adopt plans which are more modest than we would have liked," he told Context/Thomson Reuters Foundation in Damascus. "It has taken us years to build that extraordinary network of support, and almost half of them are going to be closed exactly at the moment of opportunity for refugee and IDPs (internally displaced people) return." A UNHCR spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the agency would shut down around 42 per cent of its 122 community centres in Syria in June, which will deprive some 500,000 people of assistance and reduce aid for another 600,000 that benefit from the remaining centres. The UNHCR will also cut 30 per cent of its staff in Syria, said the spokesperson, while the livelihood programme that supports small businesses will shrink by 20 per cent unless it finds new funding. Around 100 people visit the centre in Damascus each day, said Mirna Mimas, a supervisor with GOPA-DERD, the church charity that runs the centre with UNHCR. Already the centre's educational programmes, which benefited 900 children last year, are at risk, said Mimas. Mimas said if the centre closed, the loss to the community would be enormous: "If we must tell people we are leaving, I will weep before they do," she said Aid funding for Syria had already been declining before Trump's seismic cuts to the US Agency for International Development this year and cuts by other countries to international aid budgets. But the new blows come at a particularly bad time. Since former president Assad was ousted by Islamist rebels last December, around 507,000 Syrians have returned from neighbouring countries and around 1.2 million people displaced inside the country went back home, according to UN estimates. Llosa said, given the aid cuts, UNHCR would have only limited scope to support the return of some of the six million Syrians who fled the country since 2011. "We will need to help only those that absolutely want to go home and simply do not have any means to do so," Llosa said. Ayoub Merhi Hariri had been counting on support from the livelihood programme to pay off the money he borrowed to set up a business after he moved back to Syria at the end of 2024. After 12 years in Lebanon, he returned to Daraa in southwestern Syria to find his house destroyed - no doors, no windows, no running water, no electricity. He moved in with relatives and registered for livelihood support at a UN-backed centre in Daraa to help him start a spice manufacturing business to support his family and ill mother. While his business was doing well, he said he would struggle to repay his creditors the 20 million Syrian pounds (US$1,540) he owed them now that his livelihood support had been cut.
Observer
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Observer
Homes smashed, help slashed: no respite for returning Syrians
DAMASCUS: Around a dozen Syrian women sat in a circle at a UN-funded centre in Damascus, happy to share stories about their daily struggles, but their bonding was overshadowed by fears that such meet-ups could soon end due to international aid cuts. The community centre, funded by the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR), offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war, with an economy broken by decades of mismanagement and Western sanctions. "We have no stability. We are scared and we need support," said Fatima al Abbiad, a mother of four. "There are a lot of problems at home, a lot of tension, a lot of violence because of the lack of income." But the centre's future now hangs in the balance as the UNHCR has had to cut down its activities in Syria because of the international aid squeeze caused by US President Donald Trump's decision to halt foreign aid. The cuts will close nearly half of the UNHCR centres in Syria and the widespread services they provide — from educational support and medical equipment to mental health and counselling sessions — just as the population needs them the most. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees returning home after the fall of Bashar al Assad last year. UNHCR's representative in Syria, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, said the situation was a "disaster" and that the agency would struggle to help returning refugees. "I think that we have been forced — here I use very deliberately the word forced — to adopt plans which are more modest than we would have liked," he said. "It has taken us years to build that extraordinary network of support and almost half of them are going to be closed exactly at the moment of opportunity for refugee and IDPs (internally displaced people) return." A UNHCR spokesperson said that the agency would shut down around 42 per cent of its 122 community centres in Syria in June, which will deprive some 500,000 people of assistance and reduce aid for another 600,000 that benefit from the remaining centres. The UNHCR will also cut 30 per cent of its staff in Syria, said the spokesperson, while the livelihood programme that supports small businesses will shrink by 20 per cent unless it finds new funding. Around 100 people visit the centre in Damascus each day, said Mirna Mimas, a supervisor with GOPA-DERD, the church charity that runs the centre with UNHCR. Already the centre's educational programmes, which benefitted 900 children last year, are at risk, said Mimas. Nour Huda Madani, 41, said she had been "lucky" to receive support for her autistic child at the centre. "They taught me how to deal with him," said the mother of five. Another visitor, Odette Badawi, said the centre was important for her well-being after she returned to Syria five years ago, having fled to Lebanon when war broke out in Syria in 2011. "(The centre) made me feel like I am part of society," said the 68-year-old. Mimas said if the centre closed, the loss to the community would be enormous: "If we must tell people we are leaving, I will weep before they do," she said Aid funding for Syria had already been declining before Trump's seismic cuts to the US Agency for International Development this year and cuts by other countries to international aid budgets. But the new blows come at a particularly bad time. Since former president Assad was ousted by Islamist rebels last December, around 507,000 Syrians have returned from neighbouring countries and around 1.2 million people displaced inside the country went back home, according to UN estimates. Llosa said, given the aid cuts, UNHCR would have only limited scope to support the return of some of the 6 million Syrians who fled the country since 2011. "We will need to help only those that absolutely want to go home and simply do not have any means to do so," Llosa said. "That means that we will need to be very selective as opposed to what we wanted, which was to be expansive." Ayoub Merhi Hariri had been counting on support from the livelihood programme to pay off the money he borrowed to set up a business after he moved back to Syria at the end of 2024. After 12 years in Lebanon, he returned to Daraa in southwestern Syria to find his house destroyed — no doors, no windows, no running water, no electricity. He moved in with relatives and registered for livelihood support at a UN-backed centre in Daraa to help him start a spice manufacturing business to support his family and ill mother. — Reuters HIGHLIGHTS The UNHCR has had to cut down its activities in Syria because of the international aid squeeze caused by US President Donald Trump's decision to halt foreign aid
