UVA Wise Department of Natural Sciences

06/05/2026

Ornithologists and locals wonder what the future holds for this chick being raised by much taller, but still doting parents

06/03/2026

Discovery happens when faculty and students work side by side.

UVA Wise researchers partnered with George Mason University on a study of cyanobacteria in the Shenandoah River, contributing to findings that included the identification of a species new to science.

Through hands-on research opportunities, Cavs continue to make meaningful contributions to scientific discovery. 🔬🌿

Read all about it: www.gmu.edu/news/2026-05/george-mason-and-uva-wise-researchers-use-phylogenomics-identify-cyanobacteria

06/02/2026

The Vela Supernova Remnant (APOD: 2026 Jun 02)
Image Credit & Copyright: José Mtanous
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260602.html

Explanation: The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About twelve thousand years ago, a relatively normal star in the constellation Vela suddenly exploded, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. The featured image, taken piecemeal over 60 hours from the Khomas Region of Namibia, captures some of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light, with details highlighted by hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) emissions. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. Remaining at the center of the Vela Supernova Remnant is a pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that spins around more than ten times in a single second.

https://www.instagram.com/jmtanous/

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
https://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=260602

06/01/2026

05/29/2026

A newly identified mosasaur from Texas suggests that some ancient marine predators were larger, more powerful, and possibly more aggressive than previously recognized.

05/27/2026

Lorraine Boyd in Delmar, New York, saw this great horned owlet earlier this month and wrote: "Almost camouflaged high up a tree, 1 of the 3 great horned that have branched." Thank you, Lorraine! Branching is when an owlet leaves the nest before it can truly fly well, and climbs or hops onto nearby branches as part of developing strength and coordination. 🦉📸
https://ecp.earthsky.org/community-photos/entry/82683/

See more great images, and submit your own recent photos, here:�
https://ecp.earthsky.org/

05/26/2026

A self-taught engineer, Margaret Knight bagged a valuable patent, at a time when few women held intellectual property

05/22/2026

EarthSky friend Peter Lowenstein captured this beautiful view last night of the alongside (top), (near image center), and Gemini's twin stars and (right of the moon). If you saw this scene last night, you might be thinking: wasn't Venus to the lower right of the moon? Yes ... in the Northern Hemisphere. But the view is flipped in the ! And that includes Mutare, Zimbabwe, where Peter captured this image. Thank you, Peter!
https://ecp.earthsky.org/community-photos/entry/82671/

05/21/2026

In a battered trunk full of his great-grandfather’s nitrate film rolls, a Michigan man discovered a relic of filmmaking history: a copy of “Gugusse and the Automaton,” a long-lost 45-second film by French auteur Georges Méliès, a pioneer of early cinema. The slapstick short film, created around 1897, was famous for containing the very first on-screen appearance of a robot—preceding the term itself by more than two decades.

Until now, no watchable copies of the film were known to survive. What happened to many of Méliès’ films? https://bit.ly/4vlM7hV

📸: National Audio-Visual Conservation Center