Brand New Supernova

Summary: A new supernova has been discovered by undergraduates at the University of London just yesterday during their class. Upon realising what they saw, the astronomy world was alerted and many telescopes immediately trained their eye upon the sight. 

It is expected to grow brighter before dimming again to obscurity in the next two weeks. If you are feeling ambitious, you can look for the bright star in between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25860454

Star Friendly Lamps

Summary: For those of us who love to look at the stars in the night sky, we often are disappointed by the limited amount of starts we can see due to the light pollution cause by city lights. Researchers have now realized what I would have thought to be blindingly obvious, conventional streetlamps need to be altered. If you look at a typical street lamp you will notice that, not only does it not light some of the street below it leaving dark spots on the road, it also lights up the sky around it. Until we get hovercrafts, this is pointless. Researchers have now realized that they can instead use LED lights to build streetlamps. Using some Aluminum, the light rays can be focused to shine entirely on the street with minimal light polluting our beautiful night sky. These researchers do not have a prototype yet so we will be waiting a while for these better street lamps, but some progress is better than no progress.


BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22292129