Today’s hidden fact · Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Near a Black Hole, One Hour Can Equal Seven Years — and It's Not Fiction

Interstellar's famous time-slip is real physics. Clocks genuinely run slower in strong gravity — your GPS corrects for it every second.

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The cosmos right now

This dashboard refreshes itself every morning — no humans involved.

NASA Picture of the Day

NGC 6188: Dragons of Ara

NGC 6188: Dragons of Ara

Where can you find dragons fighting in the night sky? In the southern constellation of the Altar: Ara. The dragons are, of course, actually made of suggestively shaped gas and dust. The celestial home of the mythological battling beasts is cataloged as NGC 6…

© Rod Prazeres · NASA APOD · Jul 7

Upcoming Rocket Launches

  1. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-42

    Jul 9, 09:05 UTC · SpaceX
    Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

  2. Long March 10B | Demo Flight

    Jul 10, 05:20 UTC · China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
    Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China

  3. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-48

    Jul 11, 02:00 UTC · SpaceX
    Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

  4. Gravity-1 | Unknown Payload

    Jul 12, 02:00 UTC · Orienspace Technology
    Haiyang Oriental Spaceport

  5. Vikram-I | Demo Flight

    Jul 12, 05:00 UTC · Skyroot Aerospace
    Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India

Asteroids Passing Earth This Week

  • 2007 AA2

    2026-07-11 · misses us by 6,832,281 km · ~52 m wide · 25,970 km/h

  • 2019 AM12

    2026-07-08 · misses us by 10,787,227 km · ~36 m wide · 18,135 km/h

  • 2016 NB1

    2026-07-14 · misses us by 11,593,805 km · ~71 m wide · 30,381 km/h

  • 2013 AS27watched by NASA

    2026-07-10 · misses us by 12,693,133 km · ~228 m wide · 64,487 km/h

  • 2018 LQ2

    2026-07-11 · misses us by 20,039,918 km · ~43 m wide · 16,043 km/h

  • 2020 AF2

    2026-07-10 · misses us by 24,338,554 km · ~49 m wide · 20,192 km/h

Distances look huge — the Moon is 384,400 km away. Anything under a few million km counts as a close shave in space terms.

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