The Midnight Knights

Black holes are one of the most mysterious and fascinating things in space. But what exactly are they? A black hole is a place in space where gravity is so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape from it. That’s why it’s called a “black” hole. It’s completely dark. Black holes form when a very big star runs out of energy and collapses in on itself. All of its mass gets squeezed into a tiny space, creating an incredibly strong pull. Imagine something many times heavier than the sun, but packed into an area smaller than a city! Even though black holes are invisible, scientists can find them by looking at how stars and gas move around them. Sometimes, they even see bright light from matter being pulled into the black hole. There are also different sizes of black holes. Some are small, like a single city. Others, called supermassive black holes, live at the center of galaxies—including our own, the Milky Way! Black holes might sound scary, but they’re really far away and don’t ...

Have you ever looked up on a clear day and wondered why the sky is blue instead of, say, green or purple? It’s a question many of us have asked as children—and the answer lies in the way sunlight interacts with our atmosphere. Sunlight might look white, but it’s actually made up of many colors. These colors can be seen in a rainbow and include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Each color has a different wavelength, with red having the longest wavelength and violet the shortest. When sunlight enters Earth’s atmosphere, it collides with molecules and small particles in the air. This causes a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. Shorter wavelengths, like blue and violet, scatter more easily than longer wavelengths like red and yellow. However, our eyes are more sensitive to blue light and less so to violet, which is mostly absorbed by the upper atmosphere. This is why we see the sky as blue during the day. At sunrise and sunset, the sky often turns orange, pink, or r...