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From today's featured article

Microscopium is a minor constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. Its stars are faint and hardly visible from most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere. The constellation's brightest star is Gamma Microscopii, of apparent magnitude 4.68, a yellow giant 2.5 times the Sun's mass. Now around 381 light-years distant, it may have been only 1.14 light-years from the Sun some 3.9 million years ago, possibly disturbing the outer Solar System. Two star systems—WASP-7 and HD 205739—have planets, while two others—the young red dwarf star AU Microscopii and the sunlike HD 202628—have debris disks. AU Microscopii and the binary red dwarf system AT Microscopii are probably a wide triple system and members of the Beta Pictoris moving group. BO Microscopii, nicknamed "Speedy Mic", is a star with an extremely fast rotation period of 9 hours 7 minutes. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Late sixth-century BC red-figure plate of an ithyphallic satyr

... that satyrs (example pictured) are male nature spirits in Greek mythology known for their mischievous and bawdy behavior?
... that the citizens of Târgoviște, Romania, put a jinx on boyar Emanoil Băleanu, which was seen as being fulfilled when his wife died in childbirth?
... that The Hexer, the first attempt to portray The Witcher universe in film, was "crushed by the reviewers and laughed out by fans", and has since been described as "the film we all want to forget"?
... that the sponge Oscarella lobularis can multiply by forming drips and bubbles?
... that between 1933 and 1936, Max Troll betrayed hundreds of fellow communists to the Bavarian Political Police, a forerunner of the Gestapo?
... that the rock band XTC were a key influence on Britpop and later power pop acts?
... that following the July Revolution in France, Heinrich Heine wrote a history of emancipation in Germany, beginning with Luther's Reformation?
... that Donald Liebenberg experienced 74 minutes of totality aboard a Concorde during the solar eclipse of June 30, 1973?

In the news

Jair Bolsonaro

Lion Air Flight 610 crashes off the coast of Java, Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
Jair Bolsonaro (pictured) is elected President of Brazil.
In baseball, the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.
Michael D. Higgins is re-elected President of Ireland.
A shooting at a synagogue kills 11 people in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

On this day

October 31: Halloween

Indira Gandhi

475 – Romulus Augustulus took the throne as the last ruling emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
1517 – According to traditional accounts, Martin Luther first posted his Ninety-five Theses onto the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, present-day Germany, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
1917 – World War I: Allied forces defeated Turkish troops in Beersheba in Southern Palestine at the Battle of Beersheba, with the battle involving one of the last successful cavalry charges.
1941 – Approximately 400 workers completed the 60-foot (18 m) busts of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (pictured) was assassinated by two of her own Sikh bodyguards, sparking riots that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs.

Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1723) · Marie Louise Andrews (b. 1849) · Muriel Duckworth (b. 1908)

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Today's featured picture

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the auspices of the Catholic monarchs of Spain. His early life is somewhat obscure, but scholars generally agree that he was born in the Republic of Genoa and travelled widely at a young age, reaching northern Europe and west Africa. From 1492 he led the first European expeditions to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, leading to the systematic European colonization of the Americas. Widely venerated for centuries after his death, his legacy is now debated: public perceptions have changed as recent scholars have given attention to negative aspects of his life such as his role in the extinction of the Taíno people and his promotion of slavery.

This picture is a posthumous portrait of Columbus by Italian painter Sebastiano del Piombo, dated 1519, which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There are no known authentic portraits of Columbus.

Painting: Sebastiano del Piombo

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