Backup Blog for KaiYves

Na-Na-Na-Na-Na Bat Hawk (Macheiramphus alcinus)! Named after its favorite snack, and not to be confused with your favorite superhero, this raptor mainly feeds on small bats. It has a wide but fragmented range and might be seen in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Papua New Guinea. It lives in a variety of habitats, such as forests, wetlands, and savannas, where it spends most of its day roosting on a perch. But when the Sun starts to set and bats come out, this bird is quick to strike. Within about a 20-minute timespan, it can catch and gulp down as many as 11 bats!

2026 July 11

Messier 24: Sagittarius Star Cloud Image Credit & Copyright: Chuck Ayoub

Explanation: Unlike most entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It’s a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Direct your gaze through this gap with binoculars or a small telescope and you are looking through a window over 300 light-years wide at stars some 10,000 light-years or more from Earth. Sometimes called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24’s luminous stars stretch across this gorgeous interstellar scene. Spanning over four full moons on the sky toward the constellation Sagittarius, the telescopic field of view includes dark markings B92 and B93 near the center of M24, along with other clouds of dust and glowing nebulae toward the center of the Milky Way.