Good morning and welcome to Kid News! I'm Kim, today is Friday, January 20, 2023, and

we begin with a first of its kind window on the Milky Way. An international team of scientists

conducted a massive survey of our galaxy, revealing more than 3 billion celestial objects,

making it the largest catalog of its kind to date. Over the course of 22 months, astronomers

identified 1.7 billion stars, 500,000 galaxies, as well as thousands of asteroids and comets.

A dark energy camera attached to a telescope at the Sero-Telolo Inter-American Observatory

in Chile collected the data. The observatory is run by the U.S. National Science Foundation,

and one of its directors, Deborah Fisher, likened the new imaging to a group photo of over

3 billion people, and every single individual is recognizable. And while it's hard to imagine,

this latest survey covers only 6.5% of the night sky. It just goes to show how much remains to be

discovered above us, and it turns out even right here on Earth. Researchers at the California Academy

of Sciences announced in 2022 more than 140 new species of plants and animals were found,

two of them by high school buddies wielding ultraviolet flashlights. The Bay Area teen saw photos of

a pair of previously unidentified scorpions on I naturalist, a social networking site for

nature lovers, and set out to find them in the California desert. Other discoveries were made

in remote areas across multiple continents and oceans. They include a diverse range of organisms

from lizards to sea slugs, forest geckos, and sharks, as well as a rose-tinted rainbow-colored fish.

According to the Academy's Chief of Science, biodiversity is an important tool in the fight

against species extinction and global conservation efforts. A couple of trailblazing women are in the

news, one for leaving a job, the other for starting one. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern,

who made history at 37 by becoming the world's youngest female head of government,

surprised many on Wednesday morning by announcing she's stepping down in February.

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