California crab fisheries will close for the season in April when whales are feeding off the state's coast as part of an effort to keep Dungeness crab fishery gear from killing protected whales, officials announced Tuesday. The April 15 closure, three months before the crab fishing season normally ends, is part of a settlement reached by the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The center sued the state agency in 2017, saying it was liable for a surge in entanglement of endangered whales and sea turtles because it oversees operation of the fishery on state and federal waters off California's coast.

Just about every week, it seems, scientists publish the unique DNA code of some creature or plant. Just in February, they published the genome for the strawberry, the paper mulberry tree, the great white shark and the Antarctic blackfin icefish. They also announced that, thanks to a crowdfunding campaign, they'd produced the genome of Lil BUB, a female cat with a large internet following. That followed a notable advance in January: an improved genome for the axolotl, a salamander renowned for regrowing severed limbs and other body parts.

A language professor has given a Hawaiian name — Powehi — to the black hole depicted in an image produced in a landmark experiment. Powehi means "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation" and comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th century Hawaiian creation chant. Po is a profound dark source of unending creation, while wehi, honored with embellishments, is one of the chant's descriptions of po.

NASA said Thursday that it's sending a drone called Dragonfly to explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Using propellers, the drone will fly and land on several spots on the icy moon to study whether it can support microbial life.

Starting Sunday evening, all of North and South America will be able to see the only total lunar eclipse of 2019 from start to finish this weekend. The entire eclipse will exceed three hours. Totality — when the moon's completely bathed in Earth's shadow — will last an hour

Maine's giant spinning ice disk that quickly gained international fame seems to have met its end. Social media users compared it to an alien spacecraft and the moon, and ducks used it as a big raft.

NASA's Opportunity, the Mars rover that was built to operate for just three months but kept going and going, rolling across the rocky red soil, was pronounced dead Wednesday, 15 years after it landed on the planet. The six-wheeled vehicle that helped gather critical evidence that ancient Mars might have been hospitable to life was remarkably spry up until eight months ago, when it was finally doomed by a ferocious dust storm.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor Brett Ratcliffe named a new scarab beetle species drogoni, rhaegali and viserioni. The names are Latinized versions of Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion, three dragons owned by Daenerys Targaryen's character in "Game of Thrones." He's a fan of the series, but ultimately chose the names to draw attention to biodiversity and the amount of undiscovered species. "When you create names like these, you do it to gain a little bit of notoriety and bring public attention to it," he said.

Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited the moon. To this day, that 1968 mission is considered to be NASA's boldest and perhaps most dangerous undertaking.