This week Venus, the second planet from the sun, will pass directly in front of the Pleiades star cluster. It’s a rare sunset conjunction that’s easy to find with the unaided eye, but best seen through binoculars or a small telescope. Venus approaching the Pleiades on March 31st, photographed by astronomy professor Jimmy Westlake of…
Venus Crosses the Pleiades This Week
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 at
7:34 pm
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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Supports Apollo Engine Recovery by Jeff Bezos
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 at
7:21 pm
Following the announcement by Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) that he had located the Saturn V engines from the Apollo 11 mission in 14,000 feet of water last week, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued this statement regarding the efforts announced this week by Bezos to recover main engines from the Saturn V first stage rocket…
Kepler Expected to Find a “Goldilocks” Planet Within 2 Years
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 at
6:41 pm
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is discovering a veritable avalanche of alien worlds. Recent finds include planets with double suns, massive “super-Earths” and “hot Jupiters,” and a miniature solar system. The variety of planets circling distant suns is as wonderful as it is surprising. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is discovering a veritable avalanche of alien worlds. As the…
Night Sky Observer Site Migration Finally Finished!
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 at
3:33 pm
Having to move the Night Sky Observer and its associated sites, like the Telescope Guide to a new webhosting company proved to be more problematical than anticipated. While the main sites were moved at the end of last month, there were some subdomains that had to be moved as well. All this was compounded by…
Curiosity Rover to Land Near Mount Sharp on Mars in August 2012
Thursday, March 29th, 2012 at
2:39 pm
One particular mountain on Mars, bigger than Colorado’s grandest, has been beckoning would-be explorers since it was first sighted from orbit in the 1970s. Scientists have ideas about how it took shape in the middle of ancient Gale Crater and hopes for what evidence it could yield about whether conditions on Mars have favored life….
Night Sky Observer Has Moved to a New Webserver
Thursday, March 29th, 2012 at
11:49 am
You may have noticed that the Night Sky Observer was offline earlier this week. That’s because the webhost I was with was having capacity problems and I had to move the site to a new webhost. Not an easy task given that this site is 15 years old and has accumulated a lot of stuff…
Are Microbes Raining Down on Enceladus?
Thursday, March 29th, 2012 at
10:39 am
There’s a tiny moon orbiting beyond Saturn’s rings that’s full of promise, and maybe — just maybe — microbes. In a series of tantalizingly close flybys to the Moon, named “Enceladus,” NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed watery jets erupting from what may be a vast underground sea. These jets, which spew through cracks in the…
Swift Satellite Provides New Insights Into Origins of Type Ia Supernovae
Friday, March 23rd, 2012 at
5:02 pm
Studies using X-ray and ultraviolet observations from NASA’s Swift satellite provide new insights into the elusive origins of an important class of exploding star called Type Ia supernovae. Three types of systems, illustrated here, may host Type Ia supernovae. The first two panels depict a white dwarf in a binary system accumulating matter transferred from…
New Surface Features Spotted on Giant Asteroid Vesta by NASA Dawn Spacecraft
Friday, March 23rd, 2012 at
4:25 pm
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has revealed unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. New images and data highlight the diversity of Vesta’s surface and reveal unusual geologic features, some of which were never previously seen on asteroids. In this image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, bright material extends out from the crater Canuleia on…
Mysterious Objects at the Edge of the Electromagnetic Spectrum
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 at
5:10 pm
The human eye is crucial to astronomy. Without the ability to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies would be closed to us, unknown forever. Nevertheless, astronomers cannot shake their fascination with the invisible. Outside the realm of human vision is an entire electromagnetic spectrum of wonders. Each type of light–Âfrom radio waves…
Cassini Spotted a Wave Shaking Up One of the Jupiter’s Jet Streams
Friday, March 16th, 2012 at
3:25 am
New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up one of the giant planet’s jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth’s atmosphere and influences the weather. The movies, made from images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft when it flew by Jupiter in 2000, are part of an…
New WISE Mission Catalog of Entire Infrared Sky Released by NASA
Thursday, March 15th, 2012 at
8:40 pm
NASA unveiled a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky today showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. This is a mosaic of the images covering the entire sky as observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), part of…
The Sun Now (Visible light) |
The Sun Now (H-Alpha light) |
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Aurora Oval (Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval (Southern Hemisphere) |
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