Posted by Saturn is putting its best face forward for evening skywatchers over the next few weeks. Armchair astronomers can also catch this celestial lord of the rings through a special high definition, live SLOOH web broadcast June 18 from Prescott Observatory in Arizona, starting at 11:45 pm EDT / 8:45 pm PDT. (Here is a…
Gaze skyward this week and watch our solar system’s two innermost planets have a strikingly close encounter, while changing seasons brings the year’s largest moon in the sky. Moon and Spica. On Tuesday, June 18, look towards the southern sky to see the gibbous waxing moon glide extremely close to the distant star Spica (263…
Mysterious grooves carved into the slopes of giant Martian sand dunes may be generated by gliding chunks of dry ice, NASA said this week.
This week, astronomers announced that they have managed to weigh a minuscule galaxy that breaks the record for the smallest ever detected and may help shed light on mysterious dark matter. With only 1000 stars huddled together, this galactic featherweight dubbed Segue 2 has just enough mass for dark matter to act as a…
Horizons from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.
Breathtaking shots of the ground and sky dominate this striking time-lapse video shot in South Dakota and Wyoming between April and October of 2012 by veteran photographer Randy Halverson. One highlight: the footage shows the Milky Way galaxy’s bright central hub — located more than 30,000 light years away — repeatedly gliding across the frame…
This week skywatchers get a chance to watch the moon strike a pose with bright stars while the most elusive of naked-eye planets puts on its best sky show of the year. Moon poses with Venus. About 30 minutes after sunset on Monday, June 10, skywatchers around the world can look towards the very low…
A thought-provoking new study is bolstering the notion that comets raining down on Earth billions of years ago may have seeded our young planet with the organic building blocks of life. Through powerful computer simulations of comet impacts of various sizes, astronomers have found that it is possible that complex organic molecules may have hitched…
A team of international astronomers are investigating what looks like the impending death of a dwarf galaxy 54 million light years away. The scientists were clued in by a trail of fireballs streaming thousands of light years behind the small galaxy known as IC 3418. The astronomers liken these bright blobs of gas, lit…
Here’s what’s on tap this week for you skywatchers: Uranus meets the moon, Titan puts in an appearance, and Venus anoints a new moon.
Astronomers around the world are gearing up to get their first close-up views of a giant space rock and it’s new-found moon, set to hurtle by Earth Friday, May 31. The flyby will be broadcast live around the world via the web. Remote controlled telescopes on the Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa,…
Evening planets continue to dazzle all week long, the largest asteroid in the solar system pays a brief visit, and an annual celestial landmark rises, signaling that summer is not too far off. Mercury Meets Jupiter. Look towards the very low northwest horizon on Monday, May 27, about 30 minutes after sunset to catch…
The devastating tornado that barreled through the Oklahoma City area on Monday has produced some stunning on-the-ground video footage. But cameras aboard weather satellites are also putting a new perspective on the supercell thunderstorm that spawned this monster twister. These “eyes in space” provided key imagery and data of the May 20 storm for weather…
Sky-watchers this week get a chance to go eye to eye with a cosmic scorpion and witness a magnificent meeting of three neighboring worlds in the evening skies.
A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at the right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program.…
After returning to terra firma after five months aboard the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) with great fanfare, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says he feels the drag of gravity and like he has aged quite a bit. “It really feels like the day after I played a hard game of rugby or hockey…I am…
The Orion nebula is one of the most favorite spots for stargazers to explore in the heavens, but this week astronomers are releasing a stunning new look to this giant stellar nursery 1300 light years from Earth. A fiery cosmic ribbon glows with orange colors as grains of cold interstellar dust light up like…
The lunar wall comes into view, three planets huddle, and the moon joins the Leo constellation in this week’s best sky events.
The crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is preparing for a spacewalk Saturday as it deals with what NASA calls, “a serious leak” of ammonia coolant in a power system. While NASA officials in a news briefing Friday afternoon said that the leak does not pose any danger to the six-person crew or the…
A pair of dead stars sitting in a star cluster about 150 light years from Earth appear to have their atmospheres polluted with debris from asteroids . Astronomers say this suggests that the basic ingredients for making Earth-like planets could be quite common in stellar nurseries across the cosmos. “We have identified chemical evidence…
Straggler meteors, a solar eclipse, and the return of Venus are among the best sky events to watch this week.
Halley’s comet glides across the starry skies back in March 1986, shedding particles that will eventually approach Earth as Eta Aquarid meteors. Credit: NASA Halley’s Comet won’t swing by Earth for another 48 years, but you won’t have to wait that long to watch bits of the iconic comet zip across our skies. That’s…
After nearly four years of glorious service to science, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory mission has come to the end this week. Running out of helium coolant needed to chill its instruments down to near absolute zero means that it has closed its far-infrared eyes to the Universe for good. After a…
Hubble has taken its first close-up views of the much anticipated and potential ‘comet of the century’. On the night of April 10th, the space telescope snapped an image in visible light of Comet ISON while it was still at a whopping distance of 394 million miles from Earth (386 million miles from the…
In honor of its launch 23 years ago the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a breathtaking, never-before-seen view of one of the most photogenic cosmic vistas in the night sky. Dubbed the Horsehead nebula because of its obvious resemblance to a steed or chess piece in profile, this dark cloud of gas and dust sits 1,500…
Skywatchers this weekend will get treated to some beautiful close encounters when the Moon glides past bright clusters of stars and planet Jupiter. Up first on Saturday, April 13, look towards the high western sky after local sunset for a waxing crescent Moon. Look to its far upper left and you will see a super-bright…
