Tag archives for moon
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…
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 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.…
The lunar wall comes into view, three planets huddle, and the moon joins the Leo constellation in this week’s best sky events.
Posted by How far would you go to push the bounds of discovery? What would you risk? From the top of Mount Everest to the surface of the Moon, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and mountaineer Conrad Anker have risked their lives to undertake humankind’s most stunning achievements.
Straggler meteors, a solar eclipse, and the return of Venus are among the best sky events to watch this week.
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…
Sky Show: Jupiter and Moon in Super Close Pairing
Posted by Andrew Fazekas on January 19, 2013 
Two of the brightest objects in the night sky head towards a close encounter on Monday night. The sky show begins after local nightfall on the 21st when the waxing gibbous moon snuggles up to brilliant white Jupiter in the southeast. This closeness is of course just an illusion – they are in reality separate…
National Geographic’s Top 10 Tweets of 2012
Posted by Ted Chamberlain on December 13, 2012 
What did National Geographic Twitter followers retweet most in 2012? Intriguing transmissions on strange emissions—from the sun as well as wombats—subatomic science, and stargazing. Lots of stargazing.
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Armchair astronomers take note: This space atlas is for you. Yes, that kind of atlas—a series of maps and charts that evokes the ability to navigate a place, usually by ship or some sort of vehicle. The maps are remarkably detailed—Mercury’s surface incorporates the latest data from the orbiting Messenger spacecraft and the crater names might surprise you (Mark Twain, Botticelli, Dali, Shakespeare). On Venus nearly every feature is named after goddesses or famous women.
Not many people can say they’ve met the first man on the moon. But mingle with astronomers gathered in Beijing for a conference and you’ll come across one or two—even at breakfast—who can reflect personally about Neil Armstrong.
Posted by Night Sky News: Planets Dazzle Holiday Skies
Posted by Andrew Fazekas on December 24, 2011 
This holiday season skywatchers get to witness five planets hanging like ornaments in the skies above. All throughout the end of the month you can catch the five classical naked-eye planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – all of which were first seen by astronomers in ancient Greek and Roman times. First up…
Posted by Last May amateur astronomers alerted the world to the fact that the gas giant planet Jupiter had lost a belt. Normally the stormy world is encircled by two dark, rusty bands of clouds created by fast-moving jet streams. The features are easy to spot with a backyard telescope (and even easier with pro ‘scopes, such…
If you step outside tonight (and the skies are clear), look to the southwest just after sunset to see the start of a celestial driveby. Just above the horizon you should see a slim sliver of a crescent moon—just 4 percent of the lunar orb’s daylit side will be facing Earth. High above, to the…
Forget naughty or nice–with December now in full force, news outlets across the country are busy compiling their lists of what were the most popular/spectacular/important stories of 2010. We here at NG are no exception, and we’ve even compiled everything into a handy-dandy “best of” hub page for easy perusing. Since you know you love…
In the 1980s, my very first LEGO set was Spacelab, and I spent *hours* working with those finger-numbing blocks to model what should have been NASA’s first outpost on the moon. It had a space McDonald’s and everything. Alas, my brilliant work was never presented to any space agency, and several pieces of my prototype…
By Andrew Fazekas for Breaking Orbit For folks in the Northern Hemisphere, fall is the best time to see the magical displays of the aurora borealis, when nights can be set ablaze with colors as curtains of ghostly glows dance across the sky. (See new aurora pictures from an early September solar storm.) But unless…
Welcome, ladies and gents, to this week’s Carnival of Space, the 170th performance of a spectacular show filled with thrills, chills, and amazements! —Image by Victoria Jaggard This is my debut as host of the Carnival here at Breaking Orbit, but I’m no First of May when it comes to showcasing the wonders the cosmos…
The moon may be shrinking, but it’s still a big enough ball of fun to warrant its own night in the limelight. On September 18 people around the planet will be gathering for the first ever International Observe the Moon Night, a global event meant to get people excited about lunar science and exploration. The…
Well, who knows at this stage whether NASA will ever get its next-generation ATHLETE rover onto the moon or Mars. But at least we can rest assured it’ll provide any future astronauts with hours of entertainment: From moon buggy to moon boogie.
On Monday U.S. President Barack Obama officially released his policy for the nation’s space program, a 14-pager that backs up what many media outlets have been covering as the likely direction for NASA and beyond. The highlights: cooperate with other governments on Earth- and sun-monitoring satellites that feed us vital data on climate change and…
It might not be in the stars for humans to return to the moon anytime soon. But NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched last year in part to scout locations for a moon base, is proving that there’s still plenty it can do in the name of space exploration. High-resolution LRO images have helped researchers track…
Capping off weeks of rumor and speculation, U.S. President Barack Obama formally unveiled his proposed plan for NASA yesterday, an interesting mix of caution and ambition that makes some significant tweaks to his predecessor’s push for a human return to the moon. Among the main points, Obama is saying we should skip the moon and…
Forty years ago today the collective heart of the nation missed a beat when an oxygen tank on the Apollo 13 service module ruptured as the craft was en route to the moon, nearly 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) from Earth. Famously, NASA held true to their motto that failure is not an option, and the…
