Space

Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 3: A solar system trio Rising around sunset and standing highest around midnight, asteroid 324 Bamberga is visible in a small scope this evening, moving against the background stars of Capricornus. Look for it in the south around local midnight, aboutContinue reading “The Sky Today on Tuesday, August 4: Asteroid Bamberga on the move”

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Damian Peach from Hampshire, U.K. Favorable libration briefly tilts the Moon’s southwestern limb into view in this image, exposing three heavily foreshortened craters: Bailly (center left) at roughly 180 miles (300 kilometers) across; the well-preserved Hausen (upper left); and 149-kilometer Drygalski (upper right), so close to the limb it is normally hidden entirely, and liesContinue reading “The Moon’s hidden southwest corner”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 1: Open cluster NGC 6709 Mercury reaches its greatest western elongation at 4 A.M. EDT, standing 19° from the Sun. The tiny planet reaches an altitude of almost 5° above the eastern horizon an hour before sunrise, glowing at magnitude 0.2.Continue reading “The Sky Today on Sunday, August 2: Mercury at greatest western elongation”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 31: Mercury brightening With the Moon rising later each night as it wanes, there’s a slightly longer dark window tonight for deep-sky observing. Let’s use it to track down NGC 6709, a lovely open cluster in the constellation Aquila the Eagle. Continue reading “The Sky Today on Saturday, August 1: Open cluster NGC 6709”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 30: Meteors may shine Mercury has now brightened to magnitude 0.5 in the early-morning sky and should be even easier to see than it was earlier in the week. It is now just a few days from greatest western elongation.  IfContinue reading “The Sky Today on Friday, July 31: Mercury brightening”

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Tony Hallas from Foresthill, California IC 5070 is an emission region that forms the Pelican Nebula, lying around 2,000 light-years away in Cygnus. The region is filled with billowing gas clouds and finely woven strands of dust, all being sculpted and lit by radiation from nearby hot young stars. Double-lobed outflows — like the oneContinue reading “The Pelican aglow”

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Rocket launches this week On Wednesday, July 29, at 7:50 a.m. EDT, the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is planning to launch a Long March 7A from Wenchang Space Launch Site on the coast of Hainan Island in the South China Sea, according to tracking from Next Spaceflight. The payload is undisclosed.Continue reading “A classified NRO launch and a Chinese triple-header set to launch this week”

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In September 1999, the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project discovered a comet – Comet C/1999 S4, or Comet LINEAR – on a course for the Sun. Its unusual behavior drew attention: By July 5-7 of the following year, the Hubble Space Telescope had watched a piece of its crust blow off as ifContinue reading “July 26, 2000: Comet LINEAR disintegrates”

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Born on July 25, 1920, Chushiro Hayashi graduated from the University of Tokyo with a degree in physics in 1942. After World War II service in the navy, he returned to school, finishing his doctorate in 1954 and becoming a professor at Kyoto University in 1957. An innovator, he applied fundamental physics to astronomy andContinue reading “July 25, 1920: The birth of Chushiro Hayashi”

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Having launched on July 16, 1969, and landed on the Moon on July 20, the Apollo 11 astronauts returned home and splashed down in the Pacific on July 24, 1969. In a historically momentous trip, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had become the first people to step onto the Moon. (The third member of theirContinue reading “July 24, 1969: Apollo 11 returns home”

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Gerald Rhemann, taken from Farm Tivoli, Namibia The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a planetary nebula around 650 light-years away in Aquarius, the glowing remains of a dying, Sun-like star’s outer layers. They now surround a hot white dwarf left at the nebula’s center. The imager captured about 24.3 hours of exposure in Hα/OIII/LRGB filtersContinue reading “A glowing eye”

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SpaceX is now targeting Thursday, July 23, for the 13th test flight of Starship, after the company scrubbed its first attempt on July 16. It will be only the second launch of the vehicle’s V3 configuration — the version of the rocket that will fly astronauts to the Moon for NASA’s Artemis program. The 90-minuteContinue reading “SpaceX targeting Thursday for second launch of the world’s largest rocket”

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When massive stars die, they explode, leaving behind supernova remnants. Given how common binary star systems are — more than half the stars in our galaxy have a companion — it stands to reason that paired supernova remnants would also be common. But astronomers have never found one. Now, hiding in the bright shine ofContinue reading “Is this the first known binary system to produce two supernova remnants?”

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Rocket launches this week On Tuesday, July 21, SpaceX opens the week with the Starlink Group 17-39 mission, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10 a.m. EDT. The Falcon 9 booster is expected to land on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. Watch it here. Later thatContinue reading “A robotic satellite servicer and Starship’s return headline this week’s launches”

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July 19, 418 C.E., marks the first total solar eclipse (of which we have a record) during which a comet was seen. Turkish-born Church historian Philostorgius wrote in Book XII of the Epitome Historiae Ecclesiasticae: “When Theodosius had reached adolescence, on the nineteenth of July at about the eighth hour, the sun was so completelyContinue reading “July 19, 418: A solar eclipse/comet combo”

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Born on July 18, 1921, John Glenn grew up in Ohio and joined the Marine Corps in 1943. He flew 59 combat missions in World War II and 63 in the Korean War before being selected by NASA for the Mercury program. In 1962, he spent five hours orbiting the Earth in the Friendship 7Continue reading “July 18, 1915: The birth of John Glenn”

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After years of planning, training, and international negotiation, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission culminated in 1975 when spacecraft from the U.S. and the Soviet Union docked in space. On July 17, the Apollo and Soyuz capsules locked together, utilizing an “androgynous” system of petal-shaped plates, and their commanders, Thomas Stafford and Aleksey Leonov, shook hands.Continue reading “July 17, 1975: The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project link-up”

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In 1839, the president of Harvard University invited William Bond to move into a house on campus and, by virtue of bringing along his own astronomical equipment, become the university’s first astronomer in residence. With public interest spurred by the 1835 passage of Halley’s Comet and the Comet of 1843, Harvard soon had enough moneyContinue reading “July 16, 1850: Bond and Whipple photograph Vega”

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The phenomenon of a Full Moon arises when our planet, Earth, is precisely sandwiched between the Sun and the Moon. This alignment ensures the entire side of the Moon that faces us gleams under sunlight. Thanks to the Moon’s orbit around Earth, the angle of sunlight hitting the lunar surface and being reflected back toContinue reading “2026 Full Moon calendar: When to see the Full Moon and phases”

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To be a planet, NASA says an object must be big enough that its gravity has cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun. I can understand how something can clear objects close to itself, but how does it clear something 180° away in its orbit? Rebecca SmithWashougal,Continue reading “How do planets clear out objects on the other side of their orbit?”

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The Soviet Union launched Phobos 2 on July 12, 1988, the second of two uncrewed probes designed to study Mars, moons Phobos and Deimos, the Sun, and the interplanetary environment. Each probe was equipped with 25 instruments including high-energy detectors; X-ray and solar photometers; infrared, ultrasound, and gamma-ray spectrometers; and more. Phobos 1 was lostContinue reading “July 12, 1988: Phobos 2 launches”

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On July 11, 1801, French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery, c/1801 N1. When he’d began his career in 1789 as a doorkeeper (essentially, a concierge) at Marseille Observatory, the directors had recognized his talents and taught him more about astronomy. That background, combined with his exceptional observational skills and the ability toContinue reading “July 11, 1801: Jean-Louis Pons finds his first comet”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 9: Venus stands above Regulus Look north after dark tonight to spot one of the most famous asterisms in the sky: the Big Dipper. Late tonight, it lies to the lower left of the North Star, Polaris, with its cup belowContinue reading “The Sky Today on Friday, July 10: Meet Mizar and Alcor”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 8: Asteroid Melpomene at opposition Venus passes 1.1° north of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo the Lion, at 10 A.M. EDT. The pair is visible after sunset this evening, when they are still close as they slowly set in theContinue reading “The Sky Today on Thursday, July 9: Venus stands above Regulus”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 7: The Moon, Saturn, and Neptune Asteroid 18 Melpomene reaches opposition at 4 P.M. EDT. Now visible all night long, the 9th-magnitude main-belt world is located in southeastern Aquila, near the Eagle’s border with Scutum.  To track the asteroid for yourself,Continue reading “The Sky Today on Wednesday, July 8: Asteroid Melpomene at opposition”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 6: Catch the sparkling Coma Star Cluster Last Quarter Moon occurs at 3:29 P.M. EDT.  The Moon then passes 7° north of Saturn at 6 P.M. EDT.  You can catch this pairing before then, visible in the early-morning sky. An hourContinue reading “The Sky Today on Tuesday, July 7: The Moon, Saturn, and Neptune”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 5: Capture a view of Saturn’s moons About two hours after sunset, the constellation Coma Berenices is still some 40° above the western horizon. It’s a great time to take in the Coma Star Cluster, also called Melotte 111. Spanning 4°,Continue reading “The Sky Today on Monday, July 6: Catch the sparkling Coma Star Cluster”

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