Space

In Astronomy’s 2022 list of the 20 greatest astronomers of all time, Associate Editor Michael Bakich ranked Tycho Brahe No. 2, second only to Galileo, noting: “Danish astronomer Tyge (Tycho) Ottesen Brahe was history’s greatest pre-telescopic observer.” Born Dec. 14, 1546, Tycho was raised by an uncle who funded his education at the University ofContinue reading “Oct. 24, 1601: The death of Tycho Brahe”

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Born Oct. 23, 1893, in Estonia, Ernest Opik was based at the Astronomical Observatory in Tartu from 1921-1944. It was there in the 1920s that he began to research meteors and comets, their frequencies, and their speeds. In 1932, he proposed a reservoir of long-period comets that formed a large cloud, orbiting the Sun atContinue reading “Oct. 23, 1893: Birth of Ernest Opik”

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Phobos, it seems, is not long for this universe — at least on the large cosmic timescale.  Astronomers have long known that Phobos, the larger and nearer of the two martian moons, is slowly spiraling inward to eventual destruction. The end result won’t be pretty: Phobos will slip closer and closer toward Mars, then strikeContinue reading “Mars’ moon Phobos is destined to become a ring”

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In 1892, George Ellery Hale, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Chicago, convinced the university president to acquire two 40-inch telescope lens blanks. With funding from Charles Yerkes, a Chicago mass-transit tycoon looking to refurbish his image, Hale spearheaded the creation of an observatory to house the Great Refractor made with these blanks.Continue reading “Oct. 21, 1897: Yerkes Observatory is dedicated”

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BepiColombo, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launched Oct. 20, 2018. The spacecraft is actually two satellites in one, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), commissioned with investigating one of the least-visited planets in our solar system. To reach its final position,Continue reading “Oct. 20, 2018: BepiColombo launches”

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Sometime around the year 1837, a strange object passed an invisible cosmic mile marker: 1,000 astronomical units from the Sun. (One astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-Sun distance.) For more than a century, it continued undetected toward our star. Finally, on Oct. 19, 2017, humans noticed the visitor. That night, a faint, thinContinue reading “Oct. 19, 2017: The discovery of ‘Oumuamua”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  October 17: Watch Wild Ducks Tiny Tethys is transiting the disk of Saturn beginning around 9:35 P.M. EDT, most easily visible from the eastern half of the U.S. Saturn is easy to locate in Cetus the Whale — it’s the brightest lightContinue reading “The Sky Today on Sunday, October 18: Another Tethys transit”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  October 16: Tethys and its shadow transit Still visible for several hours after sunset is the Wild Duck Cluster (M11), a young grouping of stars also cataloged as NGC 6705. Located in Scutum the Shield, the cluster is still 40° high inContinue reading “The Sky Today on Saturday, October 17: Watch Wild Ducks”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  October 15: Double crater Messier Late this evening for much of the U.S., Saturn’s small moon Tethys transits the ringed planet’s disk along with its shadow. It’s the best-timed such event all month for U.S. observers, beginning shortly after midnight EDT (so,Continue reading “The Sky Today on Friday, October 16: Tethys and its shadow transit”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  October 14: Io covers Callisto An hour after sunset this evening, you’ll find the waxing crescent Moon low in the southwest, hanging above the back of Scorpius and just off the spout of Sagittarius’ Teapot. Zoom in with a telescope on MareContinue reading “The Sky Today on Thursday, October 15: Double crater Messier”

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  October 13: Vesta at opposition Observers in the U.S. Midwest and farther west have a great opportunity this morning to watch one Galilean moon pass in front of another. Io crosses in front of Callisto, occulting it from our point of viewContinue reading “The Sky Today on Wednesday, October 14: Io covers Callisto”

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Twenty-one months after the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew in a fire during a test on the launchpad, the three men who had originally served as their backup crew — Walter Schirra Jr., Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham — flew on Apollo 7. The first manned American spaceflight since the accident, their mission wasContinue reading “Oct. 11, 1968: Apollo 7 launches”

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Giovanni Passalacqua from Ragusa, Sicily, Italy A waning crescent Moon hangs less than 3° from Jupiter in western Leo before dawn on Oct. 6, 2026, hours before it occulted the planet for viewers in North America. All four Galilean moons flank Jupiter at lower left. The photographer shot a single 0.5-second exposure at f/6.3 andContinue reading “Jove and Luna”

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Francis Halzen, principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Nobel Prize in physics on Oct. 6, 2026. Halzen’s work on high-energy neutrinos has shaped our understanding of the universe’s mysterious and powerful natural particle accelerators. Halzen is theContinue reading “Francis Halzen wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics”

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Rocket launches this week On Tuesday, Oct. 6, SpaceX will launch the Tranche 1 Transport Layer A mission for the U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4:17 a.m. EDT. The Falcon 9 will carry satellites for SDA’s Transport Layer, a network of military satellites in low Earth orbit.Continue reading “South Korea, SpaceX, and China ready for launch this week”

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On Oct. 4th, 1957, at 10:29 PM Moscow time, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1 into space on a repurposed R-7 rocket. The world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik was about 22 inches (58 centimeters) in diameter and weighed 184 pounds (84 kilograms). Although there were no scientific instruments aboard, the transmitter it carried sentContinue reading “Oct. 4th, 1957: Sputnik launches”

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A 12-ton rocket loaded with a 1-ton warhead, the V-2’s successful launch would prove to be exceptionally significant to both the military and to space exploration. On Oct. 3, 1942, the V-2 was fired from Peenemunde, Germany – its fourth test, and the first to succeed. The rocket rose to an altitude of 60 milesContinue reading “Oct. 3, 1942: The V-2 successfully launches”

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Mission Highlight: Starship Flight 14 After 13 previous suborbital test flights, Starship finally reached orbit on test flight 14. SpaceX’s launch window opened at 8:15 a.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 28, and the rocket cleared the tower at Starbase, Texas, at 8:48 a.m. EDT. Just over three hours later, the flight ended in a fireballContinue reading “Starship reaches orbit on 14th test flight”

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The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie The Knopf Doubleday Publishing GroupNew York, New York In The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein — professor of physics at the University of New Hampshire and the first Black woman to earn tenure in theoretical cosmology —Continue reading “New astronomy products to fall for this month”

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At 10:58 AM on Sept. 28, 1969, residents of the small Australian farming community of Murchison, Victoria, heard a series of loud booms. The noise was accompanied by a strong smell and a streak of smoke in the sky. A carbonaceous chondite meteorite, the Murchison Meteorite broke up as it entered the atmosphere, and thusContinue reading “Sept. 28, 1969: The Murchison Meteorite explodes over Australia”

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Born Sept. 27, 1918, and educated at Bradfield College and Oxford University in the U.K., Martin Ryle would go on to be the first astronomer royal (1972-1982) with a background in radio astronomy. During World War II, Ryle worked in radio systems and countermeasures for the RAF. He was strongly antiwar, though, and had noContinue reading “Sept. 27, 1918: The birth of Martin Ryle”

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Resembling a lumpy chunk of coral floating through space, Hyperion is one of the weirdest moons not just of Saturn, but in the whole solar system. Its shape is irregular, its rotation is chaotic, and it looks oddly spongelike. On Sept. 26, 2005, Cassini completed its first flyby of this bizarre moon, giving NASA bothContinue reading “Sept. 26, 2005: Cassini visits Saturn’s weirdest moon”

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The Full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox hides an added bonus: more moonlight for your money.

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