
By Duncan Lunan The Moon will be New on November 13th, and Full on November 27th, very near Venus on the 9th and occulting it in daylight (see below). There’s some interesting […]
By Duncan Lunan The Moon will be New on November 13th, and Full on November 27th, very near Venus on the 9th and occulting it in daylight (see below). There’s some interesting […]
With the evening sky becoming darker as the year goes on, the brighter stars are becoming more prominent and the constellation figures are coming back
Prof. Freeman Dyson’s suggestion that an advanced civilisation might break up the planets of its solar system and build a shell around its star, to utilise all the matter and energy available to it . Image of a Solid Dyson sphere, impossible
Patterns in mud cracks show that Mars may have had cyclical moisture patterns. Left: the terrain in the Gale Crater where Curiosity is currently exploring. Right: mud cracks on Earth, where wet-dry cycling has occurred, creating Y-shaped patterns. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS, LANL.
The Moon will be Full on August 3rd, and again on August 31st, a ‘Blue Moon’ Full twice in the same month, and both of them ‘Supermoons’ when it is at its closest to Earth as well as Full.
An illustration of the planet AU Mic b shedding its atmosphere as it orbits its sun, AU Microscopii. Image credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted, STScI.
1st colour image of Earth from ATS, Nov 10 1967. Explore the Earth as viewed from Space with Duncan Lunan
Jupiter is now in the morning sky, rising about 4 a.m. on the border of Pisces and Aries, occulted in daylight by the Moon as seen from Scotland on May 17th.
The Lyrid meteor shower from the 1861 Comet Thatcher (not due back till 2283) peak on the night of 22nd-23rd April, and as the Moon sets early in the night there’s a better chance of seeing them.
In 1978 NASA was investigating the environment around the Earth’s orbit with Pioneer 6, 7, 8 and 9