Category: Weekly Update

Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 10/11/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Wednesday, the Orionids Meteor Shower peaks! The remnants of Halley’s comet created this shower. The best time to watch these meteors is between midnight and dawn. Then, shower will reach rates of 10-20 meteors per hour. To find the shower, look to the southwest. Friday is the first quarter moon. This is the best time to see the lunar terrain, as the low-angled sunlight dramatically lights the lunar surface.. Betelgeuse may not be so far away New research suggests the red supergiant […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 10/4/2020

Next week’s night sky: Friday is the new moon. This means that the stars will be extra bright Friday evening, giving stargazers a great chance to look at the stars. This is also a great time to take photos of the stars because the moon will not ruin your photos. On Saturday, there is a rare double shadow transit of Jupiter, with the great red spot visible! A shadow transit happens when the shadows of moons cross a planet’s surface. The transit starts at 5:25 EDT and […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 9/27/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Monday, October 5, Mars is the closest it will get to earth. This won’t happen again until 2035! The Draconids Meteor Shower will peak overnight on Wednesday, October 7. This shower can deliver up to 15 meteors per hour, or a meteor every 4 minutes. Check out the map below to see where to look. Salty Lakes under the surface of Mars Two years ago, researchers discovered a possible lake on Mars, buried under the surface of Mars. Now, new research adds […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 9/20/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Tuesday, September 9, Saturn will appear to stand still. Usually, planets appear to move across the night sky and change places in reference to other stars. However, on this day, Saturn will move with the stars. This will make the planet a lot easier to find! Just look for the bright planet in the southern sky, then remember the pattern the stars make around it. Anytime during the night, you will be able to find that pattern and find Saturn!October 1 is […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 9/13/2020

Next week’s night sky: Wednesday marks the first quarter moon. Jupiter and Saturn will be to the right of the moon, seemingly in a line pointed at the moon. On Sunday, the golden handle appears on the moon. The “Golden Handle” effect is produced by the way the slanted sunlight lights up the prominent mountains of the moon. Best seen through some sort of magnification, the golden handle will appear as a small line trailing from the light side of the moon to the dark side. A […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 9/6/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Monday, September 14, an extremely rare double transit of Jupiter will happen. What makes this transit special is that not only are there two transits happening at once, the great red spot will also be visible! To find Jupiter, go to stellarium-web.org.  Thursday is the new moon. This is a great time to go stargazing because the moon doesn’t blot out any stars. The butterfly nebula VLT captured a new image of the butterfly nebula!. But this cosmic bubble of gas, isn’t […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 8/30/2020

Next week’s night sky: Wednesday marks the end of Mars’s forward retrograde motion. If you train a camera on Mars all night, you will notice that it stops moving forward and starts going backward! This effect happens because Mars’s orbit is slower than ours. You can observe this effect when you are neck to neck with another car on the highway, and then pull ahead. Next Thursday is a third-quarter moon. Look extremely closely at the terminator between night and day to see the fine details in […]

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Top Astronomy & Astrophysics research from the week of 8/23/2020

Next week’s night sky The moon reaches its full stage, halfway through its rotation around Earth, on Tuesday. This is a great time to look more closely at the moon! With a good set of binoculars, you should be able to make out the detail of the craters and planes of the lunar surface. On Saturday, the moon and Jupiter will be only around 1 degree apart. Just wait about half an hour after sunset, and then look for a reddish brown-object shining right near the moon. […]

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Top Astronomy & Astrophysics research from the week of 8/16/2020

Next week’s night sky Tuesday this week is the first quarter moon. It will be in the sky all evening, making for some great casual observing. If you have a camera attached to a high powered telescope, you may be able to catch a time-lapse of the terminator (the line dividing day and night) sweeping across the surface of the moon! On Friday about 45 minutes after sunset, Jupiter is just a few degrees away from the moon. If you look around the moon for a big […]

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Top Astronomy & Astrophysics research from the week of 8/9/2020

Next week’s night sky: There is an exciting planet-related event happening this week! On Saturday, August 22, there will be a rare double shadow transit over Jupiter! A shadow transit occurs when the shadow of a moon passes over a planet. Shadow transits quite regularly to Jupiter, which has a lot of moons. However, these shadow transits last only minutes, making a dual shadow transit extremely rare. This shadow transit will happen at 06:32 GMT on Saturday, August 22. The moon becomes a new moon on August […]

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