The Sky: September 11-17; Comet Nishimura visible with binoculars

The Sky: September 11-17; Comet Nishimura visible with binoculars

Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 11, 2023 Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 ■ You can see in the stars that the season is changing: We’ve reached the time of year when, just as the stars come out, Cassiopeia has climbed as high in the northeast as the Big Dipper has sunk in the northwest. Cas stands […]

Guess which 2 celestial objects are within our Milky Way galaxy

Guess which 2 celestial objects are within our Milky Way galaxy

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Bob Franke] Comet C/2014 S2 (PanSTARRS) poses for a Messier moment in this telescopic snapshot from April 18. In fact it shares the 1.5 degree wide field-of-view with two well-known entries in the 18th century comet-hunting astronomer’s famous catalog. Outward bound and sweeping through northern skies just below the […]

Comet dust over central Texas

Comet dust over central Texas

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Jared Tennant Dusty debris from periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle was swept up by planet Earth this week. Vaporized by their passage through the dense atmosphere at 59 kilometers per second, the tiny grains produced a stream of Perseid meteors. A bright, colorful Perseid meteor flash was captured during this 20 […]

Spectacular Comet Lovejoy, a dirty snowball, outshines M79 star cluster

Spectacular Comet Lovejoy, a dirty snowball, outshines M79 star cluster

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Dieter Willasch (Astro-Cabinet)] Comet Lovejoy has become visible to the unaided eye …. Pictured here, Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) was … passing nearly in front of M79, the globular star cluster visible as the bright spot slightly above and to the left of the comet’s green-hued coma. The nucleus […]

European probe lands successfully on comet 67P

European probe lands successfully on comet 67P

Rosetta’s probe, Philae, has successfully landed on its comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After a daring seven-hour descent, the probe has made space history by becoming the firstever craft to land on a comet. … However, while the lander has touched down on the comet using its harpoons, scientists said that it had not yet deployed its anchors […]

Comet 67P, up close and personal

Comet 67P, up close and personal

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team; MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA/Elisabetta Bonora & Marco Faccin (Alive Universe Images) Spacecraft Rosetta continues to approach, circle, and map Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Crossing the inner Solar System for ten years to reach the vicinity of the comet last month, the robotic spacecraft continues to […]

An apocalypse that wiped out the dinosaur threat to us humans

An apocalypse that wiped out the dinosaur threat to us humans

The demise of the dinosaurs is the world’s ultimate whodunit. Was it a comet or asteroid impact? Volcanic eruptions? Climate change? In an attempt to resolve the issue, scientists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC), the University of California, Berkeley, and universities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have now determined the most precise […]