Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 15, 2023 Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report. MONDAY, AUGUST 14 A winter preview: Step out before the first light of dawn this week, and the sky displays the same starry panorama it does after dusk around Christmas. Orion is striding up in the southeast, with Aldebaran and then the Pleiades high above it. […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, June 15, 2023 Mercury brightens this week but remains lost in the glow of sunrise. It is best seen 30 or 40 minutes before sunrise, well to the lower left of brighter Jupiter. Venus is the brilliant “Evening Star” in the west from twilight into late evening. It’s not as high in […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, May 13, 2023 May is the month when the Milky Way is altogether missing from the evening sky, for those of us living in the latitudes of the continental United States. That’s because the Milky Way now lies all the way around the horizon in a circle, and the North Galactic Pole […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, March 20, 2022 Highlights for the week of March 18-26, 2022 Spot Arcturus very low in the east-northeast after nightfall and higher in the east later in the evening. By modern measurements Arcturus is visual magnitude –0.05, making it the fourth-brightest nighttime star. It’s bested only by Sirius, Canopus, and Alpha Centauri. […]
April 25, 2017 On April 12, as the Sun was blocked by the disk of Saturn the Cassini spacecraft camera looked toward the inner Solar System and the gas giant’s backlit rings. At the top of the mosaicked view is the A ring with its broader Encke and narrower Keeler gaps visible. At the bottom […]
Aug. 1, 2016 [CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute] What’s behind Saturn? The first answer is the camera itself, perched on the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting behind the planet with the most grand ring system in our Solar System. The unusual perspective places Cassini on the far side of Saturn from the […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Cassini Imaging Team, SWRI, JPL, ESA, NASA] Cassini, a robot spacecraft launched in 1997 by NASA, became close enough in 2002 to resolve many rings and moons of its destination planet: Saturn. At that time, Cassini snapped several images during an engineering test. Several of those images were combined […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Michael Wilson] This was a sky to show the kids. All in all, three children, three planets, the Moon, a star, an airplane and a mom were all captured in one image near Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA in early September of 2005. Minus the airplane, this busy […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute] [This is] Dione, and it’s a moon of Saturn. The robotic Cassini spacecraft took the featured image during a flyby of Saturn’s cratered Moon last month. Perhaps what makes this image so interesting, though, is the background. First, the large orb looming behind Dione […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA] Soft hues, partially lit orbs, a thin trace of the ring, and slight shadows highlight this understated view of the majestic surroundings of the giant planet Saturn. Looking nearly back toward the Sun, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn captured crescent […]
