Space and astronomy news
We’ve written often about how pareidolia — the human tendency to see faces or other features in random images — works its magic across the cosmos. There’s the famous face on Mars, Bigfoot on Mars, and even Han Solo on Mercury.
But now, just in time for Halloween, here’s a monster in a picture from the Spitzer Space Telescope. One astronomer sees Godzilla … or is it Cookie Monster?
Continue reading “Apparently, This Nebula Looks Like Godzilla. Do you see it?”
Vivid green and purple aurora swirled and danced across the entire night sky in Sweden recently. The nighttime light show was captured by an all-sky camera in Kiruna, Sweden, which is part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Weather Service Network.
Continue reading “Here’s the View From Sweden During the Recent Solar Storm”
An early morning launch is planned for the Lucy spacecraft, the first space mission to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. Tomorrow, October 16 at 5:34 a.m. EDT is the first day and time in Lucy’s 21-day launch window, and current weather conditions show a 90% chance of favorable conditions for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch window remains open for 75 minutes.
Lucy will embark on a 12-year mission to explore the “fossils of planet formation,” Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid swarms. This mission provides the first opportunity to observe these intriguing objects close-up.
Continue reading “NASA’s Mission to Visit 8 Asteroids, Lucy, Launches on October 16th”
A mega-comet – potentially the largest ever discovered – is heading from the Oort Cloud towards our direction. Estimated to be 100–200 kilometers across, the unusual celestial wanderer will make its closest approach to the Sun in 2031. However, the closest it will come to Earth is to the orbit of Saturn.
Continue reading “The Biggest Comet Ever Seen Will get as Close as Saturn in 2031”
A huge team of astronomers have combined forces to use the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to provide the sharpest view ever of 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.
Fittingly, the collection of images was released on the 42nd anniversary of the publication of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. In the book, the number 42 is the answer to the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” These 42 images represent some of the sharpest views ever of these objects — which might contribute to answering these ultimate questions!
Plus, there’s a great poster of the asteroids, too:
Continue reading “Images of 42 of the Biggest Asteroids in the Solar System”
Whew! A major milestone was achieved today in the James Webb Space Telescope’s journey towards launch. After the telescope successfully arrived in French Guiana yesterday following a secretive 16-day ocean journey (with apparently no pirates in sight), today the telescope took a short road trip over land to the ESA’s spaceport in Kourou. JWST is now at the payload processing facility, where staff will start the process of getting the telescope into the Ariane 5 rocket fairing.
Launch is currently scheduled for December 18, 2021 … T-66 days and counting!
Continue reading “Webb has Arrived Safely at the Launch Site”
While Mars is known as the Red Planet, a variety of colors can be found on the planet’s surface. Just like on Earth, the array of colors we can see in images from Mars comes from the diverse minerals on or just under the surface.
In the case of this picture, subsurface minerals show up in gullies that have eroded down the side of a a giant sand dune.
Continue reading “‘Glowing’ Sand Dune Erosion on the Side of a Martian Crater”
It’s been a long and winding road getting the James Webb Space Telescope from concept to reality. And finally, after decades of planning, work, delays, and cost overruns, the next generation of space telescopes is finally ready to launch. But even now, as the telescope might be secretly traveling by cargo ship to the European Space Agency (ESA) launch site in French Guiana, everyone involved with the JWST project knows a successful launch isn’t the final victory.
In reality, post launch is when the real nail-biting begins. While the Mars rover teams undergo “Seven Minutes of Terror” to land their spacecraft on the Red Planet, the JWST teams will have more than 30 days of excruciating, slow-motion terror as the telescope embarks on its month-long-day, 1.5-million-kilometer (million-mile) journey out to the second Lagrange point (L2).
Continue reading “James Webb’s 30 Days of Terror”
Earlier this week, a Soyuz spacecraft launched to the International Space Station with three people on board. But only one of them was a cosmonaut. The other two crew members were Russian actress Yulia Peresild and film producer Klim Shipenko. They will be on the ISS for 12 days to film scenes for an upcoming movie, called “Challenge.”
NASA says the film crew is there under a commercial agreement between Roscosmos and Moscow-based media entities, adding that “the launch will mark the expansion of commercial space opportunities to include feature filmmaking.”
Continue reading “Russian Actor and Filmmaker are On the Space Station to Shoot Scenes for a Film”
You know the feeling …. seeing Jupiter through your own telescope. If it gives you the chills — like it does for me — then you’ll know how the team for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter felt when they turned their spacecraft around – yes, the orbiter that’s been faithfully circling and looking down at the Moon since 2008 – and saw the giant planet Jupiter with their camera. If you zoom in on the picture, you can even see Jupiter’s Galilean moons.
Continue reading “NASA Spacecraft Takes a Picture of Jupiter … From the Moon”