Space and astronomy news
The first in a cycle of challenging occultations of the bright star Spica for northern hemisphere observers begins this coming Monday on August 12th. Watching a bright star or planet wink out on the dark limb of the Moon can be an amazing event to witness. It’s an abrupt “now you see it, now you …
Captured on camera by astrophotographer Rafael Defavari from his location in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, this video shows the Moon passing in front of Jupiter during an occultation event on December 25, 2012. Nice work! The video plays at 5x actual speed. Although Jupiter appeared to be “right next to” the Moon on Christmas …
Several teams of astronomers are taking advantage of a rare double event this week to learn more about the atmosphere and makeup of Pluto and its moons. The dwarf planet will occult, or pass in front of two different stars this week. One of the best viewing sites for these two events is in Hawaii, …
Continue reading “Double Occultations This Week Will Reveal More Details About Pluto”
On November 6, 2010, the dwarf planet Eris occulted a faint 16 magnitude star and this was the first time astronomers were able to witness an occultation by Eris. Additionally, at 96.6 Astronomical Units away, it was the most distant object for which this kind of occultation — where one astronomical object passes in front …
On September 11, 2010 South Africa had an amazing view of a full daylight occultation of Venus by the Moon, and Kerneels Mulder captured it, and shared it with Universe Today. He sent us this video created from the images he took of the event, and below is a composite look at all the images, …
Continue reading “Daylight Occultation of Venus by the Moon”
[/caption] How do you study an extremely small planetary body in the dim outer reaches of our solar system? Get all your friends from around the world to wait for a very elusive – if not short-lived – special event. And in doing so, you may find something completely unexpected. Enter James Elliot from MIT, …
Continue reading “Occultation Reveals Distant Kuiper Belt Object is Surprisingly Icy Bright”
[/caption] You’ve all heard me talk about watching the Moon occult a bright star. That’s when we get a great example of stellar parallax from our Earthly viewpoint! But did you know that there are several other heavenly bodies that can cause an occultation that’s easy to view through an amateur telescope if you just …
Sure. For those of us who hang around the night sky, we know the Pleiades and the Moon frequently venture near each other during the course of a year, but it’s much less common for the Moon to be in a crescent phase when they visit. Because the light of the nearby Moon often overpowers …
Continue reading “SkyWatcher Alert: Pleiades Occultation on April 8”
Although the outer Solar System is mostly empty, there are icy objects drifting within the very limits of detection by our largest telescopes. But maybe small telescopes can be more successful. A new paper suggests that an array of 200 automated 40-cm telescopes spread across 1,000 km could be the best way to find them. They would watch for changes in brightness as objects pass in front of stars and could even find the hypothetical Planet Nine.
If there’s an advanced civilization in the TRAPPIST-1 system living on multiple worlds, there’s a way to eavesdrop on their conversation from world to world. Researchers directed the Allen Telescope Array at the TRAPPIST-1 system during times of “planet-planet occultations,” when two of the worlds in the system are aligned with Earth and their star. Communications directed at the planet could spill over and be detectable from Earth. No signals were detected.