Category: Solar System

Our solar system

See Venus rendezvous with the crescent moon in the night sky tonight (Oct. 5)

NeRD

On Saturday evening (Oct. 5) as darkness is falling, be sure to take a look low toward the west-southwest part of the sky for a beautiful celestial tableau formed by a lovely crescent moon and the brilliant planet Venus.  The moon will appear to hover about 4-degrees below and to the left of Venus. Your clenched fist held at arm’s length measures roughly 10-degrees. So, the moon and Venus will appear to be less than a “half a fist” apart. These Venus-moon rendezvous occur on roughly a monthly schedule. Indeed, if…

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Blue Origin to debut 2nd human-rated New Shepard rocket on Oct. 7 launch (photo)

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Blue Origin will debut a new spacecraft on Monday (Oct. 7), if all goes according to plan. Jeff Bezos‘ aerospace company plans to launch its uncrewed NS-27 mission Monday morning, sending its New Shepard rocket-capsule combo on a brief trip to suborbital space. It will be the first mission for this particular vehicle, according to Blue Origin. NS-27 will launch from the company’s West Texas site during a window that opens at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT; 8:00 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch the action live via Blue…

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NASA’s exoplanet hunter TESS spots a record-breaking 3-star system

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Using NASA’s exoplanet-hunting spacecraft, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists have spotted a record-breaking triple-star system so tightly bound that it could fit comfortably between the sun and its closest planet, Mercury. The system, designated TIC 290061484 contains twin stars that race around each other once every 1.8 Earth days as well as a third star that orbits this pair once every 25 Earth days. This triple star system’s super-tight orbit, located just under 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the swan, makes it a record-breaker.  The previous…

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This Celestron beginner telescope is 18% off before Prime Day

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The Celestron 70mm Travel Scope is 18% off on Amazon in this early Prime Day telescope deal. Amazon’s Big Deal Days sales event starts Oct. 8, and we have a roundup of all the best early Amazon Prime Day deals, which you can check out. Save 18% on the Celestron 70mm Travel Scope when you grab it on Amazon ahead of Big Deal Days. Celestron’s 70mm Travel Scope is ideal for beginners, and, at under $90, it’s a low-risk investment if you’re taking your first steps into astronomy. You get…

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James Webb Space Telescope finds supernova ‘Hope’ that could finally resolve major astronomy debate

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have captured a stunning image of a distant supernova in a galaxy that looks like it’s being stretched like warm taffy. However, the golden smear hiding this gravitationally lensed supernova, which has been nicknamed “supernova Hope,” isn’t just remarkable for its aesthetic value. The supernova, which exploded when the 13.8-billion-year-old universe was just around 3.5 billion years old, tells us something about a huge problem in cosmology called the “Hubble tension.”  The Hubble tension comes from the fact that scientists can’t agree on…

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When is the next solar eclipse?

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It’ll be about six months before skywatchers are treated to another solar eclipse — during which only part of the sun will again be obscured from view.  On Oct. 2, an annular solar eclipse was visible from areas in the Southern Hemisphere, including in remote parts of Chile and Argentina. This type of eclipse occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, but does not completely cover the sun’s disk because it is at its farthest point from Earth. Therefore, the moon appears smaller than the sun, creating…

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How to watch ULA’s 2nd-ever Vulcan Centaur rocket launch on Oct. 4

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Oct. 4 LIVE Broadcast: Vulcan Cert-2 – YouTube Watch On United Launch Alliance (ULA) is set to launch the second test flight of its Vulcan Centaur rocket on Friday morning (Oct. 4), and you can watch the action live online.  Vulcan Centaur’s second mission, a test flight called Cert-2, is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex-41 (SLC-41) at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during a three-hour window that opens at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT). You can watch the launch live here at Space.com, courtesy of ULA,…

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October’s new moon will bring us a spectacular ‘ring of fire’ eclipse

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LIVE: Annular Solar Eclipse – October 2, 2024 – YouTube Watch On October’s new moon will bring us a spectacular ‘ring of fire’ eclipse The new moon occurs on Wednesday, Oct. 2, at 2:49 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (1849 GMT), according to the U.S. Naval Observatory, and for observers in the southeastern Pacific islands and southern Chile and Argentina there will be an annular solar eclipse.  A new moon phase happens when the sun and moon are on the same line drawn from one celestial pole to the other. Usually,…

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Annular solar eclipse will turn the sun into a glorious ‘ring of fire’ today. Here’s what you need to know.

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Today (Oct. 2), an annular solar eclipse will begin its journey across parts of the Pacific Ocean, southern Chile and southern Argentina.  If you’re unable to see the eclipse in person, you can watch the annular solar eclipse online here at Space.com, courtesy of TimeandDate, and follow all the action on our solar eclipse live updates page. The annular phase of the eclipse will first be visible from Earth at 12:50 p.m. EDT (1650 GMT); however, the best time to watch livestreams will be from 3:03 to 3:09 p.m. EDT…

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FAA requires investigation of anomaly on SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronaut launch

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requiring an investigation of the anomaly a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket experienced during the Crew-9 astronaut launch on Sept. 28. That liftoff successfully sent a Crew Dragon capsule carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov toward the International Space Station. However, the Falcon 9‘s upper stage suffered an issue after deploying the capsule, SpaceX revealed on Sept. 29. The issue was an “off-nominal deorbit burn,” which resulted in the upper stage landing in the ocean outside of its target disposal…

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