Jane Houston Jones from JPL provides a video preview of the night skies in the first month of the new year. There will be plenty of planetary conjunctions with the Moon: Saturn, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will all be snuggling up with the Moon throughout the month. Jane also suggests using NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System to keep track of where all the different missions are throughout the solar system. If you haven’t yet checked out this amazing site, it is an interactive 3-D “universe” where you can explore the cosmos from your computer. You can fly along with almost any NASA mission, hop on an asteroid, see the entire Solar System moving in real time, or re-live the Mars Curiosity landing. But you have the option of controlling when and where you are. It’s fully addictive!
When a spacecraft arrives at its destination, it settles into an orbit for science operations.…
The list of chemicals found in space is growing longer and longer. Astronomers have found…
The JWST is flexing its muscles with its interferometry mode. Researchers used it to study…
Brown dwarfs span the line between planets and stars. By definition, a star must be…
Life on Earth would not be possible without food, water, light, a breathable atmosphere and…
When I heard about this I felt an amused twinge of envy. Over the last…