Tag Archives: Mars

In the Sky This Week – November 26, 2019

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This entry is part 124 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

Last week I had students in my after-school astronomy and space science club build and fly rockets in Kerbal Space Program. I had them launch and recover a small pre-made rocket, and build-from-scratch a sub-orbital crewed rocket, similar to a Mercury Redstone. The very next day, I gave the “In the News” report at the meeting of the Warren Astronomical Society – I shamelessly pulled material from my previous “In the Sky” post; I included a slide about the Europa Clipper mission, and a couple about mid-ocean rift ecosystems and extremophiles. There will be a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter low on the southwestern horizon all week; Saturn continues to appear high above the southwestern horizon, and makes for an excellent observing target after Jupiter and Venus have set. Kerbal Space Program has been posting bits of astronomy news and space history on their social media feeds lately – I approve! There's a Venus & Jupiter conjunction on Nov 24th. A conjunction … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – November 19, 2019

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This entry is part 123 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

In last week’s session of my after-school club, the Endeavour Space Academy, I ran the students through a very quick tour of the solar system using both NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System app, and the NASA Solar System Exploration website. Only a couple of the students knew anything at all about the solar system, so I covered the most important points in the 25 minutes available… I wish I had several more hours to cover everything! I asked the students if any of them knew about the Earth’s mid-ocean rifts – one said they were covering that in science class. I asked the student if she heard about the ecosystems that exist around the mid-ocean rifts, and extremophiles? I talked about the students about the possibility that similar sub-ocean rift systems might exist on several of the icy moons in the outer solar system, and what that might mean for the search for life. Saturn appears high above the … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – November 12, 2019

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This entry is part 122 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

I hope you had better luck than I did seeing the transit of Mercury… a good portion of North America was shrouded in clouds – I got several inches of snow! Even the website I pointed readers to last week to view the transit online was not broadcasting due to clouds. I ended up watching it on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s (SDO) Eclipse website – clouds are never a problem for the SDO. Venus and Jupiter appear very low and Saturn appears  high in the southwestern sky after sunset this week over the week. Jupiter moves slightly towards the horizon, and Venus moves slightly southward toward Jupiter. By the beginning of next week Mercury returns, appearing low and Mars a bit higher above the eastern horizon before sunrise this week. If you are having trouble spotting Mercury, you can use Mars and the star Spica to star-hop in the general direction of Mercury. The Moon appears high in the sky at … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – November 5, 2019

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This entry is part 121 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

Jupiter is low on the horizon, and Saturn is high in the southwestern sky after sunset  this week. Mars appears low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. The Moon appears in the south-southeastern sky after sunset this week – going from first quarter, to a waxing gibbous, to full early next week. The full Moon appears high in the southeastern sky above the constellation Orion at 10:00 PM on Nov. 11th. The Pleiades star cluster (M 45) and the constellation Taurus with the bright red star Aldebaran appear nearly overhead at midnight all week. Venus appears low on the southwestern horizon after sunset   Transit of Mercury Transits occur when a planet or another body moves in between another distant body and an observer; transits of our Sun are rare and fascinating astronomical events, and one is happening on November 11, 2019 from 7:36 AM-1:04 PM EST! You will need a telescope to see Mercury cross the face of … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – October 22, 2019

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This entry is part 119 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

Saturn and Jupiter continue to be excellent observing targets in the southern sky after sunset; this last weekend. The Warren Astronomical Society hosted a boatload of girl and boy scouts at their Stargate Observatory this last weekend – I was with the girl scouts before dusk showing them a virtual reality fly-over of Saturn, another member was talking to the girls about meteorites. Mars appears low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. The Moon passes through the constellations Cancer and Leo in the mornings of Oct. 22-24th. A very VERY thin waning crescent Moon appears near to Mars above the eastern horizon before dawn on Oct. 26th. Venus and Mercury appear very close to each other in the southwestern sky at dusk on Oct. 22nd – if you use binoculars, and get Venus in your right field-of-view, Mercury will be in your left. Observing this may be a challenge if you have anything obscuring your view of the horizon. … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – October 15, 2019

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This entry is part 118 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

Saturn and Jupiter are excellent observing targets all week after sunset – Jupiter is getting lower towards the horizon each evening. I’m also noting that it’s getting darker earlier each evening. The Moon appears in the predawn sky this week, moving from west to east; the waning gibbous Moon appears high in the western sky before sunrise on Oct. 15 & 16th. On Oct. 17 and 18th, the waning gibbous Moon appears near the star Aldebaran in the southwestern predawn sky. The third-quarter Moon appears high in the southern predawn sky near the star Pollux on Oct. 21st. Mars appears low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. Orion was again impossible to miss high in the southern predawn sky. Betelgeuse Betelgeuse is generally the ninth-brightest star in the night sky and second-brightest in the constellation of Orion (after Rigel). It is a distinctly reddish, semiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude varies between +0.0 and +1.3, the widest range of any first-magnitude star. At near-infrared wavelengths, Betelgeuse is the brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – October 8, 2019

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This entry is part 117 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

This week is World Space Week! Held annually every October 4-10th, it is the largest space event on Earth, with more than 5,000 events in over 80 countries. The theme for 2019 is: “The Moon: Gateway to the Stars.” “The General Assembly declares 4 to 10 October World Space Week to celebrate each year at the international level the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition” – UN General Assembly resolution, 6 December 1999 Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon continue to be excellent observing targets all week after sunset. The waxing gibbous Moon is in the southwestern sky at midnight on Oct. 8th. At midnight on Oct. 11th, the waxing gibbous Moon is high in the southern sky. The full Moon appears in the southeastern sky at midnight, Oct. 14th. Mars appears a bit higher each morning in the eastern sky just before sunrise.   Constellation Pegasus Pegasus is a constellation in the northern sky, named after … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – October 1, 2019

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This entry is part 116 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon will be excellent sidewalk astronomy targets all week. The Moon appears near both Jupiter and Saturn during this week. The Moon leaves Saturn and Jupiter behind by the beginning of next week, but this sky is still great for doing observing sessions! Mars emerges from the glare of the Sun and appears low in the eastern predawn sky just before sunrise. The Pleiades are high (and hard to miss) in the eastern predawn sky. The constellation Cassiopeia appears in the northwestern predawn sky, and in the northeastern sky after sunset. M103 – Open Star Cluster in Cassiopeia Messier 103 (also known as M103, or NGC 581) is an open cluster where a few thousand stars formed in the constellation Cassiopeia. This open cluster was discovered in 1781 by Charles Messier’s friend and collaborator Pierre Méchain. It is one of the most distant open clusters known, with distances of 8,000 to 9,500 light-years from the earth and ranging about 15 light-years apart. There are about 40 member stars within … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Words that Change Reality

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This entry is part 39 of 187 in the series Across the Universe

My columns for The Tablet often act as a diary of sorts, recording important events in science or in my own life. Such is this column, which first ran in September, 2006. We first ran it here in 2015. Ten years ago last month [as of 2006 – now 23 years ago!], Dave McKay and his colleagues at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston announced that a meteorite, believed to have come from Mars, showed evidence of microbial life. Their interpretations are still widely disputed by the meteoritics community. But, oddly, their announcement resulted in one major change of attitudes. Before, there were still skeptics who were not sure that those rocks came from Mars; now, as the skeptics argue about the putative biogenic grains found in it, no one doubts the Martian origin anymore! Some of us can only be skeptical of one thing at a time, I guess. Still, what you call the meteorite doesn’t really change its … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Martian Sunrise

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This entry is part 84 of 187 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in August, 2008; we first ran it here in 2016 A friend has a home on the western shore of Lake Huron, with a glorious view of the lake from her living room window. She tells how once she showed the sunrise over the lake through that window to her visiting four year old grandson. The boy took in the colorful display with rapt amazement. The next morning, she heard a shout from the living room. “Come quick, grandma!” cried the little boy. “It’s doing it again!” The [2008] discovery by the Phoenix spacecraft of ice in the Martian soil had all the inevitability of the sun rising yet again. But the scientists who found it were just as thrilled as that four year old boy. For thirty [now going on 40!] years we’ve known there must have been water on Mars. The spacecraft that orbited the planet in the 1970s sent back images … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Help My Unbelief

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This entry is part 36 of 187 in the series Across the Universe

This column was published in The Tablet in August, 2007, and first ran here in 2015 We believe in things we don’t see — like electrons, or black holes — because they let us make sense of things we do see. But sometimes we don’t believe, even when we see. The question of what we believe, and why we believe in it, struck me particularly at the [2007] annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society. A French mathematician has analyzed the dates meteorites have been seen to fall over the past 200 years and found clear trends, at the 90% confidence level: more meteorites than usual tend to fall every 3 years, every 10 years, and every 17 years. His analysis is standard, straightforward stuff; but I don’t believe it. Nor did anyone else in the audience. Two hundred years just doesn’t seem long enough to show such periodicities. And we’ve been burned before with theories that had only a 10% … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – June 4, 2019

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This entry is part 99 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

Mars continues to dim in the west-northwestern sky after sunset, and Mercury appears low near the horizon all week. A thin crescent Moon appears near Mars on June 5th, and moves towards the south each day. The Moon appears by the star Regulus on June 7th and 8th. Saturn, Jupiter and the star Antares have been slowly crawling across the southern sky for several weeks; Antares sets a bit earlier each morning. Venus appears very low on the horizon just before sunrise all week. Earthshine Earthshine is visible earthlight reflected from the Moon’s night side. It is also known as the Moon’s ashen glow or as “the new Moon with the old Moon in her arm.” Earthshine is most readily visible from a few nights before until a few nights after a new moon, during the (waxing or waning) crescent phase. – Wikipedia The next few days will be the ideal time to try and catch a glimpse of Earthshine!   The Moon is a … Continue reading →