Tag Archives: Saturn

AN ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS

Space Weather News for Dec. 6, 2021
https://spaceweather.com
https://www.spaceweatheralerts.com

AN ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS: Check out the sunset sky this week. Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus are getting together with the Moon for a beautiful series of conjunctions. The 5-day show begins tonight, Dec. 6th, when the crescent Moon passes by Venus, and continues through Friday, Dec. 10th, when the celestial bodies stretch themselves into a dramatic straight line across the southwestern sky. Sky maps and observing tips @ Spaceweather.com.

 
[] 
Above: Sunset planets photographed Dec. 3rd by Marek Nikodem in Szubin, Poland. The Moon is about to join them for a series of conjunctions.

The Saturn / Jupiter conjunction

It’s being called the “Christmas Star” and it’s lovely to see Jupiter and Saturn in the same field of view if you have a telescope or even just binoculars.

It’s very low on the horizon, right at twilight, in the western sky.
Of course, we in Montreal will miss the best bit, we are clouded over, but you can watch it on the Internet. The planets will start moving away from each other now, but slowly, so do look to the west when the sky clears. With luck you will see the conjunction before the planets sink below the horizon in a few more days.
The Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, will host a program beginning at 7 p.m. ET, showcasing live views through its telescopes. The stream will be on the observatory’s YouTube page.
The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will also share live views on its website.
I ran a search on Youtube and found a lot of video from around the world.

Goodbye, and thanks for all the science!

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and ESA’s Huygens probe expanded our understanding of the kinds of worlds where life might exist and eight more reasons the mission changed the course of planetary exploration.  Nine Reasons Cassini-Huygens Matters


https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

Loss of contact with the Cassini spacecraft occurred at 4:55 a.m. PDT (7:55 a.m. EDT), with the signal received by NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna complex in Canberra, Australia.

 

Long Range Sensors Detect…

  • Cassini–Fabulous pictures of Saturn, rings, and moons.
  • Cassini’s final view of Earth from Saturn
  • Lego’s Saturn 5 kit
  • The largest SETI initiative ever
  • How does sound travel on Mars?
  • 27 best Hubble images on its 27th anniversary


Cassini–Fabulous pictures of Saturn, rings, and moons.

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/the-final-days-of-cassini

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-blogs/cassini-survives-first-grand-finale-dive/?

Cassini’s view of Earth from Saturn

Click on the image to see more resolution–Earth is a dot near centre, bottom.

And what Earth looks like from other planets

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/cassinis-final-image-of-earth

Lego’s Saturn 5 kit

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/apollo-saturn-v-lego-set

The largest SETI initiative ever

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/breakthrough-listen–initial-results

How does sound travel on Mars?

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/how-loud-is-the-curiosity

27 best Hubble images on its 27th anniversary

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/best-of-hubble-images

Long Range Sensors Detect…

  • Possible aurora display this weekend
  • Citizen scientists are closing in on Planet Nine
  • Moon of Saturn has hydrogen and water

Possible aurora display this weekend: A magnetic filament on the sun exploded on April 9th, hurling a gaseous coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The bulk of the CME will miss Earth; nevertheless a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field is possible this weekend. The impact, if it occurs, could cause magnetic disturbances and auroras around our planet’s poles. Visit today’s edition of Spaceweather.com to view a movie of the instigating explosion and for updates as the CME approaches.

Citizen scientists are closing in on Planet Nine : The Australian team are working in tandem with the public to search for what could possibly be one of the biggest discoveries of the century: a new, very massive planet. In 2016, Caltech astronomer Mike Brown and theoretical astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin announced that they’d found evidence of a massive planet orbiting far off in the annex of the solar system with a predicted orbit of 20,000 years.  Its presence is inferred from the orbit of several Kuiper Belt Objects which have dramatic orbits.  READ MORE

Moon of Saturn has hydrogen and water:  In what is likely to be its final big discovery before it plunges into the gas giant planet Saturn later this year, the NASA spacecraft Cassini has discovered what could be a habitable ocean environment on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s dozens of moons.  The discovery, reported in the journal Science and announced by NASA Thursday, shows there is hydrogen in the massive plumes of gases and water that explode like geysers from Enceladus’s south pole, out of geological features known as “tiger stripes.”   READ MORE from Montreal Gazette And from  Astronomy Magazine:  Researchers published a paper last year suggesting that hydrothermal vents were the source of life on Earth, where chemical reactions fed these early microbes. If that’s the case on Enceladus, the ocean may have microbial life at the very least.  “The hydrogen could be a potential source of chemical energy for any microbes living in Enceladus’ ocean,” Spilker says.
Of course, it may be years or even decades until we know for sure — in September, NASA will intentionally crash Cassini into Saturn to make sure it doesn’t crash land into Titan or Enceladus and accidentally contaminate either potentially habitable moon with Earth bacteria.   Read More from Astronomy Magazine

Long Range Sensors Detect…

  • Mars Lost Atmosphere to Space
  • Rosetta Sees Changing Face of Comet
  • Observing the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn this week

NASA’s MAVEN mission has confirmed that the solar wind stripped the Red Planet of its atmosphere.  http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/mars-lost-atmosphere-to-space-3003201723/Based on the ratio of various elements’ isotopes planetary scientists suspect that the Red Planet has lost anywhere from 25% to 90% of its atmosphere over the last 4-ish billion years, with the estimates favoring at least 50%. READ THE ARTICLE

Researchers have used data from the Rosetta mission to link outbursts on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with dramatic surface changes.  Changes seen on the comet’s surface provide researchers with the before and after “smoking gun” of seeing the possible triggering mechanism for a cometary outburst in action. READ THE ARTICLE

 

Jupiter (magnitude –2.5, in Virgo) comes to opposition on April 7th. It rises around sunset, shines low in the east-southeast after nightfall, high in the southeast by 11 p.m., and highest due south around 1 a.m. daylight saving time. Spica hangs 7° below it. In a telescope Jupiter is 44 arcseconds across its equator.

Mars and Mercury in the twilight.


Saturn over Sagittarius at dawn, early April 2017

Saturn (magnitude +0.4, in Sagittarius upper right of the Teapot) rises in the early morning hours and glows in the south by early dawn. Redder Antares (magnitude +1.0) twinkles 19° to Saturn’s right. Saturn doesn’t reach opposition until June 14th.

The blue 10° scale is about the width of your fist at arm’s length.