Month: August 2020

Seeing Titan

Shrouded in a thick atmosphere, Saturn’s largest moon Titan really is hard to see. Small particles suspended in the upper atmosphere cause an almost impenetrable haze, strongly scattering light at visible wavelengths and hiding Titan’s surface features from prying eyes....

Does the Sun change as it rotates? Yes, and the changes can vary from subtle to dramatic. In the featured time-lapse sequences, our Sun — as imaged by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory — is shown rotating though an entire month...

Do other stars have planets like our Sun? Previous evidence shows that they do, coming mostly from slight shifts in the star’s light created by the orbiting planets. Recently, however, and for the first time, a pair of planets has...

Perseids Around the Milky Way

Why would meteor trails appear curved? The arcing effect arises only because the image artificially compresses (nearly) the whole sky into a rectangle. The meteors are from the Perseid Meteor Shower that peaked last week. The featured multi-frame image combines...

In the center of this serene stellar swirl is likely a harrowing black-hole beast. The surrounding swirl sweeps around billions of stars which are highlighted by the brightest and bluest. The breadth and beauty of the display give the swirl...

Does the Moon ever block out Mars? Yes, the Moon occasionally moves in front of all of the Solar System’s planets. Just this past Sunday, as visible from some locations in South America, a waning gibbous Moon eclipsed Mars. The...

Why is this nebula so complex? When a star like our Sun is dying, it will cast off its outer layers, usually into a simple overall shape. Sometimes this shape is a sphere, sometimes a double lobe, and sometimes a...

What planets are those behind that unusual rock spire? Saturn (lower left) and Jupiter.  This month, after sunset, the bright planetary duo are quite prominent toward the southeast.  Now your view of our Solar System’s largest planets might not include a picturesque...

The Shifting Tails of Comet NEOWISE

Keep your eye on the ion tail of Comet NEOWISE. A tale of this tail is the trail of the Earth. As with all comets, the blue ion tail always points away from the Sun. But as Comet C/2020 F3...

Churning Clouds on Jupiter

Where is Jupiter’s ammonia? Gaseous ammonia was expected to be seen in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere by the orbiting Juno spacecraft — but in many clouds is almost absent. Recent Juno data, however, gives some clues: some high-level clouds appear to...