Welcome to the night sky report for October 2020 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. In October, Pegasus, the flying horse of Greek myth, becomes increasingly prominent in the southeastern sky. Look for M15 (NGC7078) and NGC7331. This October also brings a Harvest Moon and a Blue Moon. Plus look for Mars at any time of the night. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.
Mars has long been known for its rust. Iron on its surface combined with water and oxygen from the ancient past, give the Red Planet its hue. But scientists were recently surprised to find evidence that our airless Moon has rust on it as well. While our Moon is airless, research indicates the presence of hematite, a form of rust that normally requires oxygen and water. That has scientists puzzled.
Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light. Its presence, if it truly exists, is known only through its gravitational pull on visible matter in space. This mysterious substance is believed to be the invisible scaffolding of our Universe, forming long filamentary structures -- the cosmic web -- along which galaxies form. Astronomers have discovered that there may be a missing ingredient in our cosmic recipe of how dark matter behaves. They have uncovered a discrepancy between the theoretical models of how dark matter should be distributed in galaxy clusters, and observations of dark matter's grip on those clusters. One way astronomers can detect dark matter is by measuring how its gravity distorts space through an effect called “gravitational lensing.” Researchers have found that small-scale concentrations of dark matter in clusters produce gravitational lensing effects that are ten times stronger than expected. This evidence is based on unprecedented detailed observations of several massive galaxy clusters by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.
It's among the most fundamental of questions: What are the origins of life on Earth? What if impact craters, long seen as harbingers of death, turned out to be the cradle of life? A new study makes the case that impact craters should be considered by space agencies like NASA and ESA as top exploration targets, not just for their invaluable post-impact geological records, but also – and perhaps more importantly – as prime locations for seeking potential habitats for extraterrestrial life.
Welcome to the night sky report for September 2020 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. In September, Pegasus becomes increasingly prominent in the southeastern sky, allowing stargazers to locate globular clusters M2 (NGC 7089) and M30 (NGC 7099), as well as a nearby double star, Alpha Capricorni, which is an optical double (but not a binary pair). The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.
Auroras are created when charged particles from the Sun are trapped in Earth’s magnetic environment – the magnetosphere – and are funneled into Earth’s upper atmosphere, where collisions cause hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms and molecules to glow. A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space. Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms. Previously, scientists weren’t sure if auroral beads were somehow connected to other auroral displays as a phenomenon in space that precedes substorms, or if they were caused by disturbances closer to Earth’s atmosphere. But now powerful new computer models combined with observations from NASA’s “Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms” (THEMIS) mission have provided the first strong evidence of the events in space that lead to the appearance of these beads.
Quasars are extremely remote celestial objects that emit exceptionally large amounts of energy. Quasars contain supermassive black holes fueled by in-falling matter that can shine 1000 times brighter than their host galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars. Using the unique capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered the most energetic outflows ever witnessed in the Universe. These quasar outflows emanate from the center of the galaxies and tear across interstellar space like tsunamis, wreaking havoc on the galaxies in which the quasars live. These winds, driven by blistering radiation pressure from the vicinity of the black hole, snowplow across the galaxy's disk, pushing material away from the galaxy's center, accelerating to breathtaking velocities that are a few percent of the speed of light. Material that otherwise would have formed new stars is violently swept from the galaxy, causing star birth to cease. Radiation pushes the gas and dust to far greater distances than scientists previously thought, disturbing the natural evolution of the entire galaxy.
Welcome to the night sky report for August 2020 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. In August, a flock of star-studded figures soars overhead. Look for the constellation Lyra, shaped as a small parallelogram, which points to Epsilon Lyrae and the Ring Nebula. You can also spot three bright summer stars: Vega, Deneb, and Altair, which form the Summer Triangle. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.
A comet visiting from the most distant parts of our Solar System is putting on a spectacular display. Named Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, the comet made its once-in-our-lifetime close approach to the Sun on July 3, 2020, and will cross outside Earth's orbit on its way back to the outer parts of the Solar System by mid-August. The comet cruised just inside Mercury's orbit on July 3. This very close passage by the Sun is cooking the comet's outermost layers, causing gas and dust to erupt off the icy surface and creating a large tail of debris. And yet the comet has managed to survive this intense roasting. Observers all over the world are racing to see the natural fireworks display before the comet speeds away into the depths of space.
“Your smartphone has already replaced your camera, your TV, your radio, your wristwatch, your calendar, your GPS, your credit cards, your newspaper, your magazines, and your local library... Maybe you should lift up your head, look away from the screen, and engage your family and friends in some face-to-face conversation -- Before your smartphone replaces them too.” - Guy J. Pirro
Welcome to the night sky report for July 2020 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. In July, find the Scorpius constellation to identify the reddish supergiant Antares, which will lead you to discover a trio of globular star clusters, as well as three nebulas: the Omega Nebula (M17), the Lagoon Nebula (M8), and the Trifid Nebula (M20).The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.
Gamma rays have the smallest wavelengths and the most energy of any wave in the electromagnetic spectrum. They are produced by the hottest and most energetic objects in the universe, such as neutron stars and pulsars, supernova explosions, and regions around black holes. Unlike optical light and x-rays, gamma rays cannot be captured and reflected by mirrors. Gamma-ray wavelengths are so short that they can pass through the space within the atoms of a detector. Over the past few years, scientists have observed the Universe using gamma rays. Gamma rays originate from regions of the Universe where particles are accelerated to huge energies unattainable in human-built accelerators. Gamma rays are emitted by a wide range of cosmic objects, such as quasars, which are active galaxies with a highly energetic nucleus. An international collaboration bringing together over 200 scientists from thirteen countries has shown that the very high-energy gamma-ray emission from quasars, galaxies with a highly energetic nucleus, is not concentrated in the region close to their central black hole but in fact extends over several thousand light-years along jets of plasma. This discovery shakes up current scenarios for the behavior of such plasma jets.
Welcome to the night sky report for June 2020 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. Though the nights are shorter in June, they are filled with fine sights. Look for the Hercules constellation, which will lead you to a globular star cluster with hundreds of thousands of densely packed stars. You can also spot Draco the dragon, which will point you to the Cat’s Eye Nebula. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.
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