Sunspots were widely spread on the Sun on 1 August 2023. Image: Sheri Lynn Karl. The Sun is our very own special star, which we rely on totally for our continued existence. The long summer days, hopefully blessed with the year’s best weather conditions, when the Sun rides high in the sky, are ideal for…
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Messier 4 is one of largest and loosest globular clusters in the Messier catalogue. Image: Adam Block. The night sky in early summer is packed with so many great globular clusters that it’s hard to know where to look first. Messier 13 and Messier 5 are clear favourites, and the Messier hoards in Ophiuchus beckon,…
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Image: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava). There’s an almost 3D quality to this image of a portion of the Milky Way, with the illusion that the nebulae are far more distant when in fact they are much closer than the dark dust lanes that meander through the Milky Way. The red nebula is…
Did stars form differently 12 billion years ago compared to how they form today? The cosmic environment of the early Universe was metal-poor – that is, it was depleted in heavy elements that astronomers call ‘metals’ and that are formed inside stars. These metals were sparse because not enough time had passed for sufficient generations…
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Image: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Massey/T. A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NOIRLab)/M. Zamani and D. de Martin (NOIRLab). This cavernous nebula is home to a bundle of young stars, specifically a triple system of T-Tauri stars. These are stars that are young, less than 100 million years old, and which haven’t yet ignited nuclear fusion reactions within their…
Image: ESO/VPHAS+ Team. Splashes of colour illustrate the clear difference between the two most populous type of bright nebulae in our Milky Way Galaxy. This image, taken by the wide-field OmegaCAM on the VLT Survey Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, is dominated by the wine-red hue of an emission nebula called IC…
Mars and Jupiter lay within a degree on the morning of 19 March 2020. Image: David Blanchflower. Mars and Jupiter presently lie within a binocular field-of-view, though you’ll need to rise early to catch them lying around 20° high at about 3am BST. Both planets are hosted by the bright stars of the constellation of…
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On 9 August Saturn’s rings are tilted by 2.6°, a shallow enough angle to allow Titan to move behind Saturn at about 4.45am BST. Presently, there are a number of events taking place involving Saturn’s moons. Saturn’s moons revolve in the plane of Saturn’s equator, so the outline of their orbits matches that of the…
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A Perseid meteor from 2015. Image: Alan Tough. The annual Perseid meteor shower has been underway since last month and it predicted to reach its usual eagerly-anticipated maximum early next week, on 12 August between 13h and 16h UT. The Perseids is the year’s most popular meteor shower and one of the major highlights on…
Read More “the return of summer’s shooting star spectacular! – Astronomy Now” »
Saturn is occulted by a near full Moon on the pre-dawn of 21 August in an event visible across the UK. From London, Saturn disappears behind the Moon’s bright limb at 4.27am BST, only to reappear at 5.20am. Titan is occulted too. AN graphics by Greg Smye-Rumsby. Let’s hope for some clear skies on the…
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