Conjunction of the moon, Jupiter and Venus appear during evening twilight above the beautiful ... [+] Yamdrok Lake in Tibet, China.
Look up Sunday evening at dusk and you'll be able to see the near-full "Buck Moon" around 99% illuminated, our satellite having turned "full" at precisely 04:44 UTC on Sunday, July 5, 2020. That's 5:44 a.m. BST and 12:44 EDT.
Forming a perfect planetary triangle with the Moon over the constellation of Sagittarius will be the two gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, which not only appear close to each other at the moment, but are on the cusp of being at their brightest of the year—ready to observe soon after sunset and visible all night long.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Astronomers Spot a Planet Unlike Any We've Seen Before Orbiting a Distant Star
Some 730 light-years away, around a star that's a lot like our Sun, astronomers have found a really weird exoplanet.
It's just a little smaller than Neptune, which could indicate a gaseous planet… but it's more than twice as massive as Neptune, with a density comparable to Earth and Venus.
This super-dense surprise suggests that the exoplanet is rocky, but well above the usual upper size limit for rocky planets. Which, in turn, means it could be something very rare indeed - what is known as a Chthonian planet , a core of a gas giant that either had its atmosphere stripped away.
Star Trak: Large planets, Jupiter and Saturn, featured in July night skies | Outdoors |
Jupiter and Saturn will offer fine views from dusk to dawn during July. Both giant planets will be opposite the sun in our sky, rising in the southeast within an hour of sunset.
In early July, Jupiter and Saturn will be highest in the south at 2:00 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. local daylight time, respectively, and around 11:45 p.m. and 12:15 a.m. at month's end. By late July the two planets will set well before sunrise.
Jupiter will reach opposition on July 14, appearing in the eastern part of the constellation Sagittarius. The planet will be a fine sight in telescopes, and its four Galilean moons will shine at their brightest.
Earth's siblings lining up for a rare show of Planet Parade - Daily Times
Have you ever been asked by your science teacher to place various planets randomly around the sun while drawing a picture of solar system? Have you, as a child, wondered if the planets try to outrun each other in their race to revolve around the sun? Have you ever rushed outside to look up at the sky and catch a rare glimpse of a bright glimmering spot that’s in fact Jupiter?
This year sky-watchers were excited to find out that the Universe is set to offer multiple shows of unique celestial events in July and August.
One of these shows is known as ‘Planet Parade’, which is widely used in astronomy to explain the alignment of multiple planets in a row.
Other things to check out:
Feast your eyes: Night sky in July offers parade of planets, shaded moon | WTOP
A hard-to-see lunar eclipse and planets aplenty await your gaze. Be sure to keep up social distancing, and wear a mask from your viewing location.
The full buck moon will undergo a penumbral lunar eclipse on July 5. Get more of the details of this very hard-to-see shading of the moon from this article by Sky and Telescope. Try using binoculars or a telescope to see the eclipse at maximum.
Jupiter and Saturn will be in D.C.-area skies all night in July as both planets will be at opposition, or directly opposite the sun and rising at sunset. Jupiter is at opposition on July 13; it’s July 20 for Saturn. Be sure to enjoy watching these two gas giants through the summer.
NASA Uncovers KELT-9b, A Big, Boiling And Bizarre Planet With Four Seasons And A 36-Hour Year
One of the hottest and most bizarre planets known has been modeled by astronomers using measurements from NASA's planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission.
The previously-discovered planet, known as KELT-9 b and HD 195689 b, is about twice the size of Jupiter and has a dayside temperature that reaches around 7,800º Fahrenheit/4,300º Celsius, which is hotter than the surfaces of some stars.
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"The weirdness factor is high with KELT-9 b," said John Ahlers, an astronomer at Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Maryland, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It's a giant planet in a very close, nearly polar orbit around a rapidly rotating star, and these features complicate our ability to understand the star and its effects on the planet."
Neptune-sized planet discovered orbiting young, nearby star
"AU Mic is a young, nearby M dwarf star. It's surrounded by a vast debris disk in which moving clumps of dust have been tracked, and now, thanks to TESS and Spitzer, it has a planet with a direct size measurement," said Bryson Cale, a doctoral student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. "There is no other known system that checks all of these important boxes."
The new planet, AU Mic b, is described in a paper co-authored by Cale and led by his advisor Peter Plavchan, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at George Mason. Their report was published on Wednesday, June 24, in the journal Nature .
Unprecedented Ground-Based Discovery of Unusual Planetary System, WASP-148
Artistic view of the strongly interacting exoplanetary system WASP-148. The planet WASP-148c is shown in front. On the back, one can see the planet WASP-148b transiting the host star around which the two planets are in orbit. Credit: Institut d’astrophysique de Paris, Mark A. Garlick
Several interacting exoplanets have already been spotted by satellites. But a new breakthrough has been achieved with, for the first time, the detection directly from the ground of an extrasolar system of this type. An international collaboration including CNRS researchers [1] has discovered an unusual planetary system, dubbed WASP-148, using the French instrument SOPHIE at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université;).
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