It's a great season for planet-spotting, with all the planets in the Solar System making an appearance.
However, what makes us planet-spotters really get excited is when the planets and the Moon get close.
Astronomers call these events conjunctions . There's one coming up this weekend, and a few more before August is out.
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This morning before dawn a waning 15%-lit crescent Moon will shine beside bright Venus in the constellation of Gemini.
Check out this next:
NASA Mission Shows Dwarf Planet Ceres Is Geologically Active | Smart News | Smithsonian
The largest object in the asteroid belt, a dwarf planet named Ceres, might contain reservoirs of briny liquid, Michael Greshko reports for National Geographic .
Seven studies published in three Nature journals detail how NASA’s Dawn spacecraft observed Ceres during its last lap around the dwarf planet in 2017 and 2018. The research teams used the photographs and velocity data measured by the spacecraft as evidence that Ceres was recently geologically active—and might still be today.
All The Planets In The Solar System Are In Our Night Sky This Week. Here's How You Can See Them
The planets are all on one side of the Solar System, with Earth somewhere in the "middle" of the cluster.
While this is normal, natural and nothing to worry about (no, the Solar System won't get lop-sided!), it could cause you to ask a question:
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Yes! However, you're going to have to be quick if you want to see them since Mercury—the closest planet to the Sun, which whips around our star once every 88 days—won't be easy to see for long.
Dwarf planet Ceres has reservoirs of salty water | Berkeley News
The dwarf planet Ceres, about 940 kilometers (585 miles) in diameter, is the largest body in the main asteroid belt. NASA's Dawn spacecraft mapped the planet and found evidence — a low-density region of the crust (blue) — of an underground brine reservoir. A crater named Occator is to the left of the blue area This composite image shows gravity anomalies (red is high, blue is low) on the right side and Ceres' real colors on the left. The bright spots are near the center of Occator.
The dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in our Solar System's main asteroid belt, once harbored a global subsurface ocean that likely froze solid long ago. Today, if any liquid water — a key requisite for habitability — still exists on Ceres, a good place to look for it is beneath the youngest of its large impact craters.
And here's another article:
Dwarf Planet Ceres Has Salty Ocean Deep Underground
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter. In a new study, scientists suggest this dwarf planet contains a large body of salty water under its cold surface.
The study was released earlier this month in the publications Nature Astronomy , Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications.
The research is based on data gathered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which flew as close as 35 kilometers to the surface of Ceres in 2018. The study provides evidence that the dwarf planet remains geologically active with cryovolcanism - volcanoes that produce icy material.
Skywatch: Look for planets & the Full Sturgeon Moon this week | 10tv.com
On Sunday night Saturn & Jupiter will be just above and right of our satellite. Look in the southeast to find them.
The trio will be visible Monday evening but our Moon will be a bit farther away from the two planets. Above is how you'll find the three on Sunday night.
Mars will reach a milestone on Monday morning. At approximately 5:02 a.m. The Red Planet will reach something known as perihelion.
Planets don't move in perfect circles around the Sun. As a result, there are times when they are closer to and farther away from it.
Ask Ethan: Why Are The Moon And Sun The Same Size In Earth's Sky?
Total solar eclipses are possible on Earth, and occur whenever the Moon aligns with the Earth-Sun ... [+] plane during a new Moon phase, and is close enough for its shadow to fall on Earth. This has happened ~3 billion times in Earth's history, but won't happen for much longer.
In our Solar System, there's one overwhelming source of mass that all the planets orbit around: our Sun. Each planet has its own unique system of natural satellites that exist in stable orbits around it: moons. Some moons, like Saturn's Phoebe or Neptune's Triton, are captured objects that were once comets, asteroids, or Kuiper belt objects. Others, like Jupiter's Ganymede or Uranus's Titania, formed from an accretion disk at the same time the planets of the Solar System formed.
Surprisingly dense exoplanet challenges planet formation theories
Slightly smaller than Neptune, K2-25b orbits an M-dwarf star—the most common type of star in the galaxy—in 3.5 days. The planetary system is a member of the Hyades star cluster, a nearby cluster of young stars in the direction of the constellation Taurus. The system is approximately 600 million years old, and is located about 150 light-years from Earth.
Planets with sizes between those of Earth and Neptune are common companions to stars in the Milky Way, despite the fact that no such planets are found in our Solar System. Understanding how these "sub-Neptune" planets form and evolve is a frontier question in studies of exoplanets.
Happening on Twitter
This month brings many opportunities to see the Moon posing with planets, plus the annual Perseid meteor shower pea… https://t.co/YMLtlH2My0 Dr_ThomasZ (from Washington, DC) Sat Aug 08 15:47:00 +0000 2020
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