www.skyandtelescope.org copy pastes.

[Dukasaur]

$6000 Home rooftop telescope VS $16 billion Hubble telescope



It's amazing how good home telescopes have gotten over the last 20 years.

I've always liked that pic. The Pillars of Creation. But to me it looks like more like a vast emaciated grizzly bear rearing up to make a last angry charge as a swarm of tie-fighters attack it.

[jusplay4fun]

THIS WEEK'S SKY AT A GLANCE, JUNE 24 – JULY 2

On the mornings of the 25th, 26th, and 27th, the thinning Moon passes Venus and Mercury low in the dawn. The visibility of the fainter objects in the brightening sky is exaggerated in these scenes; bring binoculars.

■ Very low in the brightening dawn Monday the 27th, the thin crescent Moon hangs left of Mercury as shown above. Binoculars will help.

MONDAY, JUNE 27

■ Today's sunset is the latest of the year (if you live near latitude 40° north), even though the solstice was on the 21st. This slight discrepancy, amounting to only a minute or so, arises from the tilt of Earth's axis and the ellipticity of Earth's orbit — like the somewhat larger winter equivalent in December, which moves the earliest sunset from the solstice to about December 7th.

TUESDAY, JUNE 28

■ Look for the Big Dipper hanging straight down in the northwest as soon as darkness is complete. Its bottom two stars, the Pointers, point toward modest Polaris to their lower right, by about three fists at arm's length.

Polaris is the end of the Little Dipper's handle. From there the rest of the Little Dipper floats upward. Perhaps it's a helium balloon escaped from some June evening party, trailing its string. Through light pollution, however, all you may see of the Little Dipper are Polaris at its bottom and Kochab, the lip of the Little Dipper's bowl, at the top. The rest of its stars are pretty dim at 3rd to 5th magnitude.

■ New Moon (exact at 10:52 p.m. EDT).

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-june-24-july-2/

and, same SOURCE:

SUNDAY, JUNE 26

■ Low in the northwest or north at the end of these long summer twilights, would you recognize noctilucent clouds if you saw them? They're the most astronomical of all cloud types, what with their extreme altitude and their formation (in part) on meteoric dust particles. They used to be fairly rare, but they've become more common in recent years as Earth's atmosphere changes. See Bob King's Nights of Noctilucent Clouds.

[HitRed]

Images from the James Webb Space Telescope will be shared on July 12

[jusplay4fun]

THIS WEEK'S SKY AT A GLANCE, JUNE 24 – JULY 2

FRIDAY, JULY 1

■ On the eastern side of the sky, the Summer Triangle holds sway after dark. Its top star is Vega, the brightest on that entire half of the sky. The brightest star to Vega's lower left is Deneb. Farther to Vega's lower right is Altair, with fainter Tarazed just above it. The Milky Way (if you have deep darkness) runs across the Triangle just inside its bottom edge.

As evening grows late and even Altair rises high, look left or lower left of it, by hardly more than a fist, for the compact little constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin.

Did you get it? Then try for even fainter, smaller Sagitta, the Arrow. It's to Altair's upper left, just a little closer. The Arrow points lower left, past the head of Delphinus.

SATURDAY, JULY 2

■ In twilight this evening, look west for the waxing crescent Moon. Look left of the Moon for Regulus and above the Moon for slightly fainter Algieba, Gamma Leonis, as shown below. Binoculars help reveal the color difference between the two stars. Algieba is a wide optical double for binoculars and a much closer true binary (5 arcseconds) for telescopes.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-june-24-july-2/

[jusplay4fun]

JULY: STARS OF THE SUMMER SKY
BY: J. KELLY BEATTY JULY 1, 2022

July offers lots of pretty stars and constellations to check out, and you’ll get a personally guided tour of them by downloading this month’s Sky Tour astronomy podcast.

Face south on an evening in July, and you'll see the constellations of Sagittarius (with its distinctive Teapot pattern) and Scorpius over the southern horizon. This view is for 11 p.m. early in July and just after dusk at month's end. Special symbols mark open star clusters, globular clusters (blue) and nebulae (green).
Sky & Telescope

https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/sky-tour-podcast-july-2022/

[jusplay4fun]

This is a good interactive Star Chart. You can rotate it (direction of viewing) and change the times, too, about a 24 hour cycle, as I recall

https://stellarium-web.org/p/calendar

This one looks good, too.

https://skyandtelescope.org/interactive-sky-chart/

This one works well, too. Enjoy...!

Using the Top one, I noticed that 5 planets are visible at the same time, some 2 hours before sunrise. Uranus is likely visible ONLY with a telescope. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all visible to the naked eye, given the right conditions.

[jusplay4fun]

NASA: Contact lost with spacecraft on way to test moon orbit

WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA said Tuesday it has lost contact with a $32.7 million spacecraft headed to the moon to test out a lopsided lunar orbit, but agency engineers are hopeful they can fix the problem

After one successful communication and a second partial one on Monday, the space agency said it could no longer communicate with the spacecraft called Capstone. Engineers are trying to find the cause of the communications drop-off and are optimistic they can fix it, NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier said Tuesday.

The spacecraft, which launched from New Zealand on June 28, had spent nearly a week in Earth orbit and had been successfully kick-started on its way to the moon, when contact was lost, Frazier said.

The 55-pound satellite is the size of a microwave oven and will be the first spacecraft to try out this oval orbit, which is where NASA wants to stage its Gateway outpost. Gateway would serve as a staging point for astronauts before they descend to the lunar surface.

The orbit balances the gravities of Earth and the moon and so requires little maneuvering and therefore fuel and allows the satellite — or a space station — to stay in constant contact with Earth.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... 21856ec65d

[HitRed]

Solar Wind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

[jusplay4fun]

NASA: Contact lost with spacecraft on way to test moon orbit

WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA said Tuesday it has lost contact with a $32.7 million spacecraft headed to the moon to test out a lopsided lunar orbit, but agency engineers are hopeful they can fix the problem

After one successful communication and a second partial one on Monday, the space agency said it could no longer communicate with the spacecraft called Capstone. Engineers are trying to find the cause of the communications drop-off and are optimistic they can fix it, NASA spokesperson Sarah Frazier said Tuesday.

The spacecraft, which launched from New Zealand on June 28, had spent nearly a week in Earth orbit and had been successfully kick-started on its way to the moon, when contact was lost, Frazier said.

The 55-pound satellite is the size of a microwave oven and will be the first spacecraft to try out this oval orbit, which is where NASA wants to stage its Gateway outpost. Gateway would serve as a staging point for astronauts before they descend to the lunar surface.

The orbit balances the gravities of Earth and the moon and so requires little maneuvering and therefore fuel and allows the satellite — or a space station — to stay in constant contact with Earth.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... 21856ec65d

UPDATE:

Video: NASA reconnects with Capstone spacecraft en route to find new pathway to the moon
Fri, July 8, 2022 at 2:57 PM

https://www.yahoo.com/video/video-nasa-reconnects-capstone-spacecraft-185756194.html

[jusplay4fun]

Image from James Webb ST, JUST released:

President Joe Biden unveiled this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, during a White House event Monday, July 11
Webb’s image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground – and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast universe
Webb’s sharp near-infrared view brought out faint structures in extremely distant galaxies, offering the most detailed view of the early universe to date
NASA and its partners will release the full series of Webb’s first full-color images and data, known as spectra, Tuesday, July 12, during a live NASA TV broadcast

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe.

This image is among the telescope’s first-full color images. The full suite will be released Tuesday, July 12, beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT, during a live NASA TV broadcast. Learn more about how to watch.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

[jusplay4fun]

More images released from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST):

NASA Reveals Webb Telescope’s First Images of Unseen Universe



Below:

In an enormous new image, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals never-before-seen details of galaxy group “Stephan’s Quintet”
The close proximity of Stephan’s Quintet gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers, interactions
Webb’s new image shows in rare detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other and how gas in galaxies is being disturbed
The image also shows outflows driven by a black hole in Stephan’s Quintet in a level of detail never seen before
Tight galaxy groups like this may have been more common in the early universe when superheated, infalling material may have fueled very energetic black holes

BELOW:
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.


https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-sheds-light-on-galaxy-evolution-black-holes

[jusplay4fun]

"Some stars save the best for last," NASA wrote. "The dimmer star at the center of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is cloaked in dust."
https://mashable.com/article/james-webb-space-telescope-first-images

[jusplay4fun]

The Webb Telescope’s Latest Science Images Show The ‘Phantom Galaxy’ And More In Breathtaking Depth And Detail

Just days after the first formal release of its first show-off images scientists using the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have posted some stunning new images of two spiral galaxies.

Posted on Flickr by Judy Schmidt working on the PHANGS Survey, the stunning image, above, shows the spectacular “Phantom Galaxy” (also called M74 and NGC 628), with others (scroll down) showing another spiral galaxy called NGC 7496.

The incredible new images are testament to Webb’s skill at seeing in infrared and thus seeing through the gas and dust that obscures a lot of what is going on in some of the most arresting objects in the night sky.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2022/07/19/the-webb-telescopes-latest-science-images-show-the-phantom-galaxy-and-more-in-breathtaking-depth-and-detail/?sh=2dcfee3179d9

More images at the URL link above; it is worth checking, if you like looking at heavenly bodies, called Galaxies.

[jusplay4fun]

THIS WEEK'S SKY AT A GLANCE, JULY 22 – 30

THIS WEEK'S PLANET ROUNDUP
Mercury is hidden deep in the glow of sunset.

Venus, magnitude –3.9, continues to rise just as dawn begins. As dawn brightens, look for it low in the east-northeast. It's far below Capella.

Mars, magnitude +0.2 in Aries, rises around midnight or 1 a.m. and shines high in the east-southeast as dawn begins. It's about three fists lower left of bright Jupiter. By dawn they're high in the south, with Mars now directly left of Jupiter.

Mars is still quite small in a telescope, 8 arcseconds in apparent diameter.

Jupiter, a bright magnitude –2.6 (at the Pisces-Cetus border), rises due east around 11 p.m. It's at its highest in the south as dawn begins. It's now 43 arcseconds wide.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-july-22-30/

[jusplay4fun]

Image from James Webb ST, JUST released:



Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

What makes this image so mind-blowing is how small it is, and how large it is, at the same time.

It’s small in the sense that this image represents only a teensy tiny portion of the night sky. Imagine you are holding out a grain of sand at arm’s length. The area of sky that grain covers — that’s the size of the area captured in the above image.

But it’s huge in the sense that nearly every object in this image is a galaxy (besides the bright spiky starbursts, which are stars in the foreground). Think about that: In every pinprick of sky, there are thousands and thousands of galaxies, at least.

(...)

In the below image slider, the Hubble view is on the left. On the right, Webb’s view is more detailed. More of the fainter galaxies in the background are more easily distinguished. You can also more easily see how some galaxies are warped more clearly, the result of their light passing through gravitational lenses of the galaxies that are closer in the foreground. (Note: These images aren’t perfectly aligned, but you’ll still be able to see the stark difference in detail.)

Go to the URL Link below to see the image slider.


https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2022/7/12/23205256/james-webb-space-telescope-first-images-significance-nasa-jwst

[jusplay4fun]

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-august-12-20/

THIS WEEK'S SKY AT A GLANCE, AUGUST 12 – 20
MONDAY, AUGUST 15

■ Double shadow transit on Jupiter. Telescope users in much of North America tonight get a good chance to see two of Jupiter's moons casting their tiny black shadows onto the planet at once.

The flyspeck shadows of Io and Ganymede will enter the eastern edge of Jupiter's bright disk at 11:34 and 11:59 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, respectively. Both shadows will remain on Jupiter's disk until Io exits from the western limb at 1:38 a.m. EDT.

Easterners get the best view, with Jupiter high where poor seeing is less likely to blur the shadows out of view. Jupiter will be lower in the Central and especially Mountain time zones. Far westerners have only a very iffy shot at the last 20 minutes or so of the event, with Jupiter still low in the east.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 16

■ As summer progresses and Arcturus moves down the western sky, the kite figure of Bootes sprouts from Arcturus toward the upper right. The kite is 23° long, about two fists at arm's length. It's rather narrow, and its top is bent to the right. Arcturus is its bottom point where the stubby tail is tied on. The tail currently flutters downward.

The Big Dipper slants at about the same height in the northwest, to the Kite's right.


THIS WEEK'S PLANET ROUNDUP

Venus, magnitude –3.9 in Gemini, rises just after dawn begins. As dawn brightens, look for it low in the east-northeast. It's far below Capella.

Jupiter rises due east soon after the end of twilight, shining at a bright magnitude –2.8 at the Pisces-Cetus border. It's highest in the south in the hours before dawn. In a telescope Jupiter is 47 arcseconds wide, nearly its maximum. Jupiter comes to opposition September 26th.

[jusplay4fun]

There is Lots to see in the night sky this week for those willing to look and see beyond their small world:



SUNDAY, AUGUST 28

■ The Sagittarius Teapot is still nearly on the meridian (due south) right after nightfall is complete. It's tilting to pour to the right. Explore with binoculars before moonlight returns later this week.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-aug-26-sept-3/

[jusplay4fun]

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2022 August 17

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220817.html

[jusplay4fun]

NASA's most powerful rocket poised for launch on historic Artemis 1 moon mission
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD

AUGUST 26, 2022 / 7:02 AM / CBS NEWS

Five decades after the final flight of NASA's legendary Saturn 5 moon rocket, the U.S. space agency is poised to launch its most powerful rocket yet Monday for a critical, long-overdue test flight, sending an unpiloted Orion crew capsule on a 42-day voyage around the moon.

Running years behind schedule and billions over budget, the first Space Launch System — SLS — rocket is finally ready for blastoff from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center at 8:33 a.m. EDT Monday, the opening of a two-hour window. Forecasters are predicting a 70% chance of good weather.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-moon-rocket-artemis-mission/

[jimboston]

so sad… nobody responds within a few hours so you post again…

[jusplay4fun]

NASA’s Artemis Moon mission is set to launch: here’s the science on board
The most powerful rocket ever built will soon head for the Moon, carrying with it a trove of satellites and radiation experiments.

Luis Zea couldn’t stop grinning as he talked about his biology experiment on Zoom this month. He was at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, on Florida’s east coast, getting the equipment ready to fly to space.

But the set-up, which will test how yeast genes respond to deep-space radiation, won’t fly on any old rocket. It will be hitching a ride on the first flight of the most powerful rocket ever built — NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).

If all goes to plan, the SLS will lift off from its launch pad on 29 August and propel into space a small, uncrewed capsule that is capable of carrying astronauts. That capsule, called Orion, will fly around the Moon — farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever gone — and return to Earth 42 days later. The test flight is crucial because NASA plans to use the capsule to send astronauts to the Moon in the coming years. When this happens, it will be the first time that humans will have travelled beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 astronauts returned from the Moon in 1972.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02293-8

[jusplay4fun]

so sad… nobody responds within a few hours so you post again…

Two different topics, JimB; both about Astronomy and Outer Space. Do you want to contribute?

[Dukasaur]

[jusplay4fun]

Engine cooling, other issues delay NASA launch of Artemis I moon rocket; Friday 'in play' for next window
John Bacon
Emre Kelly
Jorge L. Ortiz
USA TODAY

Aug 29, 2022
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/08/29/live-updates-artemis-i-moon-rocket-launch/7927941001/