The Vineyard Gazette – Martha’s Vineyard News | Moon and Planets

In the wee hours of Sunday morning the last quarter moon appears only a few degrees from the ringed-planet Saturn. The two are in the zodiacal constellation Capricornus.

The moon advances two mornings later into the zodiacal constellation Pisces and appears near both Mars and Jupiter. If you miss it, you’ll get another chance early on Wednesday morning. Jupiter is the brighter of the two planets. Mars appears as a dull red.

Part of what makes Star Trek in all of its iterations so much fun is the endless and varied planets the characters end up on, as well as the aliens that come from those planets.

If you think that an alien can’t simply be an exact replica of a certain time period on earth, you would be wrong. Case in point: Sigma Iotia II, which is just prohibition-era Chicago, where the (very human-looking) Iotians are all gangsters.

BEIJING, May 18 (Xinhua) — Chinese scientists have proposed a space project to survey the sky through a space-borne telescope to hunt for habitable Earth-like planets outside our solar system about 32 light-years from Earth.

If the project, named Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES), could be carried out, it will be the first space mission specially designed to search for habitable terrestrial planets around the nearby Sun-like stars.

Contrary to astronomy, planetary science is very object-driven. Projects and missions are usually conceived to answer general questions on how planetary bodies work by the exploration of a specific place or similar objects.

This decision is not exactly a surprise. It was, after all, the third Flagship choice of the previous Decadal, after Mars and Europa. Uranus is also one of the two planets that was visited only by a single flyby of Voyager 2, together with its sibling Neptune.

Neptune and Uranus, the two largest icy planets in our solar system, both appear blue. But their shades are different.

The sky of Earth is blue in colour. It is said that we see this colour due to the atmosphere of our Earth. This gives rise to a question as to what is the colour of the sky in other planets then. Is the sky blue there also?

Whether it’s empire building or simply getting one’s boots on the ground to admire the fantastical and beautiful array of worlds in space, indeed, players can’t get enough of this idea.

As part of the generations that were born after the age of explorers (who ventured around the globe) and haven't yet ventured into space, the knack to discover and unearth the mysteries of what’s out there still resonates with many today.

NORTH LOGAN – Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Lab made news this week announcing it had delivered a critical subsystem to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This subsystem will be part of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope which is being prepared for launch to answer fundamental questions about exoplanets and infrared astrophysics and to search for worlds beyond our solar system.

The nearest white dwarf to us, Sirius B, has the mass of the Sun but the size of the Earth. For comparison, the Sun is over 100 times wider than Earth. Credit: ESA and NASA

Sirius B is the closest white dwarf to Earth, the leftover innards of a star like the Sun after it goes all red giant, blows off its outer layers, and reveals its dense core to space. And I do mean dense; Sirius B has the mass of the Sun packed into a ball about the same size as Earth.

Boston MA. Boston RedSox vs. Chicago White Sox, Fenway Park- May 6: Red Sox catcher Kevin Plawecki takes a throw from the outfield as White Sox Adam Engel slides in safely in the 8th inning witht hee fourth run. May 6, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo By Jim Mahoney)

Boston MA. Boston RedSox vs. Chicago White Sox, Fenway Park- May 6: Scoreboard attendant has one of the better seats in the hosue as he watches the action from inside the left field wall. May 6, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo By Jim Mahoney)

If you’ve never seen all the bright planets at once, June is your perfect chance. The five brightest planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – are lined up before dawn. They stretch across the sky from the eastern horizon to above the southern horizon.

Starting closest to the sunrise point, which is north of due east at this time of the year, you’ll find Mercury and Venus. Mercury is closest to the horizon with Venus higher and brighter. You’ll need an unobstructed view to the horizon to spot them.