The Sky This Week from February 14 to 21: Venus reaches greatest brilliancy

Venus in the nighttime sky

Caption: Venus is the brightest point of light shining at lower left in this gorgeous astrophoto of the February night sky. Credit: Toby Baier (Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0) Friday, February 14The dwarf planet 1 Ceres is in conjunction with the Sun at 5 P.M. EST today. While this means we can’t see Ceres for now, … Read more

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reaches the Top Rim of the Jezero Crater

In 2018, NASA mission planners selected the Jezero Crater as the future landing site of the Perseverance rover. This crater was a natural choice, as it was once an ancient lake bed, as evidenced by the delta fan at its western edge. On Earth, these features form in the presence of flowing water that gradually … Read more

The Sky This Week from December 6 to 13: Jupiter reaches opposition

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this stunningly sharp view of Jupiter when the planet was near opposition in 2019. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) Friday, December 6 Asteroid 15 Eunomia is making its way through central Auriga this month, passing numerous deep-sky objects along … Read more