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6 days ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission launched March 12, sending up a constellation of four Earth-orbiting satellites with the goal of studying how the Sun’s activity influences the space environment around Earth. This week, the four satellites opened their cameras to the sky and captured their so-called first light images in a major milestone for the mission.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
A Lyrid meteor streaks near the Milky Way arching overhead, as seen from Wawona, Yosemite National Park. Credit: bgwashburn (Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, April 18Jupiter still rules the early-evening skies, standing prominently in Taurus in the west as darkness falls.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, April 11An hour after sunset, the bright planet Jupiter stands out in eastern Taurus, forming a V with the two tips of the Bull’s horns, Zeta (ζ) Tauri and Gamma (γ) Aurigae. Below Jupiter shines Aldebaran, the Bull’s alpha star, a magnitude 0.9 golden-hued red giant.
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3 weeks ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, April 4This evening, the roughly half-illuminated face of the Moon hangs in Gemini, high in the south an hour after sunset. First Quarter Moon occurs at 10:15 P.M. EDT. The two brightest stars in Gemini are Castor (magnitude 1.6) and Pollux (magnitude 1.2).
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3 weeks ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
[Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, March 19, 2025] — Acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan was awarded the prestigious Hawking Medal for Science Communication at the Starmus Festival, sharing the honor with legendary naturalist Sir David Attenborough, artist Laurie Anderson and oceanologist Sylvie Earle.
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4 weeks ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, March 28The Moon passes 9° south of Venus at 10 A.M. EDT this morning. We’ll check out the planet — now a morning star as well, visible before dawn — later in the week. Tonight, let’s take advantage of the moonless dark to enjoy some deep-sky observing. A few hours after sunset, Virgo has cleared the horizon and appears in the southeast.
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1 month ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Jupiter is flanked by three of its four Galilean moons in this March 2015 image: Ganymede farthest left, Europa (closing in for a transit) nearer left, and Io to the right. Credit: Rob Pettengill (Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, March 21By 10 P.M. local daylight time, the constellation Canes Venatici the Hunting Dogs is some 45° high in the east.
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1 month ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, March 14The Moon reaches Full phase early this morning at 2:55 A.M. EDT, with a total lunar eclipse underway. Everyone across the U.S. can watch the event, and no special equipment is needed — just your eyes! Totality begins about half an hour earlier, at 2:26 A.M. EDT. The moment of greatest eclipse is at 2:59 A.M. EDT, which is the midpoint of the “total” part of the eclipse.
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1 month ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, March 7Look north after dark tonight to find the curved form of the Little Dipper. The smaller of the two famous dipper-shaped asterisms in the northern sky, the Little Dipper extends from the North Star, Polaris, at the end of its handle. But while this 2nd-magnitude star is famous for currently sitting at Earth’s North Celestial Pole, Polaris isn’t the only such sun to have this claim to fame.
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1 month ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, February 28Venus is a prominent fixture in the evening sky, still hanging on at magnitude –4.8 and setting nearly three hours after the Sun. It’s currently located in central Pisces, far outshining any stars in the region. Because Venus is an inferior planet closer to the Sun than Earth, it goes through phases as seen from our planet.
