Live coverage: ExoMars orbiter safely arrives at Mars, lander’s fate uncertain

Now that planet Saturn is effectively lost in the dusk twilight for UK-based observers, you may be wondering what has happened to the other four bright naked-eye planets. Far from disappearing, they have just transferred to the morning sky. From 8—11 October, the waning crescent Moon acts as a guide to Venus, Mars, Jupiter then Mercury in the eastern dawn sky.

In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, we see a young star breaking out. The golden veil of light cloaks a young stellar object known only as IRAS 14568-6304 in the Circinus molecular cloud complex. This stellar newborn is ejecting gas at supersonic speeds and eventually will have cleared a hole in the cloud, allowing it to be easily visible to the outside universe.

Unlike the Earth, Mars lost a global protective magnetic field billions of years ago, so solar particles can directly strike the atmosphere. NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft recently detected extensive auroral activity in the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere, plus an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud.