Early risers in the northeast of England and Scotland with clear skies can see naked-eye star lambda (λ) Geminorum, otherwise known as Alkibash, slip behind the southern polar regions of an 18-day-old waning gibbous Moon close to 5am GMT on Sunday, 29 November. However, for a select number of northern observers this will be a special grazing lunar occultation.
Have you ever seen planet Uranus? If UK skies are clear on the evening of Sunday, 22 November, the icy gas giant lies just 1.5 degrees (or three lunar diameters) from the 11-day-old waxing gibbous Moon, making it very easy to locate in binoculars and small telescopes. Here’s our online guide to locating this fascinating distant world.
Astronomers believe that the Earth-Moon system was created in a giant impact 4.5 billion years ago. Southwest Research Institute scientists combined dynamical, thermal, and chemical models of the Moon’s formation to explain the relative lack of volatile elements like potassium, sodium, and zinc in lunar rocks, when compared to those of Earth.
If you have a clear sky to the southeast an hour before sunrise on the morning of Friday, 6 November you will be greeted by a pairing of the old, waning crescent Moon with largest planet Jupiter. Then, on Saturday, 7 November, a slimmer crescent Moon joins planets Mars and Venus for an even closer triple conjunction. Have your binoculars and cameras ready!
On Thursday, 29 October, observers in the British Isles with clear skies and armed with binoculars or small telescopes can see the waning gibbous 17-day-old Moon occult first-magnitude star Aldebaran, the ‘Eye of the Bull’ in the constellation Taurus. The star slips behind the Moon soon after 9:45pm GMT and reappears at the darkened lunar hemisphere about an hour later.
Are you looking for something to bring the wow factor back to your public viewing sessions, or a means to observe in comfort out of the cold? The sub-£100 Astro-Video Systems DSO-1 camera promises near realtime colour imaging of deep-sky objects and high-resolution planetary imaging with modest telescopes. Does it deliver? Ade Ashford finds out.
Phenomenally durable crystals called zircons are used to date some of the earliest and most dramatic cataclysms of the solar system, such as the late heavy bombardment that created hellish surface conditions on the young Earth and Moon about 4 billion years ago. Now a study of zircons from a gigantic meteorite impact in South Africa casts doubt on the methods used to date lunar impacts.
A giant mound near the Moon’s south pole appears to be a volcanic structure unlike any other found on the lunar surface, according to new research by Brown University geologists. The formation, known as Mafic Mound, stands about 800 metres tall and 75 kilometres (47 miles) across, smack in the middle of a giant impact crater known as the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
Water reserves found on the Moon are the result of asteroids acting as “delivery vehicles” and not of falling comets as was previously thought. Using computer simulation, scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the RAS Geosphere Dynamics Institute have discovered that a large asteroid can deliver more water to the lunar surface than the cumulative fall of comets over a billion year period.
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.
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