USNO – Astronomy Now

2 December 2020

Latest News

[ 30 November 2020 ] SOFIA opens a surprising window on quasars and galactic evolution News
[ 24 November 2020 ] Mars rover data indicates ancient megafloods across Gale Crater News
[ 22 November 2020 ] Radioactive elements may be key to exoplanet habitability News
[ 19 November 2020 ] Iconic Arecibo Observatory, too unsafe to repair, faces demolition News
[ 8 November 2020 ] Arecibo Observatory suffers additional damage from second cable failure News

Find Martian moons Phobos and Deimos at the Red Planet’s closest approach

30 July 2018 Ade Ashford

Do you like extreme observing challenges? If you own a quality telescope of 25-cm (10-inch) aperture or larger and have excellent sky conditions, then you might just glimpse Phobos and Deimos, the diminutive moons of Mars around the time that the Red Planet is closest to Earth on 31 July.

U. S. Naval Observatory releases 228 million-star catalogue

27 April 2015 Astronomy Now

The United States Naval Observatory’s Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) near Flagstaff, Arizona began to systematically image the sky every clear night for a period of just over two years, culminating in the URAT1 catalogue of precise positional data on about 228 million stars.