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By Amazing Space
Winter Sky Guide: Orion, Pleiades & Jupiter Alignment | Meteor Shower Captured! Stargazing
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By NASA
3 min read
January’s Night Sky Notes: The Red Planet
by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Have you looked up at the night sky this season and noticed a bright object sporting a reddish hue to the left of Orion? This is none other than the planet Mars! January will be an excellent opportunity to spot this planet and some of its details with a medium-sized telescope. Be sure to catch these three events this month.
Martian Retrograde
Mars entered retrograde (or backward movement relative to its usual direction) on December 7, 2024, and will continue throughout January into February 23, 2025. You can track the planet’s progress by sketching or photographing Mars’ position relative to nearby stars. Be consistent with your observations, taking them every few nights or so as the weather permits. You can use free software like Stellarium or Stellarium Web (the browser version) to help you navigate the night as Mars treks around the sky. You can find Mars above the eastern horizon after 8:00 PM local time.
This mid-January chart shows the path of Mars from September 2024 to June 2025 as it enters and then exits in retrograde motion. Mars appears to change its direction of motion in the sky because Earth is passing the slower-moving Mars in its orbit. Stellarium Hide and Seek
On the night of January 13th, you can watch Mars ‘disappear’ behind the Moon during an occultation. An occultation is when one celestial object passes directly in front of another, hiding the background object from view. This can happen with planets and stars in our night sky, depending on the orbit of an object and where you are on Earth, similar to eclipses.
A simulated view of the Moon as Mars begins its occultation on January 13, 2025. Stellarium Depending on where you are within the contiguous United States, you can watch this event with the naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope. The occultation will happen for over an hour in some parts of the US. You can use websites like Stellarium Web or the Astronomical League’s ‘Moon Occults Mars’ chart to calculate the best time to see this event.
Closer and Closer
As you observe Mars this month to track its retrograde movement, you will notice that it will increase in brightness. This is because Mars will reach opposition by the evening of January 16th. Opposition happens when a planet is directly opposite the Sun, as seen from Earth. You don’t need to be in any specific city to observe this event; you only need clear skies to observe that it gets brighter. It’s also when Mars is closest to Earth, so you’ll see more details in a telescope.
Want a quick and easy way to illustrate what opposition is for Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, or other outer worlds? Follow the instructions on our Toolkit Hack: Illustrating Opposition with Exploring the Solar System page using our Exploring Our Solar System activity!
A mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft. The mosaic is composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech Mars has fascinated humanity for centuries, with its earliest recorded observations dating back to the Bronze Age. By the 17th century, astronomers were able to identify features of the Martian surface, such as its ice caps and darker regions. Since the 1960s, exploration of the Red Planet has intensified with robotic missions from various space organizations. Currently, NASA has five active missions, including rovers and orbiters, with the future focused on human exploration and habitation. Mars will always fill us with a sense of wonder and adventure as we reach for its soil through initiatives such as the Moon to Mars Architecture and the Mars Sample Return campaign.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Spot the Station app was developed in collaboration with the public through a series of crowdsourcing competitions.NASA In its 25th year of operations, the International Space Station continues to symbolize discovery and cooperation for the benefit of humanity. Since 2012, observers have interacted with the space station through NASA’s Spot the Station website, a web browser-based tool that includes interactive maps for users to track the station and find viewpoints closest to their location.
A decade after the website’s release, NASA sought to enhance public access to this capability with a mobile app. NASA released the Spot the Station app on IOS and Android in 2023. As of Dec. 2024, it has more than 770,000 users in 227 countries and territories around the globe, according to Ensemble, who NASA contracts to maintain support of the app.
Revamping the Spot the Station experience was more than just an opportunity for NASA to make improvements; it allowed NASA to gather direct input from users by involving them in the development of the new app. Space Operations web and platform lead, Allison Wolff, pitched the idea to publicly crowdsource the app’s development.
In 2022, Wolff and her team supported the release of three separate crowdsourcing competitions, where global communities were invited to design key components of the new Spot the Station app. Participants submitted functional designs, including an augmented reality component not offered on the web version and interfaces for screens such as login and sign-up windows. Multiple winners were awarded prizes totaling $8,550 across the three challenges.
As the former Innovation Strategist in NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, part of the agency’s Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program, Wolff was well acquainted with the ingenuity and results that stem from public-private collaborations.
“NASA strives to incorporate inclusion and innovation into how we operate. We also collaborate with minds outside the agency because the best ideas can come from very surprising places,” said Wolff.
Not only were the winning designs used in the final product, but the development team gained valuable feedback and worldwide perspectives from everyone who participated in the competition.
“When you use the power of the crowd and get a consistent message about a component or an interface, that’s a good indicator of what is user-friendly,” said Wolff.
Crowdsourcing continues to enhance the app’s functionality, including translating the app into six languages, including Spanish, French, and German, thanks to user contributions. In addition, the app’s code is open source, enabling anyone to modify and use the code for their own projects and support the tool’s growth. NASA will continue to update and improve the app with feedback from the public.
Find more opportunities: www.nasa.gov/get-involved/
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By NASA
X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand Since antiquity, wreaths have symbolized the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It is fitting then that one of the best places for astronomers to learn more about the stellar lifecycle resembles a giant holiday wreath itself.
The star cluster NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The stars in NGC 602 have fewer heavier elements compared to the Sun and most of the rest of the galaxy. Instead, the conditions within NGC 602 mimic those for stars found billions of years ago when the universe was much younger.
This new image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. The dark ring-like outline of the wreath seen in Webb data (represented as orange, yellow, green, and blue) is made up of dense clouds of filled dust.
Meanwhile, X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light into interstellar space. These X-rays are powered by winds flowing from the young, massive stars that are sprinkled throughout the cluster. The extended cloud in the Chandra data likely comes from the overlapping X-ray glow of thousands of young, low-mass stars in the cluster.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Clow, M.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand In addition to this cosmic wreath, a new version of the “Christmas tree cluster” is also now available. Like NGC 602, NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is a middle-aged star about 5 billion years old — about 1,000 times older.) In this image of NGC 2264, which is much closer than NGC 602 at a distance of about 2,500 light-years from Earth, Chandra data (red, purple, blue, and white) has been combined with optical data (green and violet) captured from by astrophotographer Michael Clow from his telescope in Arizona in November 2024.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release includes two composite images, each featuring a star cluster that strongly resembles holiday greenery.
The first image depicts star cluster NGC 602 in vibrant and festive colors. The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. The green hues and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the appearance of a wreath made of evergreen boughs. Hints of red representing X-rays provide shading, highlighting layers within the wreath-like ring cloud.
The image is aglow with specks and dots of colorful, festive light, in blues, golds, whites, oranges, and reds. These lights represent stars within the cluster. Some of the lights gleam with diffraction spikes, while others emit a warm, diffuse glow. Upon closer inspection, many of the glowing specks have spiraling arms, indicating that they are, in fact, distant galaxies.
The second image in today’s release is a new depiction of NGC 2264, known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster”. Here, wispy green clouds in a conical shape strongly resemble an evergreen tree. Tiny specks of white, blue, purple, and red light, stars within the cluster, dot the structure, turning the cloud into a festive, cosmic Christmas tree!
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By NASA
4 Min Read Celebrating 20 Years: Night Sky Network
2023 Partial Solar Eclipse Viewing at Camino Real Marketplace with the View the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit. Credits:
Photo by Chuck McPartlin by Vivan White & Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
NASA’s Night Sky Network is one of the most successful and longstanding grassroots initiatives for public engagement in astronomy education. Started in 2004 with the PlanetQuest program out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and currently supported by NASA’s Science Activation, the Night Sky Network (NSN) plays a critical role in fostering science literacy through astronomy. By connecting NASA science and missions to support amateur astronomy clubs, NSN leverages the expertise and enthusiasm of club members, who bring this knowledge to schools, museums, observatories, and other organizations, bridging the gap between NASA science and the public. Now in its 20th year, NSN supports over 400 astronomy clubs dedicated to bringing the wonder of the night sky to their communities across the US, connecting with 7.4 million people across the United States and its territories since its inception.
International Observe the Moon Night, September 2024 Credit: Oklahoma City Astronomy Club Humble Beginnings
It all started with an idea – astronomy clubs already do great outreach, and club members know a lot of astronomy (shown definitively by founder Marni Berendsen’s research), and they love to talk with the public – how could NASA support these astronomy clubs in sharing current research and ideas using informal activities designed for use in the places that amateur astronomers do outreach. Thanks to funding through NASA JPL’s PlanetQuest public engagement program, the Night Sky Network was born in 2004, with more than 100 clubs joining the first year.
Raynham Public Observing Night, February 2004 Credit: Astronomical Society of Southern New England/Mark Gibson As quoted from the first NSN news article, “NASA is very excited to be working closely with the amateur astronomy community,” said Michael Greene, current Director for Communications and Education and former head of public engagement for JPL’s Navigator Program and PlanetQuest initiatives, “Amateurs want more people to look at the sky and understand astronomy, and so do we. Connecting what we do with our missions to the sense of wonder that comes when you look up at the stars and the planets is one of our long-term objectives. We have a strong commitment to inspiring the next generation of explorers. Lending support to the energy that the amateur astronomy community brings to students and the public will allow NASA to reach many more people.”
Taking off like a rocket, Night Sky Network had over 100 clubs registered on their website within the first year.
The Toolkits
Outreach Toolkits were developed to assist clubs with their endeavors. These kits included educational materials, hands-on activities, and guides to explaining topics in an accessible way. So far, 13 toolkits have been created with topics ranging from the scale of the universe to how telescopes work. To qualify for these free Toolkits, clubs must be active in their communities, hosting two outreach events every three months or five outreach events within a calendar year. Supplemental toolkits were also created based on special events, such as the solar eclipses and the 50th anniversary of Apollo’s Moon landing. A new toolkit is in development to teach audiences about solar science, and NSN is on track to support clubs well into the future.
Rye Science Day, October 2014 Credit: Southern Colorado Astronomical Society/Malissa Pacheco NSN also hosts archived video trainings on these toolkits and other topics via its YouTube channel and a monthly webinar series with scientists from various institutions worldwide. Lastly, a monthly segment called Night Sky Notes is produced for clubs to share with their audiences via newsletters and mailing lists.
Sharing the Universe
In 2007, a National Science Foundation grant provided funding for further research into astronomy club needs. From that came three resources for clubs – the Growing Your Astronomy Club and Getting Started with Outreach video series, as well as an updated website with a national calendar and club and event coordination. Now you can find hundreds of events each month across the country, including virtual events that you can join from anywhere.
Night Sky Network: Current and Future
Map of Night Sky Network clubs within the United States, as of November 2024 Credit: Night Sky Network/Google Maps View the full article
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