Daily Archives: January 7, 2020

Thousands of scientists from around the world are converging on Hawaii this week to unveil the latest discoveries about the universe at the so-called "Super Bowl of astronomy." If the event, the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, had a stadium, it would be packed.

"This will be the biggest AAS meeting in history," AAS spokesperson Rick Feinberg told Space.com in an email.

More than 3,500 scientists are expected to attend the four-day conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, Feinberg said. The first press conferences and talks begin today (Jan. 5). They'll end on Wednesday (Jan. 8), with observatory tours and other presentations scheduled throughout the week.

NASA, as expected, will showcase its latest space findings at the conference, including the agency's recent exoplanet discoveries by the TESS space telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in April.

"NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of astrophysics and other space science topics at the 235th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Saturday, Jan. 4, through Wednesday, Jan. 8, in Honolulu," NASA officials said in a statement. "Agency scientists and their colleagues who use NASA research capabilities also will present noteworthy findings during scientific sessions that are open to registered media."

The AAS and NASA will webcast press conferences from the conference daily from Sunday to Wednesday. There are two press conferences most days (there are three today) and they can be watched live on the AAS website here as well as on the NASA Live website here.

The briefings are scheduled for 10:15 a.m. HST (3:15 EST/2015 GMT) and 2:15 p.m. EST (7:15 p.m. EST/0015 GMT). The extra briefing on Sunday is at 12:45 p.m. HST (5:45 p.m. EST/2245 GMT).

You can find the list of the press conferences here, including what scientists will discuss in each session over the next four days.

The role of Hawaii in astronomy will take center stage at this year's AAS meeting.

"The main new feature of this meeting is our major effort to bring the astronomical community and the local community together as much as possible to discuss the future of astronomy in Hawaii," Feinberg said.

Hawaii has long been a focal point for astronomy. The Keck Observatory, which has the largest active optical telescopes on Earth, and other observatories sit atop the volcano Mauna Kea and an even larger telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope, is planned to be built at the site.

But construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has been stalled due to ongoing protests by indigenous groups that consider Mauna Kea sacred. The demonstrations stepped up in 2019.

"TMT is committed to finding a peaceful way forward on Maunakea for all," the builders of the new telescope wrote in a Dec. 20 update.

"We are sensitive to the ongoing struggles of indigenous populations around the world, and we will continue to support conversations around TMT and the larger issues for which it has become a flashpoint," Gordon Squires, TMT VP for External Affairs, said in the statement. "We are participating in private conversations with community leaders, but these conversations will take time."

Email Tariq Malik attmalik@space.comor follow him@tariqjmalik. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.

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The 2020 'Super Bowl of Astronomy' Kicks Off in Hawaii - Space.com

Beginnings of Cosmology

Humans have always held ideas about how the universe originated. But it wasnt until advances in the 20th century, including Albert Einsteins theories of relativity, that astronomers could really form educated ideas about how the universe formed.

Alexander Friedmann, a Russian physicist, was the first to realize that applying the rules of relativity across large scales described a universe that changed over time. With a mathematical approach, he showed the universe could have started small before expanding over enormous distances and, in some cases, eventually collapsing back in on itself.

Observations carried outby Lowell Observatorys V.M. Slipher and, later, Edwin Hubble, showed that the universe was in fact expanding. And this helped confirm these initial ideas of the Big Bang. Two years later, the Belgian physicist Georges Lematre published a paper describing how the expanding universe had started as a tiny, hot, dense speck, which he called the primeval atom. Ordained as a Catholic priest, Lematre reported the finding as a happy coincidence of cosmology and theology in an early draft of the paper, though the comment was removed for the final publication of the paper.

Two decades later, George Gamow would develop theories on the fallout of a hot-birthed universe namely, how it would create neutrons and protons and published a popular book on the subject. It even caught the eye of Pope Pius XII, who was taken by the parallels between the scripture of Genesis and the scientific theory.

Unlike the church, Einstein wasnt initially happy with the idea of a changing universe, preferring one invariable on large scales. British astronomer Fred Hoyle wasnt happy, either. Along with two other scientists, he developed a counter-theory the steady state model. The steady state model suggested that the universe had no beginning and had always been expanding. To explain why the universe looks identical in all directions, it proposed tiny traces of matter, too small to be experimentally measured, were continually being created.

This model initially garnered support of around half of the scientific community albeit one that was very small at the time and became the Big Bang theorys biggest rival.

This [debate between theories] was not in the mainstream of physics research, says David Kaiser, science historian and physics professor at MIT. Basically no one paid attention or very little attention, even among professional physicists and astronomers.

But as evidence started gathering, that would change.

Observations of distant ultra-bright galaxies in the 1950s suggested the universe was changing, and measurements of the helium content in the universe didnt match the steady state models predictions. In 1964, the monumental discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation direct evidence of a young, hot universe would deal the final deathblow to the steady state model.

It really seems to suggest the universe had very different conditions in early times than today, Kaiser says. And that was just not what the steady state model suggests.

In an ironic twist, Hoyle used the term Big Bang in an attempt to dismiss the theory in a BBC interview. Though his own theory would be largely lost to history, the irreverent name would stick.

To his death, Hoyle would never submit to the Big Bang theory. A small subset of cosmologists still work on resurrecting a steady state model; but, on the whole, the community overwhelmingly supports the Big Bang theory.

There are a couple of other puzzles, so cosmologists don't think we're done, but theyre now kind of patching or filling in some holes to the original Big Bang models certainly not replacing it, Kaiser says.

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The Steady State: When astronomers tried to overthrow the Big Bang - Astronomy Magazine

Most massive meteorites struck Earth so long ago their craters have almost completely eroded, Sieh says. But this impact was unusual in that it was huge and recent enough that the site where it hit should be identifiable.But with rocks from the impact spread across the world, zeroing in on the location proved difficult.

The site eluded geochemists for decades, but Sieh decided to take a new approach and look at satellite imagery from parts of the world where the meteorite might have hit. In the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos, he found an expanse of flat, shallow rock formed from hardened lava, just thick enough to obscure a crater of this size.

In-person excavations found the lava dated to around the same time as the impact, while surrounding sediments were older. Additional gravity measurements also hinted at a crater below. Altogether it's enough for Sieh to be confident he's finally located ancient ground zero.

With the help of Sieh and his teams find, researchers now have a slightly clearer sense of what must have happened after the asteroid hit. Roughly a mile and a quarter wide, the rock would have opened a hole larger than San Francisco in a span of seconds.

The rock's speed and force would have been enough to send pillow-sized boulders careening through the air at almost 1,500 feet per second. Sitting on the perimeter of the suspected impact site, these rocks are a tell-tale sign of a meteorite impact. It would not have been a healthy thing to be on the receiving end of that, Sieh says.

For now, Sieh wants to focus on some of the ashy material surrounding the meteor debris. The impact would have incinerated all plant and animal life within 300 miles of the impact site, and Sieh is curious how that kind of settling dust would impact all of us today. The odds of such an impact are extremely low, but still fascinate Sieh. "I've never worked on meteorites before, but I got sucked into this with my curiosity," he says.

As for drilling down through the rock to confirm that this is in fact the site? "I'm 98 percent convinced we found it, but Id be supportive of anyone who wanted to," he says.

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Crater found from asteroid that covered 10% of Earth's surface in deb - Astronomy Magazine

A mysterious repeating radio signal from space revealed last year is now the fifth fast radio burst to be tracked back to its source galaxy.

It's a location unlike any of the others, and astronomers are having to rethink their previous assumptions about how these signals are generated.

The origin of this repeating signal is a spiral galaxy, located 500 million light-years from Earth, making it the closest known source of what we call fast radio bursts (FRBs) yet.

And the FRBs are emanating specifically from a region just seven light-years across - a region that's alive with star formation.

"This object's location is radically different from that of not only the previously located repeating FRB, but also all previously studied FRBs," said astronomer Kenzie Nimmo of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

"This blurs the differences between repeating and non-repeating fast radio bursts. It may be that FRBs are produced in a large zoo of locations across the Universe and just require some specific conditions to be visible."

Fast radio bursts are among the Universe's strangest mysteries. They are extremely brief spikes in electromagnetic radiation detected by radio telescopes, lasting no more than a few milliseconds at most. But in that time, they can discharge more energy than 500 million Suns.

Most of the fast radio bursts detected to date have only appeared once. These are impossible to predict, which makes them extremely difficult to trace - to date, only three have had their origin localised to a galaxy.

But in recent years, we've begun to find FRBs that repeat - popping off repeat signals with no discernible pattern - and in 2017, scientists managed to track down the origin of one of them.

Then last year, scientists announced that the CHIME experiment in Canada had detected a massive eight new repeating FRBs, bringing the number of known repeaters to a total of 10. It is one of these new repeaters - a signal called FRB 180916.J0158+65 (FRB 180916 for short) - that astronomers have now traced.

An international team of astronomers used eight telescopes participating in the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network to conduct follow-up observations in the direction of FRB 180916. Over the course of five hours, they detected four more bursts - which allowed them to home in on the source of the signal.

And that led them to a normal spiral galaxy called SDSS J015800.28+654253.0.

The first repeating fast radio burst to belocalised was FRB 121102. It was found to be emanating from a dwarf galaxy poor in metals over 3 billion light-years away, and the signal had been distorted by something called the Faraday effect, which occurs when electromagnetic radiation interacts with a magnetic field.

This suggested that FRB 121102 was produced in an extreme environment, like the region around a supermassive black hole at the galactic centre. Interestingly, it, too, seemed to be close to a star-forming region.

The three other non-repeating FRBs, on the other hand, were found in much more conventional galaxies - but only one of them was near a star-forming region.

FRB 180916 was not nearly as distorted by the Faraday effect as FRB 121102, which indicates that its location was not as magnetic; and it was found pretty far from the galactic centre.

"The multiple flashes that we witnessed in the first repeating FRB arose from very particular and extreme conditions inside a very tiny (dwarf) galaxy," said astronomer Benito Marcote of the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC.

"This discovery represented the first piece of the puzzle but it also raised more questions than it solved, such as whether there was a fundamental difference between repeating and non-repeating FRBs. Now, we have localised a second repeating FRB, which challenges our previous ideas on what the source of these bursts could be."

Possible explanations for FRBs put forward to date include neutron stars, black holes, pulsars with companion stars, imploding pulsars, a type of star called a blitzar, a connection with gamma-ray bursts (which we now know can be caused by colliding neutron stars), and magnetars emitting giant flares.

This research has not answered that burning question, but it could be starting to help rule out what it isn't.

"With the characterisation of this source, the argument against against pulsar-like emission as origin for repeating FRBs is gaining strength," said Ramesh Karuppusamy of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

"We are at the verge of more such localisations brought about by the upcoming newer telescopes. These will finally allow us to establish the true nature of these sources."

The research has been published in Nature.

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Astronomers Have Tracked a Repeating Radio Signal Across Space to an Unexpected Origin - ScienceAlert

This is a composite of 27 images of the Super Blood Wolf moon as it goes from being a full moon into the full lunar eclipsed moon while rising over Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Jan. 20 in Golden. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

This weekend could offer one of the best celestial events of2020 when the Quadrantids meteor shower reaches its peak, assuming the weather cooperates.

Thats just one of the nighttime shows for stargazers to note on their calendars this year. There also will be some fun things to watch regarding the planet Mars in February and October, a special full moon in April and the super conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in December, when the two largest planets in the solar system appear to come together. That also will coincide with the Winter Solstice.

Here are eight astronomical events to watch for this year:

According to the International Meteor Organization, the Quadrantids have the potential to be the strongest meteor shower of the year, and they are peaking this weekend. The average hourly rates one can expect under dark skies is 25, the IMO says. These meteors usually lack persistent trains (vaporized rock that glows after the meteor burns up in the atmosphere) but often produce bright fireballs.

Get out your binoculars or a telescope if you have one for Feb. 18, when the moon will pass in front of the planet Mars in an event called an occultation. The moon will glide in front of reddish, star-like Mars for viewers across North America, Central America, extreme northern South America, Cuba and Haiti, according to Space.com. A couple of hours later, Mars will show up on the other side of the moon (as seen from Earth). The moon will appear 23% full on that night.

This one comes recommended by John Keller, director of the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado.

Venus will be high in the evening sky in April and pass very close to the Pleiades star cluster, an easy naked-eye target, said Keller, adding that the Pleiades star cluster is easy to spot because it looks like the stars in the Subaru logo. Venus will be highest in the evening sky on March 24, passing by the Pleiades April 2 and April 3. Also of potential interest, Venus will then dive down towards the sun during the month of May and re-emerge in the morning sky in mid-June after passing by the sun on June 3. The waning crescent moon will pass very close by Venus on June 19 and provide a nice guide for observers looking for their first view of Venus in the morning sky.

The moon will be full when its orbit takes it closest to the Earth (called perigee) for the year at 221,772 miles. The moon has an elliptical orbit, and its average distance from Earth is 238,855 miles. Its apogee (farthest distance) is 252,088 miles. Because there is no consensus on what constitutes a supermoon its a matter of how close the moon is to the earth there will be one, two or three other supermoons this year (February, March and May). There also will be a second full moon in October, a so-called blue moon, and it will occur on Halloween.

This will be another highlight of the year for meteor lovers. Peaking Aug. 11-12, the Perseids are the most popular meteor shower in North America.

Normal rates seen from rural locations range from 50-75 shower members per hour at maximum, the International Meteor Organization reports. The Perseids are particles released from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle during its numerous returns to the inner solar system. They are called Perseids since the radiant (the area of the sky where the meteors seem to originate) is located near the prominent constellation of Perseus the hero when at maximum activity.

The moon will be about half-full when the Perseids peak this year.

According to Space.com, Mars will be spectacular in October. Because of its proximity to Earth, Mars will appear brighter than Jupiter and will be the third-brightest object in the nighttime sky, after the moon and Venus. On Oct. 6, Mars will be only 38.6 million miles from Earth. It wont be that close again until 2035.

According to the IMO, the Geminids meteor shower is usually the strongest of the year, and this year we get a bonus: There will be no moonlight to obscure the view when the Geminids peak Dec. 13-14. Fans of meteor showers may recall that the Geminid peak in 2019 coincided with a nearly full moon.

The Geminids are often bright and intensely colored, the IMO says. Due to their medium-slow velocity, persistent trains are not usually seen.

A conjunction occurs when two planets come closest together on their individual orbits. Conjunctions for these two planets occur approximately every 20 years. On the Winter Solstice this year, Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest they have been to each other since 1623, a so-called super conjunction.

Finally, courtesy of the folks at the Fiske Planetarium, a list of National Aeronautics and Space Administration highlights for 2020:

Feb. 5: Launch of the Solar Orbiter, which was developed by the European Space Agency to study the sun at close approaches every five months

April 11: 50th anniversary of Apollo 13

April 24: 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope launch

June 30: International Asteroid Day

July 14: 55th anniversary of the first flyby of Mars by Mariner 4

July 17-Aug. 5: Launch window for the Mars 2020 Rover Mission, which will drill for core samples from Martian rocks and soil. The mission takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, according to the Mars 2020 mission website, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself.

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Astronomy 2020: Every major meteor shower, supermoon and more - The Know

If you follow space news and astronomy, the past year offered no shortage of highlights. Astronomers provided humanitys first glimpse of a black hole. China landed on the moons far side. And the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing inspired us to look ahead to our future in space.

The year to come will be no less eventful:

No fewer than four missions to Mars could leave Earth this summer.

NASA may finally launch astronauts into orbit aboard capsules built by SpaceX and Boeing.

We expect to learn more secrets about the interstellar comet Borisov.

And private companies are working to demonstrate new abilities in space.

However much you love space and astronomy, it can be challenging to keep up with the latest news in orbit and beyond. Thats why weve put dates for some of these events on The Timess Astronomy and Space Calendar, which has been updated for 2020. Subscribe on your personal digital calendar to be automatically synced with our updates all year long. (We promise not to collect any personal information from your private calendar when you sign up.)

[Sync your calendar with the solar system.]

Below are some of the launches, space science and other events to look forward to.

Roughly every two years, the orbits of Earth and Mars come closer than usual. Space agencies on Earth often send missions to the red planet during that window, and in 2020 four such launches are scheduled.

Three of the missions will carry rovers. The United States is launching the soon-to-be-renamed Mars 2020 rover, which also carries a small helicopter. It will try to land in Jezero Crater, which once contained a lake and could preserve evidence of life, if life ever existed there.

Neither China, Europe nor Russia has deployed a rover on the Martian surface. But they will try, in a pair of missions. Chinas mission, its first on its own to the red planet, includes an orbiter in addition to a rover. The European Space Agency and Russia cooperated to build Rosalind Franklin, a rover named for the English chemist whose work was essential to finding the structure of DNA.

The rovers could be joined on Mars by Hope, an orbiter commissioned by the United Arab Emirates. It is being built in Colorado, and is to be launched on a Japanese rocket. If it succeeds, it could represent a new model for space programs, in which small, wealthy countries pay for off-the-shelf spacecraft to get themselves into orbit and beyond.

Since the space shuttles last flight, in 2011, NASA has relied on Russias Soyuz spacecraft for trips to and from the International Space Station. In 2019, NASA hoped to begin flying astronauts aboard capsules built by two private companies, SpaceX and Boeing, but persistent delays knocked back the timeline another year.

NASAs commercial crew program could finally achieve its goal in 2020. SpaceXs Crew Dragon is scheduled to conduct an uncrewed test of its in-flight abort system on Jan. 11. If the test succeeds, the capsule could carry astronauts to the space station not long after.

Boeings Starliner experienced problems during its first uncrewed test flight in December and was unable to dock with the space station. An upcoming review of that test will determine whether Starliner might still be able to fly into orbit with astronauts in the first half of this year.

Virgin Galactic, the space-plane company run by Richard Branson, conducted two successful test flights with crew aboard in the past 13 months. In the year to come, the company could carry its first passengers to the edge of space. Blue Origin, the company founded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, may follow suit; it has conducted 12 crewless tests of its capsule for short tourist jumps to suborbital space. For now, only the very wealthy will be able to afford such jaunts.

Other private companies are looking to Earth orbit for the future of internet service. SpaceX launched 120 Starlink satellites in 2019 and could launch many more in 2020. A competitor, OneWeb, could send more of its satellites to orbit in the coming year, too. These companies are blazing the trail for orbital internet a business that Amazon and Apple are also pursuing and upsetting astronomers, who fear that large constellations of internet satellites will imperil scientific study of the solar system and stars.

In September, a comet called Borisov 2I was spotted in our solar system, only the second ever confirmed interstellar object. Unlike Oumuamua, which was spotted in 2017 only as it was leaving the solar system, astronomers caught sight of Borisov and its 100,000-mile-long tail as it flew toward the sun, before it turned and began its exit.

In 2020, scientists will continue to point ground and orbiting telescopes at Borisov as it speeds back toward the stars beyond unless, as some astronomers hope, it explodes into fragments after being heated by the sun. Whatever happens, other interstellar visitors are sure to follow, and professional sky gazers hope to find them with powerful new telescopes in the years ahead.

Before the end of 2020, the moon could see one more visitor from Earth. Change-5, a robotic probe built by China, aims to collect moon rock and soil samples and send them back to Earth. The last set of lunar samples was gathered in 1976 by a Soviet spacecraft.

The year to come may also bring greater clarity about American designs for returning to the moon. NASA is aiming to put the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024, with a program called Artemis. A wide range of political, budgetary and technological hurdles stand in the way of meeting that ambitious timeline.

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Rocket Launches, Trips to Mars and More 2020 Space and Astronomy Events - The New York Times

EAST HAVEN, CT - Break out the binoculars and take out the telescope The Astronomical Society of New Haven is bringing their wide range of viewing equipment and knowledge to East Haven's organic cafe One World Roasters on the evening of Friday January 24th at 6:30 p.m. for a winter sky viewing session open to all.

"The mission of our society is to bring interest to the general public about the topic of astronomy," says Al Washburn, member at large and former president of the Astronomical Society of New Haven.

The retired North Branford High School science teacher of 38 years speaks with an inexhaustible passion of the special sights guests can expect to see on this particular night. "One of the best objects to see in the sky is in the cold winter months and hopefully it will be a good, clear evening and we'll be taking a look at that," he says.

Washburn speaks of the Orion Nebula, a giant hydrogen gas cloud and one of the most photographed objects in the sky. "You can actually see it with your naked eye if you know where to look for it, but collecting more light from it with the mirror of a telescope will allow you to see the magnificent Orion Nebula," he says.

The evening's other astronomical attractions include an ideal view of the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, a potential glimpse of the Andromeda Galaxy, and a great number of open star clusters, which Washburn describes as "diamonds and sprinkled on a black velvet napkin."

As for the Society's choice of location, Washburn concedes that the proximity to coffee shop is a definite perk, but also mentions the unique elevation of the viewing site. "It has a nice low Eastern Horizon so we will be pointing our telescopes mostly to the East and South East to see the constellations of the wintertime as they take their positions above our skies," he says.

If you are new to the world of astronomy, telescopes, and viewing sessions, fear not, as the members of the society will be happy to assist all first time attendees. "People can expect just to walk over to a particular telescope, most everybody says "Hi, welcome, it's good to see you," and the person running the telescope will say what is inside the view so that they'll know what to look for when they look inside," Washburn says.

The former Astronomical Society president does have one request for first time stargazers "I would ask those who are arriving to bring a pair of binoculars," Washburn says. "There is an excellent star cluster called M 45 (also known as Pleiades or The Seven Sisters) and it is easily seen with the naked eye but in a pair of very simple binoculars it is magnificent," he adds.

Society members also encourage new telescope owners to bring their equipment for friendly tutorials and instruction on how to properly use their viewing tools.

One World Cafe will open at 6:30 p.m. on Friday January 24th and the viewing will begin at 7:00. "Astronomy is a fun science and everyone has a front row seat and you can do it with a pair of binoculars," Washburn says.

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East Haven Coffee Shop To Host Astronomy Night on January 24th - East Haven, CT Patch

Saturday, January 4The Quadrantid meteor shower reaches its peak this morning. The slightly gibbous Moon sets around 1 a.m. local time, leaving nearly five hours of darkness for watching. The Quadrantid shower typically produces up to 120 meteors per hour, an average of two per minute, so observers should be in for a great show if the weather cooperates. The meteors appear to radiate from a spot in the northern part of the constellation Botes an area once occupied by the now-defunct constellation Quadrans Muralis a region that climbs highest just before dawn.

Sunday, January 5Earth reaches perihelion, the closest point to the Sun during its year-long orbit, at 3 a.m. EST. The two then lie 91.4 million miles (147.1 million kilometers) apart. It surprises many people to learn that Earth comes closest to the Sun in the dead of winter, but the cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year arises because the Sun lies low in the sky.

The Sun is in the news more than once today. Although people in the Northern Hemisphere experienced the shortest day of the year two weeks ago (at the winter solstice December 21), the Sun has continued to rise slightly later with each passing day. That trend stops this morning for those at 40 north latitude. Tomorrows sunrise will arrive a second earlier than todays. This turnover point depends on latitude. If you live farther north, the switch occurred a few days ago; closer to the equator, the change wont happen until later this month.

Monday, January 6Venus gleams in the southwestern sky after sunset. The brilliant planet stands out just a half hour after sunset, when it appears 20 above the horizon, and remains on display until 7:30 p.m. local time. Shining at magnitude 4.0, it is by far the brightest point of light in the night sky. A telescope shows Venus disk, which spans 13" and appears about 80 percent lit.

Tuesday, January 7The brightest star in the sky (after the Sun, of course) puts on quite a show on January evenings. Gleaming at magnitude 1.5, Sirius shines nearly four times brighter than the next brightest star visible from mid-northern latitudes: Arcturus in the constellation Botes. Sirius currently rises before 7 p.m. local time and ascends in the southeast throughout the evening hours.

Wednesday, January 8If youre game for a quick evening challenge, try to spot Neptune through binoculars. The distant planet lies 30 high in the southwest near the end of evening twilight and doesnt set until nearly 10 p.m. local time. The magnitude 7.9 world appears against the backdrop of Aquarius, 1.0 west-southwest of the 4th-magnitude star Phi (f) Aquarii. Youll need binoculars to spy Neptune and a telescope to see its blue-gray disk, which spans 2.2".

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The Sky This Week from January 3 to 12 - Astronomy Magazine

In September 2019, the Hubble team announced a social media initiative to celebrate three decades of success in discoveries with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The campaign showcased 30 hidden gems from the Hubble image archive. The 12 images that received the most likes were compiled to produce a special 30th Anniversary Calendar for 2020 (.pdf file, high-resolution print-ready .pdf file).

The cover page of the Hubbles Hidden Gems 2020 Calendar. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

The images featured in the Hubbles Hidden Gems 2020 Calendar are described below:

Cover: the calendars cover features NGC 3256, a distorted galaxy located some 131 million light-years away in the constellation of Vela; the galaxy is approximately the same size as our own Milky Way Galaxy and belongs to the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster complex; it is the relic of a collision between two spiral galaxies, estimated to have occurred 500 million years ago.

January: this picture is the result of the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field project; it contains approximately 10,000 distant galaxies.

February: this colorful image shows a small section of the Veil Nebula, one of the best-known supernova remnants; also known as NGC 6960, the Cirrus Nebula and the Filamentary Nebula, this object spans approximately 110 light-years and lies in the constellation Cygnus, about 2,100 light-years away.

March: this Hubble picture shows IRAS 14568-6304, a young star that is cloaked in a haze of golden gas and dust.

April: this image shows Trumpler 14, one of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.

May: this snapshot features the fine detail and exceptionally perfect spiral structure of NGC 634, a spiral galaxy located 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Triangulum.

June: this composite image shows Sh 2-106, a compact star forming region in the constellation of Cygnus, which combines two images taken in infrared light and one that is tuned to a specific wavelength of visible light emitted by excited hydrogen gas.

July: this image shows Saturn and six of its 82 known moons: Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas.

August: this Hubble image shows NGC 5189, a planetary nebula located in the constellation Musca, some 3,000 light-years away; the intricate structure of the stellar eruption looks like a giant and brightly colored ribbon in space.

September: this colorful and star-studded view of our Milky Way Galaxy was captured in 2016 when Hubble pointed its cameras towards the constellation of Sagittarius.

October: in January 2002, a moderately dim star called V838 Monocerotis suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun; a Hubble snapshot shows remarkable details in the shells of dust that were lit up during the titanic stellar eruption.

November: in 2011, Hubble captured a stunning close-up shot of part of the Tarantula Nebula; this is a star-forming region rich in ionized hydrogen gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

December: in 2002, Hubble revealed a rainbow of colors in IC 4406, a planetary nebula located 2,000 light-years away near the western border of the constellation Lupus; like many other planetary nebulae, IC 4406 exhibits a high degree of symmetry; the nebulas left and right halves are nearly mirror images of each other.

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This article is based on text provided by the European Space Agency.

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Hubble Team Produces 30th Anniversary Calendar for 2020 | Astronomy - Sci-News.com