How to see Mars at its best and closest this weekend...
This month, Mars will shine brighter than at any time since December 2022 as it reaches a point astronomers call "opposition." That means skywatchers will have the best views of the Red Planet — both with the naked eye and through binoculars and telescopes — until 2027.As an added bonus, on Monday (Jan. 13), the…
How to see the full ‘Wolf Moon’ swallow Mars this week
Are you ready for one of the celestial highlights of 2025? The first full moon of the year, the Wolf Moon, will do something extraordinary, as seen across North America.Although it will be officially full at 5:26 p.m. EST on Monday, Jan. 13, the full moon will be best seen rising in the east at…
Now is the best time to see Mars until 2027: How...
This month, Mars will shine brighter than at any time since December 2022 as it reaches a point astronomers call "opposition." That means skywatchers will have the best views of the Red Planet — both with the naked eye and through binoculars and telescopes — until 2027.As an added bonus, on Monday (Jan. 13), the…
New NASA robot with X-ray vision will watch Earth ‘breathing’ from...
A new robot is set to capture the first global images of Earth's magnetic field "breathing" in and out from the surface of the moon, NASA has announced.The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) — an instrument that can detect X-rays bouncing off Earth's magnetosphere — is part of the payload set to launch into…
Mars rock samples may contain evidence of alien life, but can...
NASA has announced two potential plans for retrieving rocks from Mars that may contain evidence of alien life.Since 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has been busy collecting rocks and sediments in an ancient Martian lakebed. However, NASA isn't sure how to get these samples back to Earth for analysis.The original Mars Sample Return Program called for…
A ‘planetary parade’ will dance across the sky on Jan. 21...
This month, six planets in the solar system — Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Neptune and Saturn — will appear in Earth’s skies in a "parade of planets."Although the dark hours of Jan. 21 and 25 may be good times to see it, as various media outlets have publicized, this sight will not be restricted to…
Rare comet could shine bright as Venus as it falls toward...
In the second week of January, we could see a new object grace the skies as comet ATLAS (C/2024) G3 gets close to the sun.In the wake of comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) in October, comet G3 is due to reach perihelion — its closest to the sun — on Jan. 13, 2025. That day, this…
The moon is about to ‘swallow’ Mars for 4 hours —...
Grab your stargazing binoculars, because on Jan. 13, Mars will vanish behind the moon in an astronomical event called a lunar occultation.Coincidentally, the lunar occultation of Mars also happens when the Red Planet enters opposition — that is, when Mars is directly opposite the sun in Earth's sky — meaning Mars will be at its…
Most of the atoms in your body left the Milky Way...
Most of the atoms in your body likely spent millions of years circling the Milky Way on a cosmic "conveyor belt" before returning to our galaxy prior to the solar system's creation, a new study suggests.Most elements in the universe, except for hydrogen and helium (and a few other weird exceptions), were forged by stars,…
James Webb telescope spies record-breaking hoard of stars hiding in a...
Astronomers armed with exceptionally detailed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images have discovered dozens of ancient stars from a distant, gravitationally warped galaxy. The stellar haul, which was uncovered thanks to a space-time phenomenon predicted by Einstein, is the largest of its kind ever seen so far away.The newly imaged stars are located within the…
