This week sees a special event for stargazers, as there will be a planet parade in the skies. Four planets plus the moon will be visible in a line, making this a great opportunity for anyone interested in doing some stargazing.
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will all be visible in the night sky, and the moon will be almost full and passing by each of the planets in turn throughout the week. The event, also known as a planetary alignment, happens when the planets appear by chance in a row. Although there isn’t anything particularly unusual about this happening, it does make for an exceptional time to see multiple planets — even with the naked eye.
“The parade of the planets in 2025 is one of the best line-ups we’ve had for 45 years,” said Robin Scagell, chair of National Astronomy Week, an event planned to coincide with the planet parade. “Not since April 1980, when Mars was close and we could see Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus, has there been such a fantastic opportunity to see half the solar system in all its glory.”
How many planets will be visible depends on where the planets appear over the horizon, weather conditions, and what equipment you have available. “For most observers to see a planet with the naked eye, it needs to be at least a few degrees above the horizon, and 10 degrees or higher is best,” NASA explains. “This is crucial because Earth’s atmosphere near the ground dims celestial objects as they rise or set.”
Venus and Saturn are typically very bright and easy to spot without any aids, but to get the best view of the other planets you’ll need to have very clear skies or access to binoculars or a telescope. With these aids, you may even be able to see Uranus and Neptune in the night sky as well.
If you can’t get a good view of the planets for yourself, however, then you can still watch the event online. You can tune into the National Astronomy Week livestreams which will include footage of the planets plus expert commentary and astronomy-related activities.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.