Nature Hub

     From - Sky & Telescope  By - Bob King Edited by - Amal Udawatta    You can see how quickly the comet's head changed over just 3 nights, starting sharp and bright, then becoming more diffuse. The bright streak is a synchrone and comprised of dust particles released at the time the nucleus fragmented. Larger, heavier particles reside near the nucleus while smaller ones are pushed tailward by solar radiation pressure, creating the streak. Lionel Majzik The nucleus of Comet ATLAS (C/2024 G3) held together during a brutal perihelion but not for long. Lionel Majzik of Hungary was the first to report and record dramatic changes in the comet between January 18th and 19th. The bright, strongly condensed head rapidly became more diffuse, a sure sign that its nucleus was disintegrating based on past observations of crumbling comets. His superb sequence, photographed remotely from Chile, clearly reveal the dramatic transformation, which was later confirmed by ...

  From  - Sky &Telescope  By - Bob King  Edited by - Amal Udawatta       This montage of Hubble imagery shows the four bright planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Venus — and the two fainter ones, Uranus and Neptune (lower left), that will line up across the winter sky this month and next. NASA / JPL-Caltech / JAXA Catch four planets — Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars — in the evening sky. With good binoculars, Uranus and Neptune also become visible. Plus, Comet ATLAS may survive its close approach to the Sun. I like easy. Mining the deep-sky or spending a half-hour teasing out Martian surface features have their rewards, but it's been a blast to scan the evening sky this month and enjoy the planets with just my eyes. Venus and Saturn are paired in the west and will be in conjunction this coming weekend. Turn around and face east, and Jupiter and Mars eagerly greet your gaze. Add in the glitter of the Winter Hexagon and its captive, Betelgeuse, and...

  From - Sky & Telescope  By - Bob King  Edited by - Amal Udawatta     Jupiter gleams in Taurus northeast of Aldebaran and the Hyades above the figure of Orion. The brilliant planet is unmistakable in the eastern sky at nightfall, shining at magnitude –2.8 with a disk 48.2″ across. Bob King I can't resist Jupiter's pull and I'm only half joking. Venus may surpass it in brightness, but at magnitude –2.8, Jupiter makes the more dazzling impression this season because of altitude and visibility in a dark sky. On December 7th the gas giant arrives at opposition and holds court from sunset till sunrise. Pinned between the horns of Taurus, the Bull, the mighty planet basks in the glittery company of the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters at the ear-popping declination of +22°. The last time it was this close, this big, and this bright was in November 2023. Binoculars will show Jupiter as a disk surrounded by up to four moons depending on their proximity to the...

       From-  Sky & Telescope    By - Bob King    Edited by - Amal Udawatta Comet ATLAS exhibits a bright coma and short dust tail pointing southwest on December 15th. At the time it was magnitude 8.1 and 19° from the Sun. Nick James, BAA Comet ATLAS (C/2024 G3) is on its way! Discovered April 5th by the automated  Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System  (ATLAS) when it was magnitude 19 and 4.4 astronomical units from Earth, it's now visible at 8th magnitude in Scorpius at dawn for observers at equatorial and southern latitudes. Hang tight. The future looks bright for this latest visitor from afar. The comet's position along its orbit — gray below the ecliptic plane and white above it — is shown for December 18th. It makes a hairpin curve around the Sun at perihelion on January 13th, during which time it will rapidly brighten and then just as quickly fade. NASA / JPL   with additions by Bob King Arriving at perihelio...

    From - Sky & Telescope   By - Joe Rao   Edited by - Amal Udawatta     Constant Contact Use. Please leave this field blank. In the coming weeks, Jupiter’s four Galilean satellites will arrange themselves in some unusual geometric patterns that will be fascinating to observe. Jupiter’s four  Galilean satellites  are always fun to watch as they change position relative to each other from night to night and even hour to hour. Galileo originally assigned  Roman numerals  to these moons, based on the amount of time each took to revolve around Jupiter. However, the mythological names that we use today were chosen by Galileo’s rival,  Simon Marius , who claimed that he discovered the four moons about a month before Galileo did. Io (I), the innermost of this quartet, takes only 1.8 days to make one revolution around Jupiter. Europa (II) takes twice as long at 3.6 days, while Ganymede (III) circles Jupiter in 7.2 days — exactly four t...