Monday, July 20, 2020

"Good Night, Moon"

The new moon

28.9 days

0.5 percent lit

New Moon is a great time to see the sky, especially if in the Dark Sky Park.

July 19, 2020
By Jamie Carter

With a New Moon on Monday, (click here) the early part of this week is a great time to go looking for both Comet NEOWISE and the Milky Way, both of which should be looking their best as soon as it gets dark.

If you want to see Comet NEOWISE—the best naked-eye comet for 27 years—this week could be you last chance to see it and photograph it. For now it’s possible to see it even from light-polluted cities in the northern hemisphere, but it looks its best through binoculars....

July 20, 2020

The first Arab space mission to Mars (click here) blasted off Monday aboard a rocket from Japan, after weather delays set back the launch of the probe dubbed “Hope.”

A live feed of the launch showed the rocket carrying the unmanned probe, known as “Al-Amal” in Arabic, lifting off from the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan.

“We have launched the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 42 (H-IIA F42) carrying aboard the Emirates Mars Mission’s (EMM) HOPE spacecraft... at 6:58:14 (JST) (2158GMT),” rocket manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said in a statement shortly after the launch....