[via APOD]
Mars is at opposition tonight, opposite the Sun in planet Earth’s sky. Of course, it will be easy to spot because Mars appears close to tonight’s Full Moon, also opposite the Sun in Earth’s night sky in the constellation Cancer.
For this opposition, Mars remains just over 99 million kilometers away, not a particularly close approach for the Red Planet. Still, this sharp view of Mars recorded on January 22nd is an example of the telescopic images possible in the coming days.
Image by Nico Camargo and courtesy www.citizensky.org. Used under Creative Commons license.
Some kind of obstruction is blocking our view of Epsilon Aurigae, a star in the constellation Auriga. Its exact nature is unknown — but astronomers say that if you’ve got a telescope, you could help them figure it out.
Epsilon Aurigae is a binary system, or a star locked in a pattern of mutual orbit with a second body. It lies in the constellation Auriga, about two thousand light-years away from Earth. We like this star, because it gives us the chance to shout out to some old-school Green Day.
Click on picture for full-size image
A satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud is wonder of the southern sky, named for 16th century Portuguese circumnavigator Ferdinand Magellan. Some 200,000 light-years distant in the constellation Tucana, the small irregular galaxy’s stars, gas, and dust that lie along a bar and extended “wing”, are familiar in images from optical telescopes. But the galaxy also has a tail.