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Lunar eclipse 2019 

Image credit: Dan Wery

Make Sure You Observe the Moon on October 20

On Saturday, October 20, NASA will host the ninth annual International Observe the Moon Night. One day each year, everyone on Earth is invited to observe and learn about the Moon together, and to celebrate the cultural and personal connections we all have with our nearest celestial neighbor.

There are a number of ways to celebrate. You can attend an event, host your own, or just look up! Here are 10 of our favorite ways to observe the Moon:

1. Look up

Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

The simplest way to observe the Moon is simply to look up. The Moon is the brightest object in our night sky, the second brightest in our daytime sky and can be seen from all around the world — from the remote and dark Atacama Desert in Chile to the brightly lit streets of Tokyo. On October 20, the near side of the Moon, or the side facing Earth, will be about 80 percent illuminated, rising in the early evening.

See the Moon phase on October 20 or any other day of the year!

2. Peer through a telescope or binoculars

The Moon and Venus are great targets for binoculars. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Dunford

With some magnification help, you will be able to focus in on specific features on the Moon, like the Sea of Tranquility or the bright Copernicus Crater. Download our Moon maps for some guided observing on Saturday.

3. Photograph the Moon

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/ASU

Our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has taken more than 20 million images of the Moon, mapping it in stunning detail. You can see featured, captioned images on LRO’s camera website, like the one of Montes Carpatus seen here. And, of course, you can take your own photos from Earth. Check out our tips on photographing the Moon!

4. Take a virtual field trip

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Plan a lunar hike with Moontrek. Moontrek is an interactive Moon map made using NASA data from our lunar spacecraft. Fly anywhere you’d like on the Moon, calculate the distance or the elevation of a mountain to plan your lunar hike, or layer attributes of the lunar surface and temperature. If you have a virtual reality headset, you can experience Moontrek in 3D.

5. Touch the topography

Image credit: NASA GSFC/Jacob Richardson

Observe the Moon through touch! If you have access to a 3D printer, you can peruse our library of 3D models and lunar landscapes. This model of the Apollo 11 landing site created by NASA scientist Jacob Richardson, is derived from LRO’s topographic data. Near the center, you can actually feel a tiny dot where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left the Lunar Descent Module.

6. Make Moon art

Image credit: LPI/Andy Shaner

Enjoy artwork of the Moon and create your own! For messy fun, lunar crater paintings demonstrate how the lunar surface changes due to consistent meteorite impacts.

7. Relax on your couch

Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

There are many movies that feature our nearest neighbor, from A Voyage to the Moon by George Melies, to Apollo 13, to the newly released First Man. You can also spend your evening with our lunar playlist on YouTube or this video gallery, learning about the Moon’s role in eclipses, looking at the Moon phases from the far side, and seeing the latest science portrayed in super high resolution. You’ll impress all of your friends with your knowledge of supermoons.

8. Listen to the Moon

Video credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

Make a playlist of Moon songs. For inspiration, check out this list of lunar tunes. We also recommend LRO’s official music video, The Moon and More, featuring Javier Colon, season 1 winner of NBC’s “The Voice.” Or you can just watch this video featuring “Clair de Lune,” by French composer Claude Debussy, over and over.

9. See the Moon through the eyes of a spacecraft

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/MIT

Visible light is just one tool that we use to explore our universe. Our spacecraft contain many different types of instruments to analyze the Moon’s composition and environment. Review the Moon’s gravity field with data from the GRAIL spacecraft or decipher the maze of this slope map from the laser altimeter onboard LRO. This collection from LRO features images of the Moon’s temperature and topography. You can learn more about our different missions to explore the Moon here.

10. Continue your observations throughout the year

Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

An important part of observing the Moon is to see how it changes over time. International Observe the Moon Night is the perfect time to start a Moon journal. See how the shape of the Moon changes over the course of a month, and keep track of where and what time it rises and sets. Observe the Moon all year long with these tools and techniques!

However you choose to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night, we want to hear about it! Register your participation and share your experiences on social media with #ObserveTheMoon or on our Facebook page. Happy observing!

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Hilarious Animal Snapchats That Are Impossible Not To Laugh At

General Relativity Rules: Einstein Victorious In Unprecedented Gravitational Redshift Test

“The most interesting part of this result is that it clearly demonstrates the purely General Relativistic effect of gravitational redshift. The observations of S0-2 showcase an exact agreement with Einstein’s predictions, within the measurement uncertainties. When Einstein first conceived of General Relativity, he did so conceptually: with the idea that acceleration and gravitation were indistinguishable to an observer.

With the validation of Einstein’s predictions for the orbit of this star around the galactic center’s black hole, scientists have affirmed the equivalence principle, thereby ruling out or constraining alternative theories of gravity that violate this cornerstone of Einsteinian gravity. Gravitational redshifts have never been measured in environments where gravity is this strong, marking another first and another victory for Einstein. Even in the strongest environment ever probed, the predictions of General Relativity have yet to lead us astray.”

If you want to test Einstein’s General Relativity, you’ll want to look for an effect that it predicts that’s unique, and you’ll want to look for it in the strongest-field regime possible. Well, there’s a black hole at the center of our galaxy with 4 million times the mass of the Sun, and there’s a star (S0-2) that passes closer to it, during closest approach, than any other. In May of 2018, it made this closest approach, coming within 18 billion km (about twice the diameter of Neptune’s orbit) of the black hole, and zipping around at 2.7% the speed of light.

Did Einstein’s predictions for gravitational redshift come out right? You bet they did: 5-sigma, baby! Come get the full, amazing story here!

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The funny cat stories

This Is Everything That’s Wrong With Our Definition Of ‘Planet’

“There are many people who would love to see Pluto regain its planetary status, and there’s a part of me that grew up with planetary Pluto that’s extraordinarily sympathetic to that perspective. But including Pluto as a planet necessarily results in a Solar System with far more than nine planets. Pluto is only the 8th largest non-planet in our Solar System, and is clearly a larger-than-average but otherwise typical member of the Kuiper belt. It will never be the 9th planet again.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We may be headed towards a world where astronomers and planetary scientists work with very different definitions of what attains planethood, but we all study the same objects in the same Universe. Whatever we call objects — however we choose to classify them — makes them no less interesting or worthy of study. The cosmos simply exists as it is. It’s up to the very human endeavor of science to make sense of it all.”

Next month will mark 13 years since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially defined the term planet and ‘Plutoed’ our Solar System’s (up-until-that-point) 9th planet. With an additional 13 years of knowledge, understanding, data, and discoveries, though, did they get the decision right?

Certainly, there were aspects that needed to be revised, but the IAU’s definition comes along with some major gaps and mistakes. We can do better! Come learn how.

Greatest Hits — Craters We Love

Our solar system was built on impacts — some big, some small — some fast, some slow. This week, in honor of a possible newly-discovered large crater here on Earth, here’s a quick run through of some of the more intriguing impacts across our solar system.

1. Mercury: A Basin Bigger Than Texas

Mercury does not have a thick atmosphere to protect it from space debris. The small planet is riddled with craters, but none as spectacular as the Caloris Basin. “Basin” is what geologists call craters larger than about 186 miles (300 kilometers) in diameter. Caloris is about 950 miles (1,525 kilometers) across and is ringed by mile-high mountains.

For scale, the state of Texas is 773 miles (1,244 kilometers) wide from east to west.

2. Venus: Tough on Space Rocks

Venus’ ultra-thick atmosphere finishes off most meteors before they reach the surface. The planet’s volcanic history has erased many of its craters, but like almost any place with solid ground in our solar system, there are still impact scars to be found. Most of what we know of Venus’ craters comes from radar images provided by orbiting spacecraft, such as NASA’s Magellan.

Mead Crater is the largest known impact site on Venus. It is about 170 miles (275 kilometers) in diameter. The relatively-flat, brighter inner floor of the crater indicates it was filled with impact melt and/or lava.

3. Earth: Still Craters After All These Years

Evidence of really big impacts — such as Arizona’s Meteor Crater — are harder to find on Earth. The impact history of our home world has largely been erased by weather and water or buried under lava, rock or ice. Nonetheless, we still find new giant craters occasionally.

A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland.

This follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile (31-kilometer) wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier – the first meteorite impact crater ever discovered under Earth’s ice sheets. 

If the second crater, which has a width of over 22 miles (35 kilometers), is ultimately confirmed as the result of a meteorite impact, it will be the 22nd largest impact crater found on Earth.

4. Moon: Our Cratered Companion

Want to imagine what Earth might look like without its protective atmosphere, weather, water and other crater-erasing features? Look up at the Moon. The Moon’s pockmarked face offers what may be humanity’s most familiar view of impact craters.

One of the easiest to spot is Tycho, the tight circle and bright, radiating splat are easy slightly off center on the lower-left side of the full moon. Closer views of the 53-mile (85 kilometer)-wide crater from orbiting spacecraft reveal a beautiful central peak, topped with an intriguing boulder that would fill about half of a typical city block.

5. Mars: Still Taking Hits

Mars has just enough atmosphere to ensure nail-biting spacecraft landings, but not enough to prevent regular hits from falling space rocks. This dark splat on the Martian south pole is less than a year old, having formed between July and September 2018. The two-toned blast pattern tells a geologic story. The larger, lighter-colored blast pattern could be the result of scouring by winds from the impact shockwave on ice. The darker-colored inner blast pattern is because the impactor penetrated the thin ice layer, blasting the dark sand underneath in all directions.

6. Ceres: What Lies Beneath

The bright spots in Ceres’ Occator crater intrigued the world from the moment the approaching Dawn spacecraft first photographed it in 2015. Closer inspection from orbit revealed the spots to be the most visible example of hundreds of bright, salty deposits that decorate the dwarf planet like a smattering of diamonds. The science behind these bright spots is even more compelling: they are mainly sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride that somehow made their way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust. Thanks to Dawn, scientists have a better sense of how these reflective areas formed and changed over time — processes indicative of an active, evolving world.

7. Comet Tempel 1: We Did It!

Scientists have long known we can learn a lot from impact craters — so, in 2005, they made one themselves and watched it happen.

On July 4, 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft trained its instruments on an 816-pound (370-kilogram) copper impactor as it smashed into comet Tempel 1.

One of the more surprising findings: The comet has a loose, “fluffy” structure, held together by gravity and contains a surprising amount of organic compounds that are part of the basic building blocks of life.

8. Mimas: May the 4th Be With You

Few Star Wars fans — us included — can resist Obi Wan Kenobi’s memorable line “That’s no moon…” when images of Saturn’s moon Mimas pop up on a screen. Despite its Death Star-like appearance, Mimas is most definitely a moon. Our Cassini spacecraft checked, a lot — and the superlaser-looking depression is simply an 81-mile (130-kilometer) wide crater named for the moon’s discoverer, William Herschel.

9. Europa: Say What?

The Welsh name of this crater on Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa looks like a tongue-twister, but it is easiest pronounced as “pool.” Pwyll is thought to be one of the youngest features we know of on Europa. The bright splat from the impact extends more than 600 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) around the crater, a fresh blanket over rugged, older terrain. “Fresh,” or young, is a relative term in geology; the crater and its rays are likely millions of years old.

10. Show Us Your Greatest Hits

Got a passion for Stickney, the dominant bowl-shaped crater on one end of Mars’ moon Phobos? Or a fondness for the sponge-like abundance of impacts on Saturn’s battered moon Hyperion (pictured)? There are countless craters to choose from. Share your favorites with us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

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10 Steps to Confirm a Planet Around Another Star

So you think you found an exoplanet – a planet around another star? It’s not as simple as pointing a telescope to the sky and looking for a planet that waves back. Scientists gather many observations and carefully analyze their data before they can be even somewhat sure that they’ve discovered new worlds.

Here are 10 things to know about finding and confirming exoplanets.

This is an illustration of the different elements in our exoplanet program, including ground-based observatories, like the W. M. Keck Observatory, and space-based observatories like Hubble, Spitzer, Kepler, TESS, James Webb Space Telescope, WFIRST and future missions.

1. Pick your tool to take a look.

The vast majority of planets around other stars have been found through the transit method so far. This technique involves monitoring the amount of light that a star gives off over time, and looking for dips in brightness that may indicate an orbiting planet passing in front of the star.

We have two specialized exoplanet-hunting telescopes scanning the sky for new planets right now – Kepler and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) – and they both work this way. Other methods of finding exoplanets include radial velocity (looking for a “wobble” in a star’s position caused by a planet’s gravity), direct imaging (blocking the light of the star to see the planet) and microlensing (watching for events where a star passes in front of another star, and the gravity of the first star acts as a lens).

Here’s more about finding exoplanets.

2. Get the data.

To find a planet, scientists need to get data from telescopes, whether those telescopes are in space or on the ground. But telescopes don’t capture photos of planets with nametags. Instead, telescopes designed for the transit method show us how brightly thousands of stars are shining over time. TESS, which launched in April and just began collecting science data, beams its stellar observations back to Earth through our Deep Space Network, and then scientists get to work.

3. Scan the data for planets.

Researchers combing through TESS data are looking for those transit events that could indicate planets around other stars. If the star’s light lessens by the same amount on a regular basis – for example, every 10 days – this may indicate a planet with an orbital period (or “year”) of 10 days. The standard requirement for planet candidates from TESS is at least two transits – that is, two equal dips in brightness from the same star.

4. Make sure the planet signature couldn’t be something else.

Not all dips in a star’s brightness are caused by transiting planets. There may be another object – such as a companion star, a group of asteroids, a cloud of dust or a failed star called a brown dwarf, that makes a regular trip around the target star. There could also be something funky going on with the telescope’s behavior, how it delivered the data, or other “artifacts” in data that just aren’t planets. Scientists must rule out all non-planet options to the best of their ability before moving forward.

5. Follow up with a second detection method.

Finding the same planet candidate using two different techniques is a strong sign that the planet exists, and is the standard for “confirming” a planet. That’s why a vast network of ground-based telescopes will be looking for the same planet candidates that TESS discovers. It is also possible that TESS will spot a planet candidate already detected by another telescope in the past. With these combined observations, the planet could then be confirmed. The first planet TESS discovered, Pi Mensae c, orbits a star previously observed with the radial-velocity method on the ground. Scientists compared the TESS data and the radial-velocity data from that star to confirm the presence of planet “c.”

Scientists using the radial-velocity detection method see a star’s wobble caused by a planet’s gravity, and can rule out other kinds of objects such as companion stars. Radial-velocity detection also allows scientists to calculate the mass of the planet.

6. …or at least another telescope.

Other space telescopes may also be used to help confirm exoplanets, characterize them and even discover additional planets around the same stars. If the planet is detected by the same method, but by two different telescopes, and has received enough scrutiny that the scientists are more than 99 percent sure it’s a planet, it is said to be “validated” instead of “confirmed.”

7. Write a paper.

After thoroughly analyzing the data, and running tests to make sure that their result still looks like the signature of a planet, scientists write a formal paper describing their findings. Using the transit method, they can also report the size of the planet. The planet’s radius is related to how much light it blocks from the star, as well as the size of the star itself. The scientists then submit the study to a journal.

8. Wait for peer review.

Scientific journals have a rigorous peer review process. This means scientific experts not involved in the study review it and make sure the findings look sound. The peer-reviewers may have questions or suggestions for the scientists. When everyone agrees on a version of the study, it gets published.

9. Publish the study.

When the study is published, scientists can officially say they have found a new planet. This may still not be the end of the story, however. For example, the TRAPPIST telescope in Chile first thought they had discovered three Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. When our Spitzer Space Telescope and other ground-based telescopes followed up, they found that one of the original reported planets (the original TRAPPIST-1d) did not exist, but they discovered five others –bringing the total up to seven wondrous rocky worlds.

10. Catalog and celebrate – and look closer if you can!

Confirmed planets get added to our official catalog. So far, Kepler has sent back the biggest bounty of confirmed exoplanets of any telescope – more than 2,600 to date. TESS, which just began its planet search, is expected to discover many thousands more. Ground-based follow-up will help determine if these planets are gaseous or rocky, and possibly more about their atmospheres. The forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to take a deeper look at the atmospheres of the most interesting TESS discoveries.

Scientists sometimes even uncover planets with the help of people like you: exoplanet K2-138 was discovered through citizen scientists in Kepler’s K2 mission data. Based on surveys so far, scientists calculate that almost every star in the Milky Way should have at least one planet. That makes billions more, waiting to be found! Stay up to date with our latest discoveries using this exoplanet counter.

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