Venus

With temperatures dropping and winter well set in over much of the northern hemisphere, we wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t fancy sitting outside for an evening’s stargazing. However, it would be a shame to miss astronomical events like the close conjunction of Venus and Saturn in the sky tonight. Venus meets Saturn: a planetary conjunction – live event (22 Jan. 2023) Fortunately, there’s an online livestream of the event so you can enjoy the sights while staying snug and warm at home. We’ve got the details on how to…

Did you miss the planet parade on January 2? It’s okay. There is another astronomy show coming for you this month. Know when you can see five planets together above the Earth. On January 2, the Earth witnessed a rare event where all the seven planets in the solar system were visible at the same time from the Earth. If you had access to a clear sky without pollution, you could just look at the sky without the need of binoculars and telescopes and see the planets shining brightly across the sky. But, if you missed out on…

Venus is often called Earth’s evil twin, and for good reason. The two planets are eerily similar. But why exactly do we think of them as twins? According to a new video from NASA, a lot of it comes down to where the planets formed, how they formed, and what they’re made of. It might seem silly to refer to another planet as an “evil twin,” but when you really think about it, that’s how things shape up with Venus and Earth. According to NASA Director of Planetary Science, Dr. Lori Glaze, the two planets had every…

People on Earth will bear witness to some stunning night sky events this year but none will be better than these 10. Check out the 10 Best Night Sky Events this year 2023. Earth was witness to stunning night sky events throughout 2022. Eclipses, meteor showers, blood moons and other phenomena were a sight to behold. It seems like 2023 is set to follow the trend as there are some spectacular night sky events which will take place as the year goes on. Astronomers, astrophotographers and passionate sky watchers are in for…

How could the perfect song be anything else?I was 19 years old, living in suburban Brisbane, writing my first half-decent songs, when Television released their debut album, Marquee Moon. I had been following the band for two years through the music press, buying their first single, Little Johnny Jewel. Expectations were high, but nothing prepared me for the splendour and clout of the group’s debut album, released in February 1977.It combined every great flourish of cool 60s rock – extraordinary guitar work with…

As the world dives deep into year end festivities, astronomers and amateur stargazers are in for a celestial delight. All planets of our Solar System line up for a spectacular nighttime show visible in the sky.  Five of the closest planets in Earth’s backyard will be visible from the naked eye. The windows for Mercury and Venus will be small but Mars, Saturn and Jupiter will be a trio standing out in stellar background for a long time every night. The two far away planets of Uranus and Neptune…

The spectral data from SOFIA overlain atop this image of Venus from NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft is what the researchers observed in their study, showing the intensity of light from Venus at different wavelengths. If a significant amount of phosphine were present in Venus’s atmosphere, there would be dips in the graph at the four locations labeled “PH3,” similar to but less pronounced than those seen on the two ends. Credit: Venus: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Spectra: Cordiner et al.<span class="glossaryLink"…

Ancient Venus may have looked more like Earth than previously imagined. New research suggests that Earth’s neighbor may have once looked more like our own planet and less like the hellish landscape we now know it to be. Though technically closer to our Sun than Earth, Venus may have once been in the Sun’s habitable zone – the area around a star where liquid water can exist – when our Sun was much dimmer. As such, ancient Venus may have had oceans spanning across its surface. But, its proximity to the Sun…

Is there anything good about volcanoes? They can be violent, dangerous, and unpredictable. For modern humans, volcanoes are mostly an inconvenience, sometimes an intriguing visual display, and occasionally deadly.But when there's enough of them, and when they're powerful and prolonged, they can kill the planet that hosts them.Modern-day Venus is a blistering hellscape. The temperature rises above 464 °C (850 °F, 737 °K), which is, as Universe Today readers know, hot enough to melt lead (and spacecraft).It's why, out of…

An artist’s concept of active volcanos on Venus, depicting a subduction zone where the foreground crust plunges into the planet’s interior at the topographic trench. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Peter Rubin<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Venus</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Venus, the second planet from the sun, is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the moon, it is the second-brightest natural…