www.skyandtelescope.org copy pastes.

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Perseverance Selfie with Ingenuity
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS

Explanation: On the Mars rover's mission Sol 46 or Earth date April 6, 2021, Perseverance held out a robotic arm to take its first selfie on Mars. The WATSON camera at the end of the arm was designed to take close-ups of Martian rocks and surface details though, and not a quick snap shot of friends and smiling faces. In the end, teamwork and weeks of planning on Mars time was required to program a complex series of exposures and camera motions to include Perseverance and its surroundings. The resulting 62 frames were composed into a detailed mosaic, one of the most complicated Mars rover selfies ever taken. In this version of the selfie, the rover's Mastcam-Z and SuperCam instruments are looking toward WATSON and the end of the rover's outstretched arm. About 4 meters (13 feet) from Perseverance is a robotic companion, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter. Perseverance has now spent over 1,500 sols exploring the surface of the Red Planet. On Earth date January 18, 2024, Ingenuity made its 72nd and final flight through the thin Martian atmosphere.

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NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula

NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Mike Selby
Explanation: The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often given the names of flowers or insects, and its whopping 3 light-year wingspan, NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the central star of the planetary nebula is transforming into a white dwarf star, becoming exceptionally hot, and shining brightly in ultraviolet light. The central star is hidden from direct view by a torus of dust, but its energetic ultraviolet light ionizes atoms in the nebula. In this sharp, telescopic view composed with narrowband image data, the ionized hydrogen and doubly ionized oxygen atoms are shown in their characteristic red and blue-green hues to reveal a stunning complex of knots and filaments within the nebula's wing-like bipolar outflows. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius).

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Back on Topic:

Mercury is getting a little higher in bright twilight after sunset (bring binoculars), but Jupiter has sunk hopelessly low.

The waning Moon passes widely north of the "Morning Star Venus in the next few mornings

Now Mars is pulling away from Regulus in its movement against the stars. From an Earthbound skywatcher's point of view, Regulus slides toward the lower right with respect your western horizon while Mars does so more slowly.

On paper, Mars is now essentially identical in brightness to Regulus: they're magnitudes 1.4 and 1.34, respectively. But several factors complicate things, as happens everywhere in nature. Mars's dark surface markings make one side of the planet a trace darker than the other. Unusual amounts of dust in the Martian atmosphere brighten the globe.

And Mars and Regulus are plainly different in color: pale orange and icy blue-white. Perhaps the brightness-vs.-color response of your observing eye is a little different than was used in the official definition of "visual" magnitude. In particular, our eye lenses yellow as we age. So compared to teenagers, older folks increasingly see everything through yellow filters. Thus blue-trending objects will look slightly dimmer than yellow or orange ones as you get older compared to their true brightnesses as measured by machines.

and ONE MORE:

Most deep-sky objects look a lot smaller and fainter than you might think. The great globular star clusters M13 and M92, so dramatic in closeup images as cities of thousands of stars, show their true sizes with respect to constellation parts in this image spanning 35°. You can see why you need to get good at star-hopping from map to sky in order to find faint fuzzies with a telescope.

Celestial east is roughly down and celestial north is roughly to the left; this is the scene as you see it when looking high into the eastern sky on late-spring evenings.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-june-13-22/

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The Summer Solstice is almost here. Take this opportunity to ponder the meaning of things, of what the sky and stars and heavenly motion tell us. Be in AWE of nature and consider ALL that has been created. And appreciate the passage of time and being on earth one more year.

When I see the sky, I see God's Creation.

When I see a beautiful scene in Nature, with no man-made objects, I see God's handiwork.

When I was floating down the Snake River in the Grand Teton National Park, I saw ALMOST no evidence of man, except for the raft we were on. For a long while (30-60 minutes, perhaps) the only evidence of man was the jet overhead and a small fence (supposedly put there by Harrison Ford). And near the end of the trip on the River, I saw several breeding pairs of bald eagles and some of their offspring in the trees along the Snake River, in Wyoming.

Seeing the Wonders in Wyoming, the least populous of the 50 states, I saw the Hand of God in the Grand Tetons themselves and in Yellowstone NP with all its geothermal wonders and in the two falls of the Yellowstone River.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork".

The Heavens are telling the Glory of God.

AND:
Is it fine to go outside, see the stars and planets, and LET NATURE SPEAK to you? That is what happens to me when I see the night sky and try to figure out what planet that is or which star is that bright one. THAT is why I post on HERE how to find objects in the Night Sky. I have known of APPS for this for a long time; I chose NOT to use them as I try to use MY BRAIN to determine that. And IF I have questions afterwards, I go to websites, such as Sky and Telescope, to help answer my questions. (Or I go there to determine if my knowledge was good enough to ascertain the identity of that object.)

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WoW...THAT was GREAT...!!



and looking ahead:

SUNDAY, JUNE 22

■ Late these evenings, look south-southeast to south for orange Antares, the Betelgeuse of summer. Both are 1st-magnitude "red" supergiants, which are actually more like bright orange.

Stay up late these evenings, and Scorpius will await you in the south. Following behind it is Sagittarius, recently arisen. The farther south you are the higher they will be.

Use binoculars to hunt out the labeled Messier objects. M4 and M22 are globular clusters, M7 and M6 are open clusters, and M8 is an emission nebula. Others also lurk.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-june-20-29/

I hope to catch more of these great sights soon.

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BUT WAIT, there's MORE:



I clearly saw VENUS just a few minutes ago. There are too many street lights to see more than the brightest objects in the night sky where I am. BUT VENUS is GOOD, making me again appreciate the heavenly views and enjoy the wonders of creation.



I may try for Mercury later today.

I am not sure that I have ever seen Mercury and knew what I was looking at. Has anyone seen it? With or without lenses?

[WILLIAMS5232]

Like you, I'm not sure if I've ever seen mercury. Saturn, Jupiter, mars, and venus, yes. Mercury stays so close to the sun, and too many trees make it a hard target. If I was ever out west, and thought about trying, I probably could for sure.

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Like you, I'm not sure if I've ever seen mercury. Saturn, Jupiter, mars, and venus, yes. Mercury stays so close to the sun, and too many trees make it a hard target. If I was ever out west, and thought about trying, I probably could for sure.

Yes, WILLIAM, since Mercury is so CLOSE to the sun, it makes sense that would it be seen near sunrise or sunset and ALSO that it would be hard to spot, against the brightness of the sun. Since it it usually VERY LOW in the horizon, then TREES would often be in the way to view it. For all those reasons, I suppose I have not really seen AND recognized the planet Mercury in the sky before.

June 25-27, about 30 minutes after sunset, may be the optimal time to view it, as shown in the diagram (from SkyandTelescope) below.



https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-june-20-29/

Unfortunately for me, there is probably TOO much light "pollution" around me for good viewing of this phenomenon. Now the good news is that Mercury is above most trees for most of us.