View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Abigail Atienza caught the waning gibbous moon and red planet Mars (on the right) with the northern lights along the Road to Nowhere, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. September 6, 2020. Thank you, Abigail. For about a month surrounding mid-October 2020, Mars was brighter than all the stars, even brighter than Jupiter, normally the 2nd-brightest planet. As 2021 begins, Mars is dimming again.

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What to expect from Mars in 2021

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Stephanie Becker in San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA, captured this image of the December solstice moon on December 21, 2020. She wrote: “Beautiful first quarter moon amidst the clouds.” Thank you, Stephanie!Here are the characteristics of a first quarter moon:– It’s the moon phase halfway between new moon and full moon.– It’s a waxing moon.

in-the-sky.org

What is a 1st quarter moon?

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Jill Phipps in Tucson, Arizona captured this image on January 18, 2021. She said: “These clouds caught my eye, as I was driving home last night. I had never seen anything like them. To me they looked like flying saucers, or stacks of pancakes.

Lenticular clouds look like UFOs

On January 19, 20 and 21, 2021, watch for the waxing moon to sweep near the bright planet Mars and the exceedingly faint planet Uranus. Mars is the fourth planet – and Uranus the seventh planet – outward from our sun. Mars and Uranus appear so close together on the sky’s dome now that – for the coming week or so – you could see them in a single binocular field of view, if the moon weren’t in the way. Mars will pass 1.

Moon, Mars, Uranus January 19, 20, 21

View larger. | The striking colors do not represent the actual colors of the sun as perceived by human eyesight. Instead, each image is colorized by NASA according to different wavelengths that reveal or highlight specific features of the sun’s activity. Image via NASA/ SDO/ USPS.

Check out these new Sun Science stamps!

If you think this is becoming routine, think again. This will be the first attempt to reuse a rocket booster eight times.

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SpaceX Starlink launch: How to watch Falcon 9 drop 60 satellites into orbit Wednesday

Recently, we reported on a cool new direct image taken of a brown dwarf, an object midway in mass between a planet and a star. But that image didn’t show the brown dwarf’s surface features. No existing image does. But now a brown dwarf’s surface appearance has been revealed, in a different way.

Striped brown dwarf looks a lot like Jupiter

The James Webb space telescope’s gold-coated mirror undergoing cryogenic testing. After many delays, the new space telescope – Hubble’s successor – is currently scheduled to launch on October 31. Image via Ball Aerospace/ Flickr/ The Conversation.

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