logo
Photos show rare seven-planet parade in Norfolk skies

Photos show rare seven-planet parade in Norfolk skies

Yahoo05-03-2025

Skygazers got a glimpse of a rare seven-planet parade not seen in 15 years.
Simon Luckman is a local photographer who enjoys sharing his photos of celestial events such as the Northern Lights on social media.
But last Friday he was lucky enough to spot Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Neptune, Mercury and Saturn in the sky above Winterton-on-Sea.
The planetary parade was captured by Simon Luckman above Winterton-on-Sea (Image: Simon Luckman) On the night all seven planets were visible to the naked eye, other than Uranus and Neptune, which required a telescope to see.
READ MORE: Mr Luckman was also able to capture the Milky Way and a fogbow - a white rainbow - making the photos of the rare alignment all the more dazzling.
The rare alignment of seven planets won't be visible again until 2040 (Image: Simon Luckman) Mars was visible in the east, Jupiter and Uranus in the southeast and Venus, Neptune and Saturn in the west.
The rare display won't be seen again until 2040.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Mars Orbiter Captures Rare View of Ancient Volcano Poking Above the Clouds
Mars Orbiter Captures Rare View of Ancient Volcano Poking Above the Clouds

Gizmodo

time5 hours ago

  • Gizmodo

Mars Orbiter Captures Rare View of Ancient Volcano Poking Above the Clouds

Floating in orbit above Mars, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter captured a panorama of the Red Planet's biggest volcanoes, Arsia Mons, peeking over a sea of clouds. The picturesque moment offers an exceptionally rare view of a Martian volcano, showing the landform at an angle in space that captures the planet's horizon. 'We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds. And it didn't disappoint,' Jonathon Hill, the operations lead for Odyssey's camera and a mission planner at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility, called the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, said in a statement. THEMIS can view Mars in both visible and infrared light. Launched in 2001, Odyssey has been circling around Mars for over two decades, studying the Martian surface. But in 2023, the orbiter began taking breathtaking panoramic views of the Martian horizon. Because THEMIS can't pivot to get these stunning views, the orbiter flips on its side, rotating a full 90 degrees. That way, it captured Mars' 'limb,' the edge of the planet's horizon. This is THEMIS' fourth limb observation since 2023. Odyssey captured the image on May 2, just before dawn. In it, Arsia Mons stands 12 miles (20 kilometers) high and measures 70 miles (450 km) in diameter. For comparison, Earth's tallest volcano, Mauna Loa, stands 6 miles (9 km) above the seafloor and measures 75 miles (121 km) in diameter. Arsia Mons is also one of Mars' cloudiest volcanoes and the southernmost of the three Tharsis volcanoes that form Tharsis Montes, or Tharsis Mountains. These mountains are often surrounded by water ice clouds, particularly early in the morning. The clouds form when air expands as it blows up the sides of the mountain and then rapidly cools. This view also allows scientists to study Martian weather and phenomena like dust clouds and how they change over the course of the seasons. Odyssey might be able to capture a few more of these panoramas before its eventual retirement, likely at the end of this year.

Mars by 2026? The 4 key takeaways from Elon Musk's Starship update
Mars by 2026? The 4 key takeaways from Elon Musk's Starship update

Yahoo

time14 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Mars by 2026? The 4 key takeaways from Elon Musk's Starship update

SpaceX's billionaire founder Elon Musk says that despite Starship setbacks, the space company hasn't taken its eyes off the ball — and that ball is big, red, and roughly 140 million miles away. In a 42-minute video posted to X on Thursday evening, Musk laid out a plan to launch the mammoth spacecraft to Mars for the first time as early as next year. His ultimate vision has been to use a fleet of Starships to send 1 million humans to Mars by 2050. To be clear, he doesn't just want to visit the planet; he wants to establish a permanent, independent city there. The new timeline is hard to fathom, especially for those who watched another Starship prototype explode this week. Though the ship reached space during the test, it failed to achieve many of its goals. Musk has earned a reputation for wildly underestimating schedules — he once aimed to send an uncrewed ship to Mars by 2018 — but that didn't stop him from presenting yet another ambitious timeline. "If we have two planets, we keep going," he said. "We can be out there among the stars, making science fiction no longer fiction." Here are the key takeaways from Musk's latest Mars update: SEE ALSO: Listen to the eerie sounds of Mars recorded by a NASA rover Elon Musk gave a presentation called "The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary." Credit: SpaceX / X screenshot Musk is now targeting late 2026 for the first uncrewed Starship flight to Mars, taking advantage of an orbital alignment that would shorten the journey between planets. The ship would arrive seven to nine months later in 2027. Musk considers the odds of launching in that upcoming window to be about 50-50. If SpaceX misses it, the next opportunity wouldn't come for another two years. In order to head to Mars that soon, SpaceX first has to master how to refuel a Starship in low-Earth orbit, after it has already blasted off the planet — something that, by the way, has never been done before. Though the first flight won't carry people, SpaceX still intends to put some butts in seats. The "crew" will consist of humanoid Optimus robots, built by Musk's electric car company, Tesla. During his talk, Musk presented some renderings of the sci-fi robots, including one meant as an homage to the famous Lunch atop a Skyscraper photo, with Optimuses (Optimi?) sitting together on a steel beam. "That would be an epic picture to see Optimus walking around on the surface of Mars," he said. NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft looked at Arcadia, a region with ice, in 2001. Credit: NASA / JPL / Arizona State University SpaceX is looking at several potential areas on Mars where Starship could land, but the lead candidate so far is a region known as Arcadia, which also happens to be the name of one of Musk's children. It's one of the few regions where lots of shallow ice exists relatively near the Martian equator, according to NASA. SpaceX will be prioritizing a location that isn't close to the poles, has ice as a source for water, and isn't too mountainous for the rockets, Musk said. With each Mars alignment launch window, SpaceX wants to increase its cadence of flights. To do that, they'll need a lot more rockets and ships. Right now the SpaceX plant in Starbase, Texas — which residents just voted to make a city — can make a new Starship every two to three weeks, Musk said. The company will build two so-called "Giga Bay" facilities — one in Texas and another in Florida — to ramp that up to several per day. He envisions 1,000 to 2,000 ships heading to the Red Planet every couple of years, with the ability to catch and reuse boosters within hours. The goal is to send enough people, infrastructure, and supplies so that if for some reason cargo shipments from Earth stop coming, the Martian city won't die. "My guess is that's about a million tons, but it might be 10 million tons. I hope it's not 100 million tons," he said. "That'd be a lot."

NASA orbiter saw something astonishing peek through Martian clouds
NASA orbiter saw something astonishing peek through Martian clouds

Yahoo

time14 hours ago

  • Yahoo

NASA orbiter saw something astonishing peek through Martian clouds

NASA's longest-running Mars mission has sent back an unprecedented side view of a massive volcano rising above the Red Planet, just before dawn. On May 2, as sunlight crept over the Martian horizon, the Odyssey spacecraft captured Arsia Mons, a towering, long-extinct volcano, puncturing a glowing band of greenish haze in the planet's upper atmosphere. The 12-mile-high volcano — nearly twice the height of Mauna Loa in Hawaii — punctures a veil of fog, emerging like a monument to the planet's ancient past. The space snapshot is both visually arresting and scientifically enlightening. "We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds," said Jonathon Hill, who leads Odyssey's camera operations at Arizona State University, in a statement, "and it didn't disappoint." SEE ALSO: An enormous Martian cloud returns every spring. Scientists found out why. Arsia Mons sits at the southern end of a towering trio of volcanoes called the Tharsis Montes. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech To get this view, Odyssey had to do something it wasn't originally built for. The orbiter, which has been flying around Mars since 2001, usually points its camera straight down to map the planet's surface. But over the past two years, scientists have begun rotating the spacecraft 90 degrees to look toward the horizon. That adjustment allows NASA to study how dust and ice clouds change over the seasons. Though the image is still an aerial view, the vantage point is of the horizon, similar to how astronauts can see Earth's horizon 250 miles above the planet on the International Space Station. From that altitude, Earth doesn't fill their entire view — there's enough distance and perspective for them to see the planet's curved edge meeting the blackness of space. Odyssey flies above Mars at about the same altitude. Arsia Mons sits at the southern end of a towering trio of volcanoes called the Tharsis Montes. The Tharsis region is home to the largest volcanoes in the solar system. The lack of plate tectonics on the Red Planet allowed them to grow many times larger than those anywhere on Earth. Together, they dominate the Martian landscape and are sometimes covered in clouds, especially in the early hours. But not just any clouds — these are made of water ice, a different breed than the planet's more common carbon dioxide clouds. Arsia Mons is the cloudiest of the three. Scientists have recently studied a particular, localized cloud formation that occurs over the mountain, dubbed the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. The transient feature, streaking 1,100 miles over southern Mars, lasts only about three hours in the morning during spring before vanishing in the warm sunlight. It's formed by strong winds being forced up the mountainside. The cloudy canopy on display in Odyssey's new image, according to NASA, is called the aphelion cloud belt. This widespread seasonal system drapes across the planet's equator when Mars is farthest from the sun. This is Odyssey's fourth side image since 2023, and it is the first to show a volcano breaking through the clouds. "We're seeing some really significant seasonal differences in these horizon images," said Michael D. Smith, a NASA planetary scientist, in a statement. "It's giving us new clues to how Mars' atmosphere evolves over time."

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store