'Snow Moon' to follow February's planetary parade
It has been a busy start to 2025 for astronomy lovers with plenty of planets spread across the sky, the moon passing between Mars and Earth in an eclipse-like event, and, in the Southern Hemisphere, views of a comet.
The celestial shows will continue into February with more easy-to-see events, provided the weather cooperates. From the Full Snow Moon to crystal-clear views of the cosmos, here are the top astronomical sights to look for in February:
The planetary parade that started in January will get even better during the first week of the month as the moon joins the celestial show.
After sunset on Monday, Feb. 3, the crescent moon will appear in the middle of the alignment, glowing between Venus and Uranus in the southwestern sky. Six planets will be spread across the sky, but a telescope is needed to spot Uranus and Neptune.
The moon will continue to sweep past the planets throughout the first part of the month, meeting up with Jupiter on Feb. 6 and pairing up with Mars on Feb. 9.
The second full moon of 2025 will rise during the second week of February, appearing full on back-to-back nights.
February's full moon is known as the Snow Moon, as it is typically one of the snowiest months of the year across North America. Other nicknames include the Groundhog Moon, the Hungry Moon, the Bald Eagle Moon and the Bear Moon.
A passenger jet is silhouetted against the rising full moon as it takes off from Sky Harbor airport on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
The full moon will rise on the night of Tuesday, Feb. 11 into Wednesday, Feb. 12, and will continue to appear full on the following night.
Winter is a pristine time for stargazing because the lack of moisture in the air makes the night sky appear crisper than during the humid and muggy nights of summer. The tradeoff, however, is enduring much colder weather while outdoors.
Stars also seem to twinkle more during winter, especially some of the brighter ones like Sirius, which shines below the famous constellation Orion. It also helps to stargaze in the night surrounding the new moon, which occurs on Feb. 27, as the lack of moonlight causes the cosmos to appear darker.
The constellation Orion shines above the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, on a clear night. ()
New skywatchers trying to identify planets in the night sky should focus on how objects appear; stars will twinkle, while planets will not.
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Scientific American
a day ago
- Scientific American
This New Map of Nearby Stars May Solve a Cosmic Mystery
I don't think it's overly poetic to say that stars are how we know the universe. When we look out at the night sky, stars are overwhelmingly what we see—thousands of them, ranging from Sirius, the brightest in the night sky, to ones so dim they are known by mere catalog designations instead of names. And for every star we can see by eye in our sky, telescopes can see millions more. Astronomers study them to understand the shape, size, structure, history, and fate of our galaxy and use them to gauge the distances and behavior of other galaxies. Even when studying exoplanets, we need to understand their host stars to make sense of these alien worlds. The heavier elements making up our planet and even our body were forged in stars long ago, and our own sun is a star, of course—so in a very real sense, to study stars is to study ourselves. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Yet for all that, some basic questions about stars remain unanswered. While we have a pretty decent grasp of how individual stars are born, there are still gaps in our knowledge of their statistics en masse. One of my favorite unanswered questions concerns the most fundamental properties of stars as a group, which is how different kinds are born out of a gas cloud. Say you have a giant gas cloud that is busily manufacturing stars. As a percentage, how many of them will be like the sun? How many will be feeble red dwarfs, how many will be massive blue beasts, and how many will be so low in mass that they will straddle the line between a true star and a planet? The mass of a star—how much matter is in it—determines most of its properties, including its temperature, color, brightness, evolution and even its destiny, so this is something astronomers are very keen to understand. Understanding stars' distribution in our galaxy tells us about the galaxy itself, much like poring over the contents of a construction kit offers insights about the finished product and the way it's assembled. The 'initial mass function' is the technical term for this unresolved question of stellar demographics. And in theory, it's not too hard to answer: just observe a bunch of stars, determine their masses and then figuratively put them into the proper box. In practice, though, it's very difficult indeed. Massive stars are bright and easy to spot. We can't, however, see small, dim ones if they are very far away—which means our cosmic census of low-mass stars is largely limited to whatever happens to be relatively near our solar system. Still, given time, these stars mix pretty well throughout the galaxy, so we can assume such fainter stellar next-door neighbors are representative of the galaxy at large. Still, to give you an idea of just how hard this undertaking is, after millennia of astronomical observations, the first nearly complete tally of all stars out to a distance of about 65 light-years only appeared—in 2024! Published by a huge team of astronomers, the paper, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal, is a sprawling description of the Herculean effort involved. Performing the survey in the first place required using several space- and ground-based astronomical observatories. The European Space Agency's Milky Way–mapping Gaia mission was chief among them, and it pinned down key data for most of the bright stars within the requisite 65 light-years. For lower-mass stars, which shine brightest in infrared, Gaia's observations were augmented by data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Such stellar dim bulbs are critical for determining the lowest-mass end of the initial mass function. Brown dwarfs, which are objects of intermediate mass between planets and stars, give off essentially no visible light and can only be detected in the infrared. The first brown dwarfs were only found in the 1990s. And in general, these objects are so dim that even nearby ones can elude detection. Luhman 16 is a binary brown dwarf system just 6.5 light-years from the sun— the third closest system to us —yet was only discovered in 2013. After carefully teasing out the details of objects confirmed to be within the 65 light-year region, the study team found a total of approximately 3,000 stars and 600 brown dwarfs. Right away this is a remarkable finding. I'm used to thinking on much larger spatial scales, so finding 3,600 objects within a mere 65 light-years of the sun is more than I'd have guessed. Mind you, our Milky Way galaxy is a flat disk 120,000 light-across, which is roomy enough for hundreds of billions of stars and other celestial citizenry. The astronomers were careful to note that their survey wasn't complete at the low-mass end, either. Brown dwarfs cooler than about 325 degrees Celsius are so faint that our current technology can't directly see them beyond about 50 light-years. Also, some brighter brown dwarfs may still be hiding in crowded parts of the sky, such as the star-rich disk of the galaxy. There could also be smaller binary companions to some stars that have gone undiscovered. What that means is that some brown dwarfs have likely been undercounted, which is actually pretty problematic for trying to determine the full range of object masses spawned in galactic gas clouds. Think of it this way: if you smash a rock with a hammer, you're likely to get one or two big pieces, a dozen or two midsize ones, hundreds of small chunks and thousands or tens of thousands of tiny grains. If you don't count all the grains, you can't really know how the size of the debris is distributed. Still, this new, best-yet census of our interstellar neighborhood does extend our understanding of the initial mass function. Before, it wasn't clear if objects had a mass cutoff at the lower end. We know that gas clouds in stellar nurseries have to form clumps that collapse under their own gravity and that these clumps become stars. Is there a limit to how small a clump can be to collapse? Possibly, but until brown dwarfs were discovered and counted, we weren't sure they could even form like stars do. What the census finds is that the number of objects formed generally increases as mass decreases, as expected, much like the debris distribution from a hammer-struck rock. But the census does reveal some quirks: the tally of objects flattens out a bit as mass descends from the stellar regime to brown dwarfs but then starts rising again at lower, more planetary-scale masses. Does it flatten out again at some lower mass, such as around a few times that of Jupiter? That's for future telescopes to determine. Still, this survey is a big step forward. Extrapolating it to the Milky Way and other galaxies will help us understand how galaxies behave—and how they change their behavior over time, churning out different mixes of stars as they age. The confidence we have in our scientific knowledge depends on each link in the chain, so the better we determine the initial mass function, the better we will comprehend the universe.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Amid NASA cuts, popular social accounts for Mars rovers, Voyager going dark
President Trump's NASA budget plans look to cut its public relations funding by half, but already the agency is shuttering social media accounts that include those dedicated to popular missions including Mars Curiosity, Mars Perseverance and Voyager. Those three in particular have quite the fanbase on X with Curiosity's account touting more than 4 million followers, Perseverance and its little flying buddy Ingenuity have more than 2.9 million followers and Voyager nearly 900,000. The X handles for the robotic missions have taken whimsical approaches to posting over the years. And after NASA announced Monday the planned consolidation of accounts, prompting an outpouring of support online, each posted thankful responses. 'Wow, thank you all for the supportive messages. I may be a robot, but I felt every bit of love,' reads a post from @MarsCuriosity, the account created in 2008 on what was then Twitter ahead of its 2011 launch from Cape Canaveral and 2012 landing on Mars. 'Every single one of you has made this curious journey even more meaningful. This account isn't archived just yet — so stick around for some highlights these next few weeks.' The account for @NASAPersevere, created in 2020 for the mission that launched that year and landed on Mars in 2021, posted a 'Thank you' with a heart emoji and said, 'All of your supportive words are more meaningful to me than ones and zeroes could ever be. My work on Mars continues, and while this account will soon be archived, I'm going to share a few mission highlights before signing off.' The account for @NASAVoyager, created in 2010 for the nearly 50-year-old mission, posted, 'Thanks to everyone who sent messages of support after yesterday's announcement that this account will be archived in coming weeks. Until then, we'd love to take you on a trip down memory lane and highlight some of our grand adventures and discoveries. Sound OK to you?' Another mission-specific account to hear the death knell is for New Horizons, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and is now traveling through the Kuiper Belt. It's one of several active missions the proposed Trump budget looks to shut down. It similarly posted a farewell message @NASANewHorizons and like the others asks followers to look for updates on other NASA accounts that remain active. They are among the most popular accounts as NASA streamlines its message, according to the agency announcement. Some social media accounts shuttering include NASA's Launch Services Program (@NASA_LSP) and Exploration Ground Systems (@nasagroundsys) based at Kennedy Space Center. Also being consolidated are Orion (@NASA_Orion), Space Launch System (@NASA_SLS) and Gateway lunar station (@NASA_Gateway) accounts under the Artemis program. Others shuttering include ones dedicated to NASA's astronaut corps (@NASA_Astronauts), climate missions (@nasaclimate), the Commercial Crew Program (@Commercial_Crew), moon science (@NASAMoon) and atmosphere research (@NASAAtmosphere) among others. 'Over time, NASA's social media footprint has expanded considerably, growing to over 400 individual accounts across 15 platforms,' the agency posted. 'While this allowed for highly specialized updates, it also created a fragmented digital landscape that was challenging for both the public to navigate and for NASA to manage efficiently.' NASA will still give updates to the missions, but just on broader channels. So many will be deactivated, while some will merge and in a few cases some will be rebranded. The move is a precursor to plans to centralize communications in its headquarters and eliminate those at its nine space centers, including Kennedy Space Center, according to Trump's proposed 2026 budget. 'Beginning in FY 2026, the Office of Communications will restructure the organization to an Agency or centralized structure vs Center-specific to eliminate functions not statutorily mandated, except functions the Agency deems necessary, consolidate management layers and duplicative functions, and evaluate/implement technological solutions that automate routine tasks,' reads the proposal. The 2024 budget funded the Office of Communications with $76.2 million of the NASA's nearly $25 billion. The 2026 spending plan drops that to $33.8 million of the agency's $18.8 billion. That includes eliminating $7.8 million for KSC — the most of any space center's public relations budgets. The shuttering of individual accounts is part of a plan for a more uniform message, NASA stated, citing the 1958 law creating the agency that required the 'widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof.' 'The 2025 social media consolidation project is designed to fulfill this mandate more effectively. By reducing the number of agency accounts, NASA seeks to make its work more accessible to the public, avoiding the potential for oversaturation or confusion that can arise from numerous social media accounts bearing the NASA name and insignia,' it stated. Aside from fans who bemoaned losing the popular accounts, the change in approach has critics — including Jonathan McDowell. The British-American astronomer and astrophysicist works at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' Chandra X-ray Center. 'So @NASA is consolidating media accounts for 'consistent messaging'. Which is bad the same way every cafe in town being a Starbucks forcing a consistent menu on you is bad. Much less chance of something interesting to *your* taste but not to HQ making it into the public domain,' McDowell posted on X. 'In my view the core strength of social media is letting individual voices and their quirks find their individual audiences. Making a bland uniform corporate account to replace individual @NASA voices is a mistake.'
The Hill
06-06-2025
- The Hill
Trump's pulled NASA nomination
The Big Story The aerospace community was caught off guard this week by President Trump's withdrawal of tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman's NASA nomination. © AP Photo/John Raoux, File Announced days before the Senate's likely confirmation of Isaacman, the withdrawal sparked a swirl of rumors and concerns, as budget cuts loom and NASA stretches into its sixth month without a leader. Trump, in a social media post over the weekend, offered few details but said his decision was made after a 'thorough review of prior associations.' One space policy executive called the reasoning 'complete bulls—.' 'That's like the worst excuse in the world,' said the executive, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the withdrawal. Isaacman's nomination had already advanced through the Senate Commerce Committee in a 19-9 vote and was expected to hit the full floor this week. 'I was frankly gobsmacked,' Mark Whittington, an author who studies space, politics and policy, told The Hill. 'Jared Isaacman is well regarded by just about everybody.' Rumors quickly circulated over the weekend that the decision might have something to do with Isaacman's ally, Elon Musk, who stepped down from his role leading Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last week. Two sources close to the White House suggested Isaacman's ties to Musk may have also contributed to his removal as the pick to lead NASA. Musk, the sources said, rubbed many people in the administration the wrong way. And with his official departure from government, Isaacman lost a strong ally in the White House. Isaacman worked alongside Musk at SpaceX to fund the company's first private spacewalk, and he was one of four astronauts aboard the Polaris Dawn flight last year. 'It was a real bummer,' Isaacman said on the 'All In' podcast about the decision. 'It was certainly disappointing. But the president needs to have his person that he counts on to fulfill the agenda.' 'I'm not … [playing] dumb on this. I had a pretty good idea,' he added. 'I don't think the timing was much of a coincidence that there were other changes going on the same day, and it was obviously a little bit of a disappointment.' Musk, in a series of posts criticizing Trump on Thursday, signaled his frustrations with the decision by reposting the president's initial nomination announcement in December. Attached to the repost, he wrote, 'This is what he said about Jared.' Read more in a full report at Welcome to The Hill's Technology newsletter, we're Miranda Nazzaro and Julia Shapero — tracking the latest moves from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here. 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