Written by A so-called mini-moon of Earth that has been lingering in the heavens since September will begin a journey towards the sun on Monday as it prepares to disappear until 2055. The school-bus-sized asteroid known as 2024 PT5 might actually be a huge boulder that broke from the moon after another space rock crashed into it […]
On these cold wintry mornings it can often take a lot of effort or the promise of something good to drag us out of bed. On 27 November, nature will provide a beautiful sight that will reward the early risers: an exquisitely thin waning crescent moon will be sitting next to the bright star of […]
Scientists could soon get a precise age for the giant impact basins on the moon, and a better understanding of the impact history of the young Earth, thanks to a new geological map of the moon’s youngest large impact site, the Mare Orientale basin. Mare Orientale sits on the edge of the face of the […]
Mars has continued its eastward progression, crossing from Gemini, the twins, into Cancer, the crab. On the night of 20 November, it will be joined in the night sky by a waxing gibbous moon. The chart shows the view looking east from London at 23.00 GMT. As the night progresses into the early hours of […]
Moon over Col de Sarenne nagelestock.com/Alamy Observational astronomers hate the moon. This might be surprising to some of you – after all, the moon is gorgeous, it’s the closest astronomical object we can observe and the dominant feature of the night sky on Earth. But that very spotlight is the problem: when the moon is […]
China’s space agency has opened up a first round of applications for researchers to borrow its Chang’e 6 lunar far side samples. Chang’e 6 launched in May this year. The complex, multi-spacecraft, 53-day mission collected samples from Apollo crater on the far side of the moon and returned to Earth in late June. Now, small […]
I have a habit, if I wake some nights, to get up and go downstairs to read. Last night was noteworthy because I could see the moon as a mere horn repeatedly swallowed then reborn from the passing clouds. Through binoculars, however, I could make out the other portion of the whole lunar sphere as a […]
It has been nearly 70 years since Francis Thomas Bacon developed a source of clean green energy that would help power the first moon landing and change the course of history. Yet, few are aware of the Essex-born, Cambridge-based engineer whose invention of the first working hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell helped send Apollo 11 to the […]
Scientists continue to piece together the moon’s complex history using lunar samples collected during NASA’s Apollo missions over half a century ago. A fresh analysis of lunar dust collected by Apollo 16 astronauts in 1972 offers a clearer picture of the effects of asteroid strikes on the moon, allowing scientists to reconstruct billions of years […]