Tag: planets
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A Look Ahead to the Sky in July
As we approach the end of June, we’re going to take a look ahead to what’s coming in July. Of course, at the very beginning, the sky won’t look too different, but we will look through the whole month. We will still start at the beginning of the month and the beginning of the night,…
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Icy Moons: What, Where and Why do we Care?
Recently, we took a look at the difference between the gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter and the ice giants like Neptune and Uranus. Today, we are going to look at something else icy: icy moons. We already passed by an icy moon in the ice giant video, Triton, Neptune’s largest moon. Triton is tough…
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Undiscovering the Planet Vulcan
Today, we are mostly going to take a look at some mistakes. Mistakes from the past can leave behind little quirks and inconsistencies in things we use today, and catching mistakes is often a good thing. Realizing that we were wrong about something can help us prevent similar mistakes in the future. This is inspired…
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Ice Giants versus Gas Giants: A Closer Look at the Biggest Planets
Every month or so, I usually make a video talking about a particular planet. beginning with several months ago, up Jupiter and Saturn in the past couple of months. Having looked at the gas giants, the ice giants are next. Before giving them a specific video, I though it would be nice to compare the…
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June and the Summer Solstice
In the previous video we took a look forward to the very early part of June, particularly the planets that we will get to see in the morning. Despite Mercury and Jupiter being too close to the Sun for us to see in Ireland, from other locations four planets would be visible in the sky…
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Solar Day, Sidereal Day, and the Parade of Planets
I mentioned in the last article that there are different ways to measure a day, among them are the sidereal and solar days. This little tidbit was not mentioned in the previous video attached to that article, just one of the many little bonus facts readers of the website get. In the above video, I…
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Transits of Venus and an Eclipse on Mars!
Continuing the theme set by last week’s video, where we looked at the transit of Mercury coming up in 2032 and the return of Halley’s Comet in 2061, we are going to look even further into the future this time. the next transit of Venus that will be visible from the Earth is almost 100…
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Comets Continued: Time to Say Goodbye to 12P/Pons-Brooks
While comet 12P/Pons-Brooks was making its approach to the Sun, it became visible to the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere, under good conditions at least. It was also quite close to Jupiter in the sky during the recent total solar eclipse visible from North America. This lead to the comet getting a lot of…
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A Closer Look at the Saturn: The Ringed Planet
Now that Saturn is returning to the early morning sky, even becoming visible to the naked eye in the city, we are going to take a closer look at the planet. It is still tricky to see from higher latitudes, but as long as you are up early enough and have a clear view of…
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A Look Ahead to May: What We Can See as the Nights Get Shorter
We are back to looking a month ahead, to see what the sky will look like in May as we come to the end of April. In the last video, about a few meteor showers, we touched on the Eta Aquariids, which are one of the big astronomical events in May, but the sky is…
