... Explanation: Positioning his camera and tripod on planet Earth, near Maricopa, Arizona, USA, astrophotographer Joe Orman created this trailing display of the ongoing sky-full-of-planets on May 3rd. ... Of course these planets, Mercury , Venus , Mars , Jupiter , and Saturn all still dazzle in western skies near sunset, but sky gazers who want to see Mercury should look soon. ... Publications with keywords: planets - conjunction . ... Venus Near the Moon . A Superior Conjunction Of Mercury . ...

... 2015 February 20 . An Evening Sky Conjunction . ... Explanation: Eight years ago, an evening sky held this lovely pairing of a young crescent Moon and brilliant Venus . ... And since every 8 years the Moon also nearly repeats its phases for a given time of year, a very similar crescent Moon-Venus conjunction will again appear in planet Earth's evening skies tonight . But the February 20, 2015 version of the conjunction will also include planet Mars . ... About APOD | ...

... Planets . ... Earth Satellites . ... Looking in the direction of the constellation Cygnus the Swan and launched by NASA in 2009 is the Kepler Space Observatory.Many previous missions searching for exoplanets mainly detected large giant planets, like large hot Jupiters (it is easier to detect larger planets).However KeplerтАЩs main objective is to search for much smaller planets located in a habitable zone which is not too close nor too far from their star; planets which may be just like our Earth. ...

... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. March 25, 1999 . March of the Planets . ... Explanation: This March stargazers have been treated to eye-catching formations of bright planets in western evening skies. On March 3rd, looking toward a beautiful sunset from a beach on the Hawaiian isle of Maui, photographer Rick Scott recorded this fleeting, four-planet "hockey stick" array. ...

Armagh, 2nd May 2002. Saturn and Mars are at the top left, Venus is the very bright object and Mercury appears through the clouds. ... All five planets visible to ancient astronomers can now be seen in alignment in the western sky. ... Next is Venus, the brightest planet or "Evening Star", followed by Mars, a much fainter red planet, then Saturn (near the red star Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus), and finally, slightly higher in the sky, the largest planet Jupiter. ...

3) Planets and Brown Dwarfs . ... By its nature, this method is most sensitive to massive planets orbiting close to their stars. ... That means that some of the more massive extrasolar planets could actually be brown dwarfs (although the statistics of the finds suggest that most of them are not). ... Another possible difference between brown dwarfs and massive planets is how they are born. ... They would base the fundamental definition on the mode of formation: a planet is built from planetesimals. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Mad Science . ... Site Info . ... Public Talks . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... Who is this guy who calls himself "The Bad Astronomer?" ... First, yes, I am a real live astronomer (when people ask me what astronomers do, I tell them "They astronom !" ... These are emitted by powerful objects like black holes, exploding stars, and super-dense neutrons stars. ... Finally, am I really a bad astronomer? ... 2008 Phil Plait. ...

The apparent path of the Sun across the sky. ... The path of the Sun across the celestial sphere is very close to that of the planets and the moon. ... In one year, as the Earth completes a full circuit around the Sun (drawing above), the Earth-Sun line and its continuation past Earth sweep the entire plane. ... Since the Sun and Earth are in the plane of the ecliptic, the line is automatically in that plane too; if the moon is also on the same line, it must be in the plane of the ecliptic as well. ...

... Astronomers have found a planet the size of Earth just outside of our Solar System, orbiting around our nearest star! ... More than 800 planets have now been found outside our Solar System, we call them 'exo-planets . ... While the newly discovered exo-planet is similar to the Earth in size, it is much closer to its star than our planet. ... A year on the exo-planet would be just three days long (this is how long it takes the planet to complete one orbit of its star). ...