Astronomy

Astronomers say viewing conditions are promising for the Perseid meteor shower this year. A new moon will prevent moonlight from spoiling the show. NASA says about 50 to 100 meteors per hour may be visible under ideal conditions during Wednesday night's peak. The Perseids will coincide with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade. The best time to view the fireballs will come after totality. Meteor showers happen when Earth plows through trails of debris left by comets or asteroids. The Perseids come from comet Swift-Tuttle. The next major meteor shower peaks in October.

Bob Rauschenberg was brought to NASA to develop art to commemorate the moon landing. However, he wasn’t content with his art that celebrates the exploration of space lying dormant on Earth.

The comet known as C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS as seen over the Caloosahatchee River on Tuesday night, Oct. 15, 2024, in Fort Myers. The comet was first discovered in 2023 by observers at the Purple Mountain Observatory in China and an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in South Africa. The comet can be seen about 45 minutes after sunset each day through the end of October. It can be seen without special equipment but the best view is through a pair of binoculars. The comet isn’t expected to be visible again for 80,000 years.

We explore some of what’s been happening in the world of space science with Dr. Derek Buzasi. He is an astronomer and the Whitaker Eminent Scholar in Florida Gulf Coast University’s Department of Chemistry and Physics.

A phenomenon that takes place every year and a half or so brings dozens to the James and Barbara Moore Observatory on a late Sunday night to view the first total lunar eclipse of 2022.

When we look up at the stars our eyes see the visible light that’s travelled billions of miles to get here. And when early astronomers first turned their…

NASA’s new Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, is set to launch this evening at 6:32 p.m. on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral. The…

We're joined by Dr. Dawn Gelino, she’s Deputy Director of the Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. She’s on…