“Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so, but this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to one another,” Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan said in a statement. “You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky.”

Aligning with the winter solstice on December 21, 2020, the two planets will be just 0.1 degrees apart — less than the diameter of a full moon, EarthSky says. The word “conjunction” is used by astronomers to describe the meeting of objects in our night sky, and the great conjunction occurs between the two largest planets in our solar system: Jupiter and Saturn.

The planets will be so close, they will appear, from some perspectives, to overlap completely, creating a rare “double planet” effect.

Chang’e-5 lunar lander flag system. Credit: CCTV.

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have discovered two new young planetary systems. They found that two stars not older than 320 million years, namely TOI-251 and TOI-942, are orbited by a mini-Neptune planet and two Neptune-sized exoplanets. The finding is reported in a paper published November 26 on arXiv.org.

TESS is conducting a survey of about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun with the aim of searching for transiting exoplanets. So far, it has identified over 2,400 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 82 have been confirmed so far.

Recently, a team of astronomers led by George Zhou of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, confirmed another three planets. Between August and December 2018, TESS observed two stars: TIC 224225541 (TOI-251) and TIC 146520535 (TOI-942), which resulted in the detection of transit signals in the light curves of these objects. The planetary nature of these signals was confirmed by follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations using ground-based facilities.

Touchdown!

Asteroid capsule located in Australian desert.

A team retrieves a capsule carrying the first significant quantities of rock from an asteroid is in “perfect” shape, according to scientists.

Blue is the dominant color, as with the suits that Virgin Galactic passengers will wear.

The pilots and passengers who fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle will be nicely color coordinated.

Ever wonder what happens when you wring out a washcloth in SPACE?! 🌌 👨‍🚀 💧 via Canadian Space Agency & NASA — National Aeronautics and Space Administration.