Space and Astronomy News 28th February 2026

The planets align this weekend. What you can easily see and what's a bit tricky.

An excellent way to welcome autumn

Lots of news and social media posts over the last couple of weeks about the "Parade of the Planets" on the 28th of February 2026.

There's a grain of truth to this, but most of what we've seen online is simply incorrect and misleading. 

First of all, yes there's several planets that can be seen in the early evening sky.  In theory over the coming few days these planets would be visible:

• Mercury
• Venus
• Jupiter
• Saturn
• Uranus
• Neptune
• Plus, as an added bonus, the Moon

Only Mars won't be able to be spotted.

Unlike many of the AI images we've seen, the planets will not be neatly arranged in a line, evenly stretching across the sky. 

Many social media posts have been featuring AI images. While this is great for clicks and likes, it's not what people are going to see. The last thing everyone here at BINTEL wants is for folks being disappointed with their astronomy experiences, especially if they're just starting. 

These images below will give you an idea of what's in the sky this weekend and are generated by Stellarium. We'd encourage you to visit their website or download their app and use it to generate your own views of the night sky.

The view from Sydney 28th February around 7.50pm local time

Just after sunset, Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Saturn be in the sky, extremely low on the horizon and very hard to see given the glare from the setting Sun. 

If you are going to try to see these planets through binoculars or a telescope, make sure the Sun has fully set to avoid accidentally looking at it directly. This could cause serious eye damage!

The cross hatch in this image show's where the ice giant planet Neptune can be spotted around the same time.  Given how faint the planet is, and the extreme closeness to the horizon, we would suggest it would next to impossible to view for most people.

The crosshatch shows where Uranus will be in the sky around 8.30pm tonight from in Sydney

Jupiter will be a bright "star" close to the Moon and be visible most of the evening. A great sight through a telescope of any size and even binoculars will show its brightest moons either side of the planet. Using a telescope you could even spot the pale blue "dot" of the planet Uranus.

Bottom line:

While there will be a line-up of planets over the coming few nights, it will be very hard to see. This doesn't take away from this weekend's wonderful opportunity to catch Jupiter and the nearly full Moon in the evening sky.  

Australia is helping to track our Universe in real time

The Universe is constantly changing. Now we can see what's happening each night. 

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) at The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is really starting to produce some amazing results as it photographs the entire southern part of the sky each night, watching for changes both in our local Solar System and beyond.

We've talked about this new observatory going back over a few years in a few blog posts and the first images released delighted the world last year. Now the telescope is commencing its main work, scanning the southern sky each night and spotting changes. Traditionally the Universe was thought of as never changing, that ran like a clock, with the occasional comet or shooting star thrown our way.

Astronomers now know that it's instead intensely dynamic.  Discovering and cataloguing these changes is what the Vera C. Rubin Observatory does.  The amount of data being collected is also staggering. On a single night on the 26th of Feb 2026, Rubin discovered some 800,000 changes in the night sky. Once fully operational, it's expected this figure will climb into the millions. These changes include supernovae, variable stars, active galactic nuclei, and Solar System asteroids. It's estimated that the coming years Rubin will find some 6 million asteroids in the Solar System, 17 billion stars in the Milky Way and even take colour images of 20 billion galaxies.

The task of handling this precious data is via a data broker called FINK. This is jointly run by Australia and France.  Dr. Anais Möller from Swinburne University in Melbourne heads up the FINK project in Australia.  Among the first 800,000 initial changes, Dr Möller’s team also identified about 100 supernova candidates. Alerts of cosmic events from FINK can used to trigger rapid follow-up observations on other facilities, like the ANU 2.3m telescope and the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales.

Can amateur astronomers get involved?

Yes.

I had a chat with Dr Möller who gave me some hints on retrieving data from the FINK Portal for members of the BINTEL community:

"For LSST, you can use the search bar in our portal and use the tag “in_tns” to find potential SN candidates reported. If you click there you will see the latest data received. Many of these objects will be quite faint given Rubin sensitivity but I am sure there will be interesting objects for amateurs and by itself the data is amazing!'

Artemis II rolls back into the shed. Earliest launch date is now April 2026

We've been keenly following the progress of Artemis II mission which will return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972. The Artemis program has suffered another setback which is going to cause another lengthy delay. We reported last week that the dress rehearsal for the mission had gone well, hydrogen leaks appeared to be resolved, and a launch date of early March seemed to be likely.

Shortly after engineers discovered helium leaks in the Artemis II SLS Rocket. Helium is not used to fuel the rocket but rather is a way to flush out fuel lines.  

Artemis II is now back in NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building undergoing further tests. 

However....

NASA makes major announcements on when it will land humans on the Moon

Breaking news this morning is that NASA have revamped the Artemis mission timeline and when it will return humans to the Moon's surface.

Artemis III low Earth orbit test mission in 2027

After Artemis II gets off the ground, hopefully in the coming months, NASA will next fly and test its Moon landing hardware in low Earth orbit mission. For those of you familiar with the 1960's space program this is what was done in the 1969 Apollo 9 flight.

Land on the Moon in 2028

NASA have now said they intend to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028

Land on the Moon at least once a year going forwards

NASA will commence a steady program of a Lunar mission at least once a year.

This is a developing story! You can read more about this new schedule and updates to the Artemis hardware at the NASA site here.

Cheers,

Earl White 

BINTEL

28th February 2026