Uranus at opposition this month

It's the summer of the planets!

The closest of the Solar System's two ice giants, Uranus, will be at opposition this month and at its closest to Earth on the 26th of November Sydney time. 

Uranus close by the Pleiades star cluster in the northeastern sky as seen from Sydney around 10.30pm local time on the 26th of November 2026. Image via Stellarium. Note the full Moon on this evening which might wash it out slightly.

You'll be able to spot the faint greenish Uranus even in binoculars, while a telescope with an aperture of 8" (203mm) or more will start to show it as a disk. You might even be able to spot one of Uranus' brighter moons.  While Uranus is on the edge of being able to see it with your eyes alone, it's such a tough target that even ancient peoples who were very keen sky observers never made the connection that it was a planet. 

WIth planetary oppositions, don't forget they're slow moving events. If you miss the evening of the opposition itself don't worry. The days or even weeks either side are just fine. 

For example, if you are heading under the stars this week, don't forget that while Saturn is a month past opposition and still wonderful viewing!

The next few months are going to be a busy time for planetary viewing, and we'll have a full BINTEL Summer 26/27 Solar System guide out shortly.

Another moon for the Earth

Apart from the Moon, the Earth is known to collect new moons. Some actually orbit us and others are taking much the same path around the Sun. These tend to not hang around in celestial terms and are found pretty regularly. We chatted about one last year called 2025 PN7 and astronomers have found another. 

Newly discovered 2026 QQ8 is about 1.5 times away from Earth as the Moon. Astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky first spotted it in August 2026. Modelling suggests that it actually slipped into Earth's gravitational orbit in April 2026 and will remain bound in a peculiar, loopy path until December 2026, after which it will break free and return to orbiting the Sun. It's small too, at just under 2m across. It's too far away and not on a path to hit Earth, but if it was, it would likely just burn up in our atmosphere. 

Unlike bodies often called quasi-moons that take the same path around the Sun the Earth does and are more like fellow travellers, 2026 QQ 2026 crossed into Earth's Hill sphere. This means Earth's gravity temporarily became the main force directing its motion.

NASA still planning to save Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope or "Hubble" to its friends is no doubt the most famous astronomical instrument ever made by humans. It's made discoveries that have changed our view of the Universe and produced images of the cosmos that have struck a chord with a huge chunk of people on the planet. 

It was designed to be upgradable and serviceable in orbit, receiving five servicing missions, including the one the in 2002 carried out by the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-109) which boosted Hubble's orbit.  

This week, another space telescope, the Swift Observatory, plunged back to Earth despite a robotic servicing mission called LINK to raise the telescope's orbit that failed in August. With no boost to Hubble, it will also crash back into Earth in the coming years. 

Why do spacecraft crash back to Earth?

Space isn’t empty. Even hundreds of kilometres above Earth, spacecraft encounter traces of our outer atmosphere. Increased solar activity can heat and expand that atmosphere, increasing the drag. This gradually removes orbital energy and lowers the spacecraft’s orbit, exposing it to denser air and accelerating its descent towards re-entry.

All this adds up to a very slight amount of drag which slows down a spacecraft. It then sinks lower in its orbit where it will encounter even more of the atmosphere and continue to slow down even more. This is called orbital decay and will eventually result in the spacecraft slowing down so much it won't be able to stay in orbit and will crash to Earth. This is Hubble's fate without some form of intervention, likely sometime time between 2033 and 2034. 

The only way to avoid this is to fire rockets attached to the Hubble to increase the height of its orbit. 

NASA is now seeking interest from companies to boost Hubble into a higher orbit to extend its life. While other components have been failing over time, the space telescope is still capable of unique observations and receives about seven times requests for observing time from astronomers around the world than it actually has available. 

You might wonder why we still need Hubble when we have the James Webb Space Telescope. They observe different parts of the spectrum. Hubble’s ultraviolet and visible-light capabilities complement Webb’s infrared observations, giving astronomers different views of the same objects. 

There are some other large space telescopes in the pipeline. China has a near 2m optical/near ultraviolet wavelength due to launch in 2027 that will orbit near its Tiangong space station called Xuntian, or "surveying the heavens".  One solution to the need to service a complex instrument when it's in space is simply to park it close to a space station where astronauts are stationed, avoiding the need for separate missions.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is a 6-8m class instrument that could launch in 2041 and aimed at direct observations of Earth-like exoplanets to search for life. 

“Hubble still has important science ahead of it, and we should be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “If there are innovative and cost-effective ways to extend the life of an asset already on orbit, we owe it to the American taxpayer and the scientific community to explore them. Extending Hubble’s life would mean more discoveries, more science, and more opportunities to expand our understanding of the Universe.”

Whether anyone comes up with a solution to boost Hubble is yet to be seen, but anyone with even a hint of interest in astronomy would dearly wish to see this beloved space telescope continue its work for many years to come. 

Read more here.

Rubin uncovers more possible Milky Way satellite galaxies

We chatted last week about a possible 6th dwarf planet for the Solar System and how the techniques used by the Rubin Observatory point towards it discovering many, many more.* 

Now astronomers using data from Rubin have identified possibly another a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way and a globular cluster . Large galaxies are often surrounded by smaller satellite galaxies and the Milky Way is much the same. There are some 61 smaller galaxies comparatively nearby the Milky Way, although not all of these are gravitationally bound to our galaxy and some including the LMC are basically "passing through".

Studies have theorised that there should be around 100 or so smaller galaxies orbiting a galaxy like the Milky Way which leads to "Where are they? How hard is it to spot a close by galaxy?"

Where the two new Milky Way satellites are located. Image via: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA, ESA/Gaia/DPAC, W. Cerny

New studies, including one led by a Yale astronomer, point towards Rubin being able to uncover some of these previously hidden companions. They found that by using just the test data generated by Rubin before its main survey got underway and taken between April 2025 and January 2026 which covered about 7% of the night sky.   

This test data was found to contain two very faint Milky Way satellites. Aquarius IV, a galaxy towards the furthest part of the Milky Way’s edges some 355,000 light-years from Earth. The other satellite found, named Rubin-GC1, is a star cluster located on the other side of the Milky Way.

“What I find especially exciting is that these discoveries are just the beginning for Rubin,” said William Cerny, an astronomy student in Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and first author of the Aquarius IV study in the journal Research Notes of the AAS. He is second author of the Rubin-GC1 study, which has been accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

What's exciting about these results is that if these sorts of discoveries have been made using Rubin's test data, we can only imagine what the full 10-year survey will reveal. 

You can read more at Yale University here.

China announces a timeline for landing human on the Moon

Last week we covered NASA's announcements for their plans to return astronauts to the Lunar surface which should happen in 2028 if all goes well. 

This week at the Seventh Manned Spaceflight Conference in Beijing, China laid out plans for a crew to land humans on the Moon "before 2030".  

The timeline includes missions like:

• Early 2027: Long March 10A rocket with no external boosters and the Mengzhou ("Dream Vessel") spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. 
• 2029: Two Long March 10 rockets, one carrying uncrewed Mengzhou and the other the Lanyue ("Embracing the Moon") lander vehicle to dock in orbit
• Before 2030: Dual launch of Long March 10 rockets, with crew on the Mengzhou spacecraft, this will be their first landing mission

No plans for an Apollo 8/10 or Artemis II mission where astronauts or taikonauts orbit or loop aound the Moon but don't land have been outlined. 

A schematic diagram of China's lunar laboratory. Image via: China Manned Space Engineering Office

A Tansuo lunar rover is planned for the first landing, allowing them to travel farther while collecting samples and carrying out scientific work. Afterwards, they’ll launch back into lunar orbit, rejoin their colleague and return to Earth aboard Mengzhou.

Cheers,

Earl White

7th November 2026

*The candidate for the Solar System's 6th dwarf planet, 2026 ED138, that Rubin found we covered last week might have been recorded in astrophotos going back possibly almost 90 years ago!  Researchers are now going back through old photos to try to identify this small body against the vast Milky Way star clouds. There's likely to be some more results announced soon but here's a pre-print.