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It's the best time to see the ringed planet, Saturn, for 2025. Check out our BINTEL guide about how and where to see Saturn.  Why Saturn is so bright at the moment and why that matters. Saturn's brightness as seen from Earth varies as both it, and our home planet orbit the Sun throughout their respective years. This month (September 2025) Saturn is at what astronomer's call opposition on the 21st. This term simply means that the Earth and Saturn are pretty much directly opposite each other in their orbits. As we're as close are we're going to get to Saturn for the year, it's the best time to view the spectacle of the planet and its rings. (Along the same lines, if you were an alien astronomer living on the surface of a moon of Saturn, it would also be the best time to turn your telescope towards Earth!) Planetary oppositions happen slowly. Saturn will be great viewing in the weeks leading up the 21st of September 2025 and well worth catching in the weeks and afterwards. There's no need to rush out on the night or worry you might miss it. An illustration showing how the Sun, the Earth and Saturn line up during an opposition. It's not to scale, but rather to give you an idea of their positions. Image by Jess Gilmore, BINTEL  During opposition, Saturn will appear as a brilliant, slightly yellowish "star". It will be one of the brightest stars in the sky, slightly fainter than Betelgeuse, the red star that forms one of the shoulders of the famous constellation Orion. Where can I spot Saturn? Around the time of opposition, Saturn will rise close to sunset and be visible most of the night. For best viewing, I would give it two or three hours after it gets darks for it to get a bit higher in the sky. You can use the chart below to get an idea where it be located around this time. It will appear as a bright yellowish star. Where to find Saturn at around 9.30pm on the 21st of September 2025. The view is from Sydney. Saturn will appear close to the rising Moon and be visible throughout the night.  Over the next couple of months, Saturn will rise later and later in the evening.  If you don't have a telescope like one of the Celestron StarSense Explorer range that have night sky navigation as standard, then there's a wide range of apps to help you find planets and deep-sky objects. One of our favourites is Stellarium that can run on your phone, tablet or PC. Almost any telescope will show the rings of Saturn The rings of Saturn are the most famous single feature in the Solar System* One of the most amazing sights in astronomy is to point your telescope at what looks like a bright star with your eyes and then spot a small ball with rings around it in the eyepiece! I remember it doing exactly that as a youngster and it was one of the things that got me hooked on space and astronomy for the rest of my life. BINTEL sells a wide range of telescopes that will deliver great views of Saturn and what's more, you don't have to spend a lot of money either. For example, this Celestron StarSense Explorer LT127 AZ is great for viewing Saturn as well as Jupiter, Mars, the Moon and thousands of deep-sky objects.  Celestron StarSense Explorer LT127 AZ Solar System planets will reveal more as you increase the magnification and telescopes such as this Celestron have higher powered eyepieces as standard. We can also help with optional eyepieces, filters and Barlow lenses to further improve your views.  You won't see the rings of Saturn with binoculars, especially this year. The varying angles of Saturn's Rings Saturn, like the Earth, orbits the Sun at slight tilt. This tilt is the reason we have seasons and Saturn too has seasons.  It also means that during some oppositions Saturn's rings, which are aligned around the middle of the planet, are wide open and facing Earth. This is when they're at their most spectacular.  As the seasons on Saturn change and the angle of its tilt changes, how the rings appear to us here on planet Earth will change too.  The varying view of Saturn as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Saturn's rings in 2025 are fairly edge on, more like the bottom left corner of the HST image and will open up more in the coming years. This is a good time to try to spot the faint bands on the surface of Saturn.  (Your views won't be a sharp or detailed as the those in this image as you won't be looking through a multi-billion dollar space telescope like Hubble. You might still be surprised at you can see! through your home telescope!) Why doesn't Saturn twinkle as much as Milky Way stars? One thing that's noticeable about the Solar System planets is that while they appear as "stars" in the night sky, they also lack one feature you'll see when viewing Milky Way stars of similar brightness: planets don't twinkle anywhere near as much as the stars do.  Stars twinkle as due to the disturbances in the air above our heads and this varies night to night. Even the smallest star is vast compared to the size of a planet. As all visible stars range in distance from a handful to possibly even thousands of light years away, light even from these massive disks arrives on here on Earth as a single point of light.** Astronomers call the quality of the air the seeing. It's not always dependant on the weather. Sometimes clear skies can have very poor seeing and you can often get sharp views when patchy clouds are overhead.  We can see the disk of major planets with even a small telescope. The light from the planets spread over a slightly larger region and as they're not pinpoints, are less impacted by wiggles and fluctuations in the air.  Have we visited Saturn? Yes! Several spacecraft have visited Saturn, although not as many as you might think. Only four spacecraft have been there. Three were just flybys, with one sophisticated mission spending years observing the ringed planet and its moons from complex orbits.   Humanity got its first close up of Saturn in 1979 with a flyby of Pioneer 11.  The famous Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes made flybys as part of their "Grand Tour" of the Solar System that also included exploring beyond Saturn with visits to Uranus and Neptune.  In 2004, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft which was a joint NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) project, arrived at Saturn where it spent the next 13 years imaging and observing Saturn and its moons. It finished with the Cassini probe deliberately crashing into Saturn itself to avoid any contamination of Saturn's moon with microbial life from Earth.  What's next for exploring Saturn? For such an amazing place, human beings aren't expending a lot of effort in making firm plans to return to Saturn***. The only confirmed mission is the car sized Dragonfly due to launch sometime in July 2028 and arrive at Saturn's moon Titan, in 2034. You can read more about NASA's Dragonfly mission here.  Until then, we'll need to observe Saturn from Earth or with space telescopes.  Next week: A telescope and some camera options for taking photos of Saturn, Jupiter, the Moon and more.  Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 13th of September 2025 PS: Here's a few further bits of info you might find useful: * Other planets in the Solar System have rings as well Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune all have rings systems; however, Saturn is the only rings you'll be able to see with your telescope ** But I can see a small "disk" when looking at some stars? Is this the surface of the star? No. Humans have only seen the surface of a small number of stars using extremely large telescopes. What you are seeing is the single point of light spread over a small area by wobbles in the atmosphere, a view that's not totally focussed or some kind of aberration caused by your telescope's optics. Or maybe a combination of all of the above.  *** The discovery of possible signs of past life called biomarkers in the Solar System such as on Mars would without doubt make Saturn a high priority for future missions. Its moon, Titan, is the only other place in the Solar System apart from Earth that has water on its surface and a thick atmosphere. Another moon, Enceladus, possibly has an ocean under its icy sheets that cover the surface. NASA’s Cassini probe flew through geysers near its south pole and found chemicals including organic compounds which might help life form. 

TL;DR: NASA today announced that a rock they've named "Cheyava Falls" found by their Perseverance Mars Rover in 2024 shows signs of chemicals compounds and features called biosignatures that are likely products of ancient microbial life. The Perseverance team have used every resource available on the rover on the surface of Mars and carried out extensive peer review over the last year, but so far have not been able to come up with alternative reasons for these biosignatures. Full confirmation that ancient life did once on Mars will require these samples to be either returned to Earth or analysed further by future astronauts on the surface of the red planet in the coming years, probably in the 2030s. This is the strongest indication of life beyond Earth humanity has found so far.  The announcement today from NASA that they've found strong indicators of ancient life or potential biosignatures on the surface of Mars was not taken lightly. You can read the NASA press release here. A NASA rover currently on the Martian surface, Perseverance, has been exploring inside Jezero Crater near a region that was known to be an ancient lakebed.  The rover been collecting samples for future missions and drilled into mudstone. There it found a rock nicknamed Cheyava Falls in 2024 in that has a pattern of "leopard spots" and other features. On Earth, these could be products of past microbial life. These chemicals and features can also sometimes be produced by other, non biological processes as well and these need to be ruled out in order to establish that they are indeed a result of past life. A close up of the rock Cheyava Falls show the tiny "Leopard Spots". Image via NASA / JPL-Caltech Over the last year or so, scientists have been investigating whether the leopard spots and other features on Cheyava Falls might have been caused by these, non-life processes. Some of these involve high temperatures or acidity. Cheyava Falls shows no signs of having undergone these types of processes.  Where this discovery was made is also important. It's the only place visited on Mars that once had three key ingredients for the possible formation of life in the distant past: organic molecules from which life is made from, water and energy.  What are these potential biosignatures that have been found? If NASA hasn't found life itself, what has it found? It's important to point out that Perseverance did not find organisms on Mars. Rather, it found what's call potential biosignatures.  A biosignature is a chemical or artefact produced by life processes. It's not life itself or direct evidence of life. For example, dinosaur bones embedded in rocks are direct evidence of a long dead animal and are called fossils. You might also find an imprint of a lifeform that died say in soft mud, which has hardened into rock and the remains of the critter either leaving an imprint or being replaced by rock. Ammonite fossils for example are popular with collectors and are pretty cool things to own! Biosignatures on the other hand are chemicals and features that can be produced by life, not direct evidence of the lifeform itself such as a fossil. In exobiology they refer to chemicals we can observe either directly on a planet's surface using a spacecraft like the Perseverance Rover, from orbit or even deep into space using a telescope. A few months, ago NASA announced they'd found possible biosignatures on exoplanets with the JWST. (Read more about that here.) Biosignatures hint at direct evidence of life. To confirm the existence of life beyond Earth, all of these other ways of forming biosignatures need to be ruled out. NASA has thrown the kitchen sink at this Despite their best efforts using all the tools they have available on the Perseverance rover, researchers have not been able to come up with viable, non-biological alternatives to explain what has been found.  In other words, what have been found so far are signs of ancient life on Mars. While the rover is the most comprehensive science package ever to visit the Martian surface, it was designed to return samples to Earth for more comprehensive investigations. It's also worth pointing out that the search for signs of ancient life is a key mission objective for the Perseverance program. You can read more about those here. Whether this sample return mission now happens is still uncertain. “We basically threw the entire rover science payload at this rock,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance project scientist. “We're pretty close to the limits of what the rover can do. “After a year of review, they have come back and they said, listen, we can’t find another explanation,” said Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting.” Why was NASA so cautious about making this announcement?  Saying there's life on another planet is obviously a big call! NASA made two infamous previous announcements regarding Martian life. In 1996, then president Bill Clinton fronted a news conference to tell the world NASA had found micro bacterial "life" on a Mars meteorite, ALH84001. There was a lot of excitement about this discovery at the time. Subsequent investigations showed what appeared to be fossils of bacteria were in the results of geological processes.  Going back a little further, the first Mars NASA landers Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976 carried experiments to detect signs of life. Initial results were that there was current life in Martian soil. These results were found soon after in the opinion of most scientists to be unusual soil chemistry rather than biological process. However, there was continuing disagreement from some, including the lead researcher of the Viking Labelled Release (LR) life detection experiment who maintained that Viking did in fact find life on Mars in the 1970s. Read more about that here. The discovery of Cheyava Falls with its leopard spots was announced over a year ago and was accompanied at the time with a firm "further research is needed."  This time around NASA and the scientific community explored every possible alternative before stating that there might strong possibility of life existing in the past on Mars.  Is there life on Mars now? There's no indication of anything alive on the Martian surface. Today's announcement refers to the possibility of life in the distant past.  Mars once had a thicker atmosphere and liquid water which was more amenable to life. There is a possibility that life exists buried in the soil in the red planet between cracks and fissures in rocks. Investigating these places will require human boots on the ground.  Where did life on Mars come from? We don't know anything much about the organisms that might have caused the biosignatures on Cheyava Falls, except that they appear to have produced similar biosignatures to those found on Earth.  This raises the question of whether life arrived on Mars and Earth from elsewhere in the Milky Way via a process called panspermia or if arose on Mars independently.  Does this have implications for life elsewhere in the Solar Systems? If today's announcement about ancient life on Mars is confirmed in the coming years, it will have profound implications for the existence of life both throughout the Solar System and beyond. Since the confirmation of the first planets around other star systems or exoplanets in the 1990s, we now know that most stars have planets around them. Prior to this the Sun and our Solar System was only planetary system we know off. We see the building blocks of life or organics throughout the Milky Way as well.  If life is not restricted to Earth and is also found on the planet next door to us, just how common is it throughout the Universe? To wrap up.... Today's announcement is a major step in the search for life. After extensive investigation NASA now has the confidence to say there's a high probability of life existing on Mars in the distant past. Confirmation of this will require either the samples from Cheyava Falls and others to be returned to Earth for further study or humans to land on Mars and investigate the region in person. Our search of for life in the Solar System isn't just restricted to Mars. There's currently a mission head towards a moon of Jupiter, Europa Clipper , which will investigate if the conditions for life exist on that icy moon and other missions are planned.    It certainly looks some exciting discoveries will be made in the coming years! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL / Mars Society Australia PS: If you'd like to read the detailed scientific results from the NASA team and associates, you can find the paper here.

The Earth has another moon Say G'day to the Earth newly discovered quasi moon, 2025 PN7! Just in time for this weekend's total Lunar eclipse, astronomers have found another quasi moon, called 2025 PN7 for now. We have one permanent Moon which we all know about. The Earth also has a number of other, small rocky bodies that orbit the Sun long with our home planet. We've known about seven of these and this discovery this week of PN 2025 brings the number to eight.  A diagram showing how another quasi moon discovered in 2026, Kamo'oalewa, orbits the Sun along with the Earth. Image via NASA JPL These small bodies are not in stable orbits around the Earth and will eventually leave the vicinity in a few hundred or thousand years. Their orbits are complex and not stable. This new moon was discovered on August 29th 2025 by the Pan-STARRS observatory. A number of other observatories also confirmed the results. You can see the announcement here. Going back through other images, it seems that 2025 PN7 was first spotted back in 2014. It seems to have been a quasi moon for about 60 years and likely to remain one for another 60 years or so. Astronomers have established that other quasi moons are the result of a meteorite hitting the Moon and throwing rocks into space. Such objects are called lunar ejecta. In a post in the Minor Planets Mailing List (MPML), Alan Harris from the Space Science Institute, stated that 2025 PN is travelling too fast compared to Earth of 3.4 km/s or 12,240 km/h to be lunar ejecta. He adds that it's "most likely just an asteroid that has trickled into a near-Earth orbit from the inner main belt." It's likely to be pushed away from Earth. "Some future close encounter with Earth could put it on an orbit that intersects either (or both) Mars or Venus," Harris continued. There's no formal name for this new moon and sadly, you won't  be able spot this small body in your telescope either. Astronomers are preparing to observe the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passes near Mars on October 3, 2025 It might be some the best observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will be from Mars, not Earth. In about a month, the third visitor to the Solar System we've found so far, comet 3I/ATLAS, will be around 30 million kilometres from Mars, compared to its closest approach to Earth of about 168 million kilometres. While there's no telescopes on the red planet, there are a number of sophisticated spacecraft in orbit above it.  A recent image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Image via: NASA/ESA/David Jewitt (UCLA) The European Space Agency's Colin Frank Wilson, project scientist for their Mars orbiters, says their spacecraft will be used to observe 3I/ATLAS. Both the  Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will be used.  These orbiters were not designed to make such observations, but will possibly provide some good results. "We will attempt to obtain images of the object using the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard Mars Express, and also with the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard TGO," Dr. Wilson said. Astronomers are also planning to use ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft for observations of 3I/ATLAS as well. Next week, a Saturn is at opposition! Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 6th September 2025

SpaceX Starship 10 Flight success After a string of hardware failures that ranged from engines and systems not functioning properly through to major explosions, and after two delays, Starship 10 flew a successful mission this week. This included another launch of the largest flying vehicle ever built, restart of rocket motors in space and the deployment of dummy satellites. Neither Starship itself nor the massive booster were returned back to the launch pad for a "chopsticks" catch. Both had planned but controlled ocean splashdowns which went to plan.  SpaceX Starship 10 launch.  More here. As this was a test flight, SpaceX had taken few measures such as deliberately removing a few heat tiles to stress test the vehicle during re-entry.  Now this flight being largely successful, more launches are expected shortly.    Roo-ver books a flight to the Moon The 20kg Australian Moon Rover, called Roo-Ver, that's a project of the Australian Space Agency and the ELO2 consortium, will be travelling to the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis program.  "Establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon and Mars is a key focus of the international space community over the coming decades," Australian Space Agency head Enrico Palermo said. "This is also another chapter in our long and valued partnership with NASA in space – a partnership as important today and for our future as it was when it first began almost 70 years ago." While compact, the Roo-ver is a complex device that highlights Australia's expertise. Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science, Tim Ayres, further commented that “This is one of the most specialised robotics and advanced manufacturing projects in the country. It’s accelerating the development of Australia’s advanced technical capabilities and deepening local manufacturing expertise." When will it fly? At this point, Roo-ver is slated to fly on an Artemis related mission sometime towards the end of this decade as part of NASA's CT-4 Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.  Once landed, it will collect data about the Lunar surface and resources, with an aim of assisting with future crewed missions to the Moon. You can read more here. Mars was whacked. By something big.  An artist's illustration of a large impact on Mars some 4.5 billion years age Image via: NASA/JPL-Caltech Scientists have found evidence that Mars was hit by one or more large objects around 4.5 billion years ago. This a result of findings by NASA's InSight lander which finished its mission in 2012. By examining the treasure trove of data such instruments deliver, the found large chunks of the impact, buried deep and spread throughout the red planet's mantle.  This was revealed by data on some of the 1,319 Marsquakes that InSIght's seismometer recorded. What hit Mars? Unfortunately, we'll likely never know.  There were a considerable number of large bodies in the early part of the Solar System and while major impacts were rare, they played a key role in the formation of the rocky planets that we see today. For example, our own Moon might be a result of the impact of an early Earth with body now called Thea. Read more here. Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL  30th August 2025    

As usual, lots of space and astronomy news this week! Uranus gets a new moon We might think of the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) making observations deep into interstellar and intergalactic space, but it's also making discoveries somewhat closer to home.  During an observing run on the 2nd of February, 2025, Webb captured a previously undiscovered moon around the ice giant, Uranus. This brings the total of known moons at the planet to 29. The newly discovered moon is only approx. 10km across. Uranus has been extensively observed by ground based telescopes for many years and even visited by spacecraft. The small size meant it remained hidden until now.  “This object was spotted in a series of 10 40-minute long-exposure images captured by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam),” said Maryame El Moutamid, a lead scientist in SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division based in Boulder, Colorado. “It’s a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft didn’t see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago.” While the name S/2025 U1 isn't too fancy, all of the moons around Uranus have been named after characters from Shakespearian plays, so we expect something fitting will be assigned to it soon.  Even with charts showing its position, S/2025 U1 will be too small to observe with your telescope.  More details at the NASA website here. Did comets help make life Earth *the* place for life? The water found on Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is found to be very similar to what's in our oceans. Many folks would know that there water and ice are found on comets. It has long been conjectured that comets were one mechanism that delivered the large amounts of water found on the Earth's surface, mainly in our oceans.  While we observe water on comets, is it the same water we see around us? (Bear in mind I'm writing this during a long and very wet weather spell here in Sydney!)  For starters, water isn't just water. We all know that water is a compound of two common elements: two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen. This is why it's also called "H2O".  There's also a compound called heavy water, "HDO". This is formed by the same number of molecules with the exception of the hydrogen being a heavier isotope called deuterium which has a neutron. This is lacking in "normal" hydrogen.  Heavy water is found in small amounts on Earth, mixed in with regular water.   Astronomers have now observed the water on a Halley class comet 12P/Pons-Brooks to have an almost identical amount of heavy water as the water we find in our oceans.  Observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) mapped the ratio of "normal" water and heavy water in the comet as it got close to the Sun. Lead researcher, Martin Cordiner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, commented: "Comets like this are frozen relics left over from the birth of our Solar System 4.5 billion years ago. Since Earth is believed to have formed from materials lacking water, comet impacts have long been suggested as a source of Earth’s water. Our new results provide the strongest evidence yet that at least some Halley-type comets carried water with the same isotopic signature as that found on Earth, supporting the idea that comets could have helped make our planet habitable.” While it's not definitive, these fascinating results help bolster the theory that much of the water on Earth where life grew and evolved, was delivered from space by comets. Read more here. SpaceX Starship's next flight this week The largest rocket ever to fly is going to fly again. Maybe. SpaceX have announced they've finalised investigations into the causes of the failures of the last Starship mission and are now ready to launch Starship 10 this coming Sunday the 24th of August 2025 from 6.30pm US central time.  (From Monday morning 25th of August 9.30am Sydney time.) You can follow the live broadcast here from a little before via this link. This is again a test flight and not aimed at placing any payload into Earth orbit. Rather, it's focused on testing hardware including engine restarts and thermal characteristics. Neither the booster nor Starship itself will be returned to the launch pad for an attempted "chopsticks" catch and landing. Both will splash down into the ocean, assuming the flight is successful. You can read a detailed mission profile here. We will report back next week with the results of this test. It will be spectacular no matter what the results.  The first launch of the SpaceX Starship was nearly two and a half years ago and it's yet to reach orbit. By contrast, Blue Origin's mega rocket, the New Glenn, is headed to Mars with the twin probes of NASA's ESCAPADE mission as some point from September 29th, 2025 onwards. (This will be the second launch of New Glenn, following its first successful launch in January 2025.) More to come on that mission soon! Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL  23rd August 2025      

For Father's Day 2025 here's some gift ideas for the astro and nature loving Dad in your life. Two Telescope suggestions for beginners and beyond Here's two Celestron StarSense Explorer telescopes that are ideal for Dads starting out in Astronomy, but also have enough power to help you keep exploring the Universe as your observing skill grow. Both of these telescopes will let you see: The rings of Saturn Moons of Jupiter Craters and mountains on the Moon Countless deep-sky delights such as nebulae (interstellar gas clouds), star clusters and other galaxies Both are also light enough to be easily moved around.  Celestron StarSense Explore LT80 AZ For less than $400 Dad will have a Celestron astronomical telescope complete with mount and tripod, two eyepieces for wide field and close up views and the Celestron StarSense Explorer system. We measure telescopes by the width of their main lens or mirror. The larger this is, the more light it collects and the brighter and more detailed what you observe will be. A popular size for beginner's telescopes is 70mm. These sorts of telescopes collects around 100x as much light as your eye does. The larger 80mm lens in the StarSense LT80 AZ collects about 130x, or about 30% more powerful than a 70mm telescope.  Find out more here Celestron StarSense Explorer LT127 AZ Moving up to just under $500, the Celestron LT127 AZ telescope also includes all the same accessories as the LT80 AZ model but with a larger main mirror.  It's a type of telescope called a reflector and collects a smidge over 2.5 times as much light as the LT80 AZ.  If it's within your budget, this a very handy upgrade to the smaller telescope.  Find out more here. The Celestron StarSense Explorer system Introduced by Celestron a few years ago, the strange looking StarSense Explorer gizmo combines with a dedicated app for both iPhone and Android phones to make the sometimes tricky task of finding objects in the night sky simple and easy to manage.  Much like maps on phone or in cars, just put in what you'd like to observe and the StarSense Explorer app will show you where to point your telescope to find it. If you're not sure what you'd like to see, the app will even take you on a guided tour of the night sky, personalised for your time and location. An informative and easy way to learn about the Universe! Quickly start observing planets such as Saturn, Jupiter or Mars. Travelling beyond the Solar System, there's a lifetime of observing star clusters, nebulae, binary stars and more in the Milky Way. You'll even be able to spot other galaxies, millions of light years.  All the data needed by the StarSense Explorer is installed along with the app. This means that you can take your LT80 AZ or LT127 AZ into the bush for dark sky viewing where there's no mobile signal and they'll continue to work just fine.  Nikon Aculon Binoculars under $200 Here's some Nikon Aculon binoculars that are spot on for taking to cricket this summer, general scenery and nature watch and ideal if you're getting into bird watching. The Nikon Aculon 7x50 are a classic sized pair of binos that offer a bright, wide field views and are large enough to keep observing when conditions are poor due to low light or less than ideal weather condition.  Find out more here Moving up to a higher magnification, the Nikon Aculon 12x50 is the same physical size, with the same optical quality. It offers higher magnification compared to the 7x50 model. If you were mainly into long distance viewing such as ocean views or whale watching, these might be a better option. Nikon Aculon 12x50 Binoculars - full details here. (In the optical world, the first number is the magnification and second the size of the front lens.  We have guide that touches on choosing binocular sizes here.) You can use both of these Nikon binos if you need to wear glasses. There's a BINTEL article about eyeglasses and binoculars that you can read here. All Nikon Aculon binoculars include a carry bag and neck strap. Stay tuned for more BINTEL Father's Day 2025 gift ideas this week!

There's always lots of happening in the skies above our heads, and there's even more to learn about and celebrate during Science Week! New BINTEL Online calculator To wrap up Science Week, we launched a new BINTEL astronomy FOV (field of view) online calculator. This features various calculators for both visual and photographic scenarios: Field of view for eyepiece/telescope combinations Magnification calculator Exit pupil calculations  Field of view for camera/telescope combinations Northern/southern hemisphere selection Choice of image catalogues Download of JPG images with field of view and equipment indicators  Plus, lots more on the way! By using established astronomical catalogues and databases such as DSS2 Colour, PanSTARRS etc, you can see how practically any deep-sky object will fit into your telescopes field of view. You're not limited to a small handful of objects.  The BINTEL FOV Calculator showing the size of NGC 253 (The Silver Dollar Galaxy) in a Celestron 8" Newtonian telescope with a 12mm Plossl eyepiece The BINTEL FOV Calculator can provide framing for a wide range of camera, telescope and reducer/corrector combinations. This will assist in the selection of targets and equipment.  How the great globular cluster Omega Centauri will appear in a Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED using a ZWO ASI553MC Pro camera.   Currently support equipment: Currently, there's hundreds of different pieces of equipment and we are adding continuously to this list. There's too many for a drop-down list. Just start typing and you'll quickly find what you're after.   We're aiming for this new calculator to be useful for astronomers globally. The brands included are not just those sold by BINTEL as well. If you'd like to add your own gear, let us know and we'll do our best to add it in.  In both visual and imaging modes you can download JPG images showing the framing as well.  Please note these images are for showing the field of view and the size of the astro object in your gear. They're not for showing how bright your object will appear or the level of detail it will show.  While the main idea is to select from a wide range of telescope gear, there's also an Advanced Mode that allow you to tweak the parameters further. Additional parameters shown in advanced mode This is the first public release of the BINTEL FOV Calculator. It's a beta release and you may run into problems. We'd very much welcome any feedback or bug reports if that's the case. One thing we are after are Solar System images of the planets such as Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and even Mercury, Uranus and Neptune. If you have any that we could use - with full credits of course - we'd be happy to include them. (Sorry, we might have to give Pluto a miss!) Please free to test the BINTEL FOV Calculator out here. New evidence for a planet orbiting our closest star Many of our BINTEL family would already know one of the brightest stars in the sky, Alpha Centauri or the lower of the two "pointers" to the Southern Cross, is a multiple star system. A single star to your eyes alone, it's easily split into two stars (Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B) with even a modest telescope.  The third member of the Alpha Centauri system, Proxima Centauri, is much smaller and dimmer than the two larger stars and is extremely difficult to spot or image. It's also the closest star to Earth. We know of three planets around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri; however, it's a very different type of star compared to the Sun.  An artist's illustration of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. Image via: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) Astronomers have announced that there's now strong evidence of a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A. This planet, thought to be a gas giant, would only be the closest planet to Earth around a star around the same age and size of our own Sun. This new planet is in the habitable zone around Alpha Centauri A, although being a gas giant, it's not a place where terrestrial type life could survive.  This discovery was made using an instrument on the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).  One of the researchers, Charles Beichman, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech’s IPAC astronomy centre commented: “With this system being so close to us, any exoplanets found would offer our best opportunity to collect data on planetary systems other than our own. Yet, these are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly." Combined with the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope due for launch in the next year or two, these observations might open techniques for discovering and observing exoplanets. Read more at the NASA website here. A new way to search for life on Mars using a simple test Can scientists teach an old (Mars roving) dog new tricks? Researchers from Imperial College London’s Department of Earth Science & Engineering have realised that an existing instrument carried on many spacecraft going back to the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s can be used in a novel way to detect signs of existing and recently deceased life.  Using a chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS), they identified a life-based chemical bonds that space missions are not looking for.  What's more, this technique could be used with existing hardware that's already on the surface of Mars as part of the Curiosity Mars Rover as well as on the upcoming ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover. "Space Agencies such as NASA and ESA don't know their instruments can already do this,” said Professor Sephton, lead author of the study. “Here we have developed an elegant method that rapidly and reliably identifies a chemical bond that shows the presence of viable life,” he says. “The Curiosity rover just turned 13 on Mars, but who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” NASA's Mars Curiosity rover taking a selfie on the red planet. Image via: NASA/JPL-Caltech PhD student Solomon Hirsch commented: “Our expectation of finding things alive on the Martian surface is low due to the hostile temperature and radiation conditions. Still, we aren’t ruling out the possibility - life finds amazing ways to survive in extreme circumstances. Furthermore, future missions such as the ExoMars mission plan to drill metres deep into the surface of the planet where the likelihood of finding active life is significantly higher.” Read more here. Oh, there's another BINTEL Calculator Before we go, another Science Week product launch is the new BINTEL Moon Phase Calculator. There's a few such tool available both online and as apps. However, we've designed this to as simple as possible and aimed at astronomers, both visual It shows for the next 30 days the: Moon phase Rise and set times By default, it selects your current location, or you can input another.  August to September 2025 Moon phases with local, Sydney times Please feel to try this calculator here. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 15th August 2025          

It's a Full Moon this weekend, so while it shines brightly overhead, let's cover some Lunar related news Have we found meteorites from the Moon here on Earth? After the blog article from a couple of weeks ago where we mentioned that a large Martian meteorite was auctioned off for a record price (You can read about that here) a number of people asked have we found chunks of other planets that have fallen to Earth? These are rocks that were flung into space by a large meteor impact on Mars or the Moon that have then landed on Earth.  There's been a number of meteorites discovered on good ol' terra firma that turned out to have originated from the Moon.  Lunar meteorite called Northwest Africa 10495 which was found in the desert of Morocco in 2015.  Meteorites aren't common. They differ from terrestrial rocks both in their composition and chemistry and they're often quite different from other rocks in the locations where they are discovered.  There can also be long periods of time between when meteorites hit the Earth and their discovery. This means they are subject to Earth weathering, sometimes for thousands of years.  Just about all of the meteorites discovered (almost 99%) have been traced back to asteroids which were formed early on in the history of the Solar System. A small number have been traced back to the Moon (approx. 0.7%) and Mars (approx. 0.5%). When I wrote this blog article, there's been 754 confirmed meteorites that originated from the Moon. You can see the most current list here.  Like the Martian meteorites, it's a fair question to ask how we know these meteorites are from the Moon. There's a number of reasons. First of all, they show signs of passage through the Earth's atmosphere during re-entry. They've been exposed to shorter periods of cosmic radiation while they were in their lengthy transit from the Moon to the Earth compared to meteorites formed much earlier in the Solar System's history.  It's a complex area! If you'd like take a deep-dive into hunks of rock from the Moon that have hit the Earth, check out this article here. A nuclear reactor on the Moon? It mightn't be as crazy as it sounds There was a lot of news this week about the proposal by interim NASA boss, Sean Duffy, to bring forward plans to have a working 100 kilowatt nuclear power plant on the Moon. Acting NASA chief, Sean Duffy NASA had previously submitted research for a 40 kilowatt nuclear reactor to be in place by 2030 called KRUSTY (Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology). Read more about this here. The announcement arrives on the back of a memorandum between Russia and China to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2036.  It would be fair to say there's a new "Space Race" underway. The larger, new reactor proposal is understood to aim for launch to the Moon before the KRUSTY 2030 timeline.  While even the headline "rush to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon" sounds a bit crazy, nuclear power is not a bad option for permanent human settlements on the Moon or Mars.  The slow rotation of the Moon is due to it being tidally locked to the Earth. While each Lunar day is some two weeks long, the night is also two weeks in length. This makes Solar power less than ideal. (While Martian days are similar in length to Earth, the red planet's distance and frequent dust storms also make Solar power for larger projects hard to achieve. For example, NASA's large Perseverance Mars Rover or "Percy" uses a nuclear power source called a MMRTG or Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator). Some of the technologies being proposed for nuclear power on the Moon aren't prone to suffer from the meltdown type events seen with reactors here on Earth.  What do you think? Comment below! Lunar Trailblazer goes dark NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission has officially ended. The spacecraft was launched on the 26th of February 2025, and contact was lost the next day. Lunar Trailblazer was tasked to survey the Moon's surface, looking at where deposits of water located, how much is there and observe changes over time.  Lunar Trailblazer during testing in 2024. Image via Lockheed Martin Space The limited data received from the spacecraft suggested that its solar panels were not correctly oriented towards the Sun, resulting in loss of power.  “At NASA, we undertake high-risk, high-reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to find revolutionary ways of doing new science,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “While it was not the outcome we had hoped for, mission experiences like Lunar Trailblazer help us to learn and reduce the risk for future, low-cost small satellites to do innovative science as we prepare for a sustained human presence on the Moon. Thank you to the Lunar Trailblazer team for their dedication in working on and learning from this mission through to the end.” Read more here. Should we not bother with the Moon?  Here's an interesting idea. Should we skip the Moon and head deeper into the Solar System? Humans landed on the Moon, six times from 1969 until 1972. At current rates of progress, there will be new boot prints on the Lunar surface before the end of this decade. There's also strong possibility the 60th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing by a return to the Moon won't be a mission from NASA. Apollo 15 on the Moon in 1971. Image via NASA The return to the Moon is seen a as a jumping off point to Mars, asteroids and even further destinations in the Solar System.  Future explorers could land on the Moon, fill up at bases with resources extracted from the Lunar surface and then scoot off to continue their journey.  There are a few catches to this as NASA advisor Paul Sutter points out in Universe Today. First of all, while the Moon does have major mineral resources, they're not concentrated in certain areas like they are here on Earth. This is because the Moon hasn't seen the types of tectonic activities that result in large quantities in a few locations. Rather, resources are spread far more evenly across the Moon's surface. You would have to mine and sift through large amounts of material to extract resources.  Many of these resources are of course, already available on Earth and it might be simply easier to take them into space directly. Where valuable resources are concentrated are the asteroids and possibly a more sensible long term plan would be to mine those instead.  The Moon maybe should be left alone or used as a place for research. It's no doubt the best place in the Solar System for astronomy that we can easily reach. A thought provoking read and you can find it here. NASA Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell passes away Apollo 13 and Apollo 8 hero also flew on Gemini VII, Gemini XII Sad news this morning is the death at 97 of astronaut Jim Lovell.  He's probably best known as the commander of the ill fated Apollo 13 mission in 1970 that suffered a catastrophic failure to the spacecraft on the way to the Moon and managed to return the crew safely to Earth.  Jim Lovell. Image via: NASA He was also one of the first three humans to leave Earth and orbit the Moon in December 1968 on the Apollo 8 mission as well as two Gemini flights including one with Buzz Aldrin.  There are now only five remaining NASA astronauts who made the journey to the Moon during the heady days of the Apollo program: Buzz Aldrin Fred Haise David Scott Charles Duke Harrison Schmitt A sad day for the space and astronomy community.  Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 9th August 2025  

Not just individual rogue planets. Planets can form new planetary systems without host stars Back in 2023, we chatted about how planets can be found wandering the Milky Way without a host star. You can read that blog post here. Astronomers theorised that there could be trillions of planets in the Milky Way that aren't part of a star system. How planets could be removed from their host star was a subject of some conjecture, including possible interactions with nearby stars or larger parts of the galaxy.  One of the problems of finding these "rogue" stars is that don't emit light on their own, and they're not close enough to stars to cause them to wobble. They were found by watching the light from more distant stars dim as the planets pass between observer and the star.  Now researchers have found evidence of infrared light from planets in deep interstellar space, a sign usually associated with circumstellar disks of dust from where planets are formed. Using the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) astronomers found six possible candidates for "Solar Systems" made up of just planets. This means that planets could possibly form into their own mini Solar System without stars.    An illustration of a dust cloud surrounding a free floating planet. Image via: University of St Andrews Lead author Dr Belinda Damian from the University of St Andrews said: “These discoveries show that the building blocks for forming planets can be found even around objects that are barely larger than Jupiter and drifting alone in space. This means that the formation of planetary systems is not exclusive to stars but might also work around lonely starless worlds.” (One thing we're always asked about when talking about exoplanets is whether you'd be able to see them with your telescope. It's not something that can be done.) Read more about this fascinating discovery here at the University of St Andrews website here. When are humans heading back to the Moon? A bit soon than you might think Many folks would know that the last time that humans left Earth orbit and headed to the Moon was on the Apollo 17 mission back in 1972. Since then, all human space missions have been in Earth orbit. The highest altitude achieved in recent years was the crew of Polaris Dawn at approx. 1,400km in September 2024.  It was 54 years ago this week when the first Lunar Rover was driven on the surface of the Moon as part of the Apollo 15 mission There's likely going to be quite a few changes in the next years, with changes to NASA priorities and staff especially. One mission that looks like it will taking place is Artemis II. This flight will leave Earth orbit and will perform the a single orbit around the Moon before returning to Earth. It will not enter Lunar orbit. No Moon landing will be attempted until later missions.  While Artemis II might seem unexciting compared to the heady days of the Apollo program, humans leaving the Earth's orbit after such a long break marks the beginning of a more permanent presence deeper in space.  Artemis II crew.  From left: mission specialist Christina Koch, pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen. Image via: NASA At this point the Artemis II mission will return humans to the Moon no later than April 2026 or about 9 months away, although there are some suggestions that the launch could be as early as February 2026. The program is due to be cancelled after Artemis III, slated for 2027.   Is K2-18b an ocean world? There was a lot of interest about the announcement a few months ago that the exoplanet K2-18b harboured life. (You can read our blog article about it here. ) This was based on chemical signatures found by the JWST.   The authors of the original research while confident in their results cautioned, that much more study would be needed. Given the significance of their claims, there has been a lot of controversy and even counter-claims by other scientists dismissing their finds of life signatures.  Some have argued that life indicating molecules were not found in the original JWST data, while others have found other, non-living pathways to the chemicals that were observed. An illustration of K2-18b showing the planet and its host star. Image via: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser One thing researchers do seem to agree on is that further studies of K2-18 b by the JWST have confirmed that it is a Hycean world or one covered by a planet wide ocean. Such planets are considered prime targets in the search for life beyond Earth both within the Solar System or beyond.  For example, NASA's Europa Clipper is travelling to Jupiter to investigate the possibility of life in the ocean under the frozen surface of its moon, Europa.  "This has certainly increased the chances of habitability on K2-18 b" Nikku Madhusudhan, the University of Cambridge scientists who part of the team behind the study published earlier in the year.  "This is a very important development and further increases the chance of a Hycean environment in K2-18 b. It confirms K2-18 b to be our best chance to study a potential habitable environment beyond the solar system at the present time." he continued. There's going to be a lot more discussion on this topic in the next years and final conclusions might have to wait until the next generations of large, Earth based telescopes come online.   Read more here. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 2nd August 2025                    

Betelgeuse has a companion Anyone who's spent time looking up at the sky during summer nights downunder would know the large constellation of Orion with its distinctive "saucepan" of comparatively bright stars in the middle. There's a good chance you'd know one of the four "shoulders", bright, reddish star called Betelgeuse.  Where to find Betelgeuse in the northeastern sky from Sydney around 9.30pm local time on Christmas Day, 2025. Betelgeuse is a large red supergiant star, probably only around 10 million years old. It's likely to explode as a supernova sometime in the next few or hundred thousand years. (Large, bright stars have short lives. Our own Sun will go through a red giant phase, although not for some billions of years.) Astronomers have observed brightness changes in Betelgeuse. There could be a number of reasons for this, but a long held theory is that this massive star has a much smaller companion. Finding such a small star has always been tricky given the brightness of Betelgeuse itself. Now scientists lead by NASA’s Ames Research Center have found a clever way to do this and it didn't involve either the James Webb or Hubble Space Telescopes. Betelgeuse and Siwarha via: NSF NOIRLab Steve Howell from Ames and his colleagues used a combination of the large Gemini North telescope in Hawai’i, and a clever camera called the Alopeke Speckle Instrument. This camera is able to take multiple short exposures and combines them in such a way to overcome atmospheric disturbances. (Those keen on planetary imaging are probably recognising these sorts of techniques.)  “I hope our discovery excites other astrophysicists about the robust power of ground-based telescopes and speckle imagers – a key to opening new observational windows,” said Howell. “This can help unlock the great mysteries in our universe.” Apart from the challenges of capturing the images of the companion star, with the title of “Siwarha" for now, astronomers were also working on a short timeframe before its orbit around Betelgeuse took it even further into the main star's glare.  There's a great read about this discovery at the NASA website here Vera C. Rubin Observatory spotted Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS before it was discovered Strange things certainly happen in astronomy! The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has stunned the world over the last few weeks with its widefield deep-sky images. This massive telescope is already producing unparalleled  amounts of astronomical data, that will without doubt reveal the unexpected in our Universe. These discoveries could take years to uncover in the data. Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, captured by the Vera Rubin observatory on July 3rd. Image: C.O. Chandler et al. For example, analysis of images from the new telescope have found the recently found visitor to the Solar System, Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, was captured by Vera C. Rubin on the 21st of June 2025, some ten days before it was observed by the ATLAS facility and its discovery announced.  You can read more on this here. NASA Fixes an astronomy camera from 595 million km away One of the big problems with space missions, especially those heading on long journeys to explore outer planets, is the damage that Solar radiation can cause to sensitive computer electronics and camera sensors. Even with the best precautions, unexpected problems can occur, and they can put entire missions at risk. NASA encountered just that with its Juno mission to Jupiter. JunoCam, a high resolution, visible light camera, started to deteriorate due to the high radiation environment around the gas giant.  Image from JunoCam showing noise due to radiation damage to the camera sensor. Image via: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS A work around was presented last week at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nuclear & Space Radiation Effects Conference in Nashville. The never tried before solution? Turn up the heater and try to re-anneal the surface of the sensor.  “We knew annealing can sometimes alter a material like silicon at a microscopic level but didn’t know if this would fix the damage,” said JunoCam imaging engineer Jacob Schaffner of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, which designed and developed JunoCam and is part of the team that operates it. “We commanded JunoCam’s one heater to raise the camera’s temperature to 77 degrees Fahrenheit — much warmer than typical for JunoCam — and waited with bated breath to see the results.” This long-distance gamble seems to have restored much of JunoCam's capabilities, at least in the short term. Read more about this camera repair here.  Cheers, Earl White  BINTEL 26th July 2025