Meteorology Monday (1/27/25): Planetary Parade
6 Planets are nearly aligned on one side of the sun and 4 of them will be visible to the naked eye throughout the rest of January. Those four are Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn. Uranus and Neptune will also be visible with viewing equipment such as binoculars or telescopes. To find them, just look to the south after the sunsets, and look for bright spots- and remember, stars twinkle but planets shine continuously
The planetary alignment isn't exactly rare or uncommon, in fact we just had one last year. However, it can take some planets decades or even a century to make a full revolution around the sun, and what makes this one special is that we have so many visible to us without professional equipment.
This evening might be one of the best days of the week to view, as we will be cloudy and snowy for the next few nights. Make sure to send in any pictures that you get to the 18 Storm Team and happy viewing!
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Some FirstEnergy customers won't get power until tonight
(WJW) – Power is slowly being restored for some FirstEnergy customers Friday as others are losing it. Several hundred FirstEnergy customers remain without power Friday after overnight outages. Lorain police officer who died following ambush remembered Early Friday morning, more than 6,000 people were without power. According to the FirstEnergy website, the bulk of the outages are in Cuyahoga and Summit counties. Restoration times were pushed back to 11 p.m. for most communities still without power. Summit County saw new outages in several communities late Friday afternoon. Later in the day, a few hundred Green residents were still without power, with restoration expected by 5 p.m. and outages in Akron had been resolved. Other widespread outages in Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Medina, Richland and Trumbull counties have since been resolved. Check restoration times here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Scientists may have solved a chemistry mystery about Jupiter's ocean moon Europa
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A long-standing mystery about the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on Jupiter's icy ocean moon Europa may be closer to being solved. Hydrogen peroxide forms as a byproduct when energetic particles break apart water molecules, leading to the recombination of OH radicals — highly reactive molecules with unpaired electrons. H2O2 was first observed on Europa by the Galileo Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, a scientific instrument aboard NASA's Galileo Jupiter orbiter that was designed to study the composition and surface features of the gas giant's moons and atmosphere using infrared light. Later, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) noticed elevated levels of hydrogen peroxide in unexpected areas on the Jovian satellite. Lab studies predicted that higher concentrations of hydrogen peroxide would be found in Europa's colder polar regions — but JWST observations showed the opposite, detecting higher levels in the moon's warmer equatorial regions. These areas, known as chaos terrains, are marked by broken blocks of surface ice that appear to have shifted, drifted and refrozen. "Europa's peroxide distribution does not follow the temperature dependence predicted for pure water ice," wrote the team in their paper. Lab studies consistently show that colder ice has more H2O2, while warmer ice has less. In a new study, scientists report that they have noticed higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the chaos terrains alongside elevated levels of H2O2. This is probably the result of CO2 escaping Europa's subsurface ocean through cracks in the ice, the researchers say. The team therefore wondered if the presence of CO2 might be changing the ice's chemistry. "Could the presence of CO2 drive the enhanced peroxide production in Europa's chaos regions, signaling a surface composition more conducive to the formation of this radiolytic oxidant?" they wrote in their paper. "Supporting this hypothesis are preliminary experiments on irradiated H2O-CO2 ice mixtures that show increased H2O2 yields compared to pure water ice." To find a definitive answer, they "simulated the surface environment of Europa inside a vacuum chamber by depositing water ice mixed with CO2," Bereket Mamo, a graduate student at The University of Texas at San Antonio and a contractor with the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. "We then irradiated this ice mixture with energetic electrons to see how the peroxide production changed." The experiment confirmed what the team had suspected: Even small amounts of CO2 in water ice can greatly boost hydrogen peroxide production at temperatures similar to those on Europa's surface, helping to explain the unexpected JWST observations. This occurs because CO2 molecules behave as "molecular scavengers," grabbing hold of any stray electrons produced when radiation hits the water ice. By capturing these electrons, the CO2 helps protect hydrogen peroxide from being broken apart by further impacts or reactions. Related Stories: — Europa: A guide to Jupiter's icy ocean moon — 'Chaos' reigns beneath the ice of Jupiter moon Europa, James Webb Space Telescope reveals — Europa Clipper: A complete guide to NASA's astrobiology mission "Synthesis of oxidants like hydrogen peroxide on Europa's surface is important from an astrobiological point of view," said study co-author Richard Cartwright, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "In fact, an entire NASA mission, the Europa Clipper, is en route to the Jovian system right now to explore the icy moon and help us understand Europa's habitability. "Our experiments provide clues to better understand JWST Europa observations and serve as a prelude to upcoming close-range investigations by Europa Clipper and ESA's [the European Space Agency] JUICE spacecraft," Cartwright added. The new study was published in the Planetary Science Journal on Monday (July 21). Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Scientist Suggests Tests to See if Large Object Headed Toward Earth Could Be an Alien Spacecraft
Earlier this month, astronomers made a fascinating discovery: a mysterious object with interstellar origins, now dubbed 3I/ATLAS, that's hurtling toward the inner solar system at extreme speeds. As scientists race to get a better understanding of the rare visitor — it's only the third confirmed interstellar object to have ventured into our solar system — some intriguing theories have emerged. One particularly eyebrow-raising possibility beyond the mainstream suggestions of it being either a comet or an asteroid, as championed by Harvard astronomer and alien hunter Avi Loeb, is that 3I/ATLAS could have been sent by an intelligent, extraterrestrial civilization. In a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, Loeb analyzed the possibility that the object is "alien technology," highlighting its unusual trajectory and what he says may be attempts to brake itself to have a closer look at Earth and Jupiter. (He also emphasized that it might just be a comet or space rock.) "The orbital path of 3I/ATLAS has some very unlikely combination of characteristics, which could quite easily have been simple coincidence, as extremely strange as that ostensibly appears," the paper reads. But Loeb — who previously wrote an entire book about the possibility that 'Oumuamua, an interstellar object first observed in 2017, may have been sent to us by an alien civilization — and his colleagues stopped far short of concluding the latest discovery was an alien probe. In the paper, they argued that "this paper is largely a pedagogical exercise" and that "by far the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet." As Swinburne University of Technology lecturer Sara Webb argued in a piece for The Conversation, the idea that the intriguing object could have an extraterrestrial origin is an intriguing hypothesis, and shouldn't be discarded. "The idea of alien probes wandering the cosmos may sound strange, but humans sent out a few ourselves in the 1970s," Webb wrote, pointing out that "both Voyager 1 and 2 have officially left our Solar System, and Pioneer 10 and 11 are not far behind." "So it's not a stretch to think that alien civilisations — if they exist — would have launched their own galactic explorers," she concluded. However, figuring out whether 3I/ATLAS is indeed an alien probe coming to visit our system isn't nearly as easy as it sounds. According to Webb, we'd start out by checking if the object has a "tail" like comets do. Other than that, we could "look for signs of electrostatic discharge caused by sunlight hitting the probe" or "any kind of radio waves coming from the probe as a form of communication." But in the absence of any clear indications that 3I/ATLAS is an alien visitor, Webb agrees with Loeb that, as intriguing as the alternative may be, there's a very good chance we're looking at a comet: a celestial wad of ice, dust, and rock. "For now, 3I/ATLAS is likely just an unusually fast, old and icy visitor from a distant system," Webb concluded. "But it also serves as a test case: a chance to refine the way we search, observe and ask questions about the universe." More on the object: Astronomer Says the Object Approaching Us From Beyond the Solar System Is Not What We Think Solve the daily Crossword
