Hello ...
Here's your Cosmic Pursuits newsletter for July 2024!
1. Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn continue their march upward into the early morning sky and find themselves near the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters. Mercury emerges in the evening sky. And the best meteor shower of the year for southern observers gets underway. Here's what to see in the Night
Sky This Month...
2. And yet another discovery courtesy of the remarkable Gaia space observatory - it turns out more than half the open star clusters near the Sun emerged from just three families that formed over the past 30 million years. Read about this remarkable discovery and you won't look at open star clusters quite the same way again.
3. The intrepid Voyager 1 spacecraft, which toured the outer planets some 40 years ago and now moves through interstellar space, was recently teased back to life by
engineers. Here's a look at the past present and future of the mission which has vastly exceeded its planned five-year lifespan. And here's a video review of the mission by Ed Stone, the mission director for 50 years, and who recently passed away.
4. Grab a pair of binoculars and tour the Summer Triangle this month.
5. And finally, a look at why the standard model of cosmology is insufficient to explain recent measurements of the expansion of the universe.
And the astronomy quote of the month...
“The heart and core of astronomy, to me,
is the direct experience of the universe."
- Robert Burnham
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Wishing you clear skies!
Brian Ventrudo
Publisher
CosmicPursuits.com
