Look to the western sky after sunset

Vandals have set fire and destroyed a seminal artwork by one of Italy’s most famous living artists.

The sky this week offers nice viewing!

Sandro Botticelli's iconic goddess of love in his 15th-century masterpiece “Birth of Venus” has now become a “virtual influencer” in a new Italian tourism campaign.

You probably heard something about the line up of five planets visible in our night skies right now, but I have a bit of advice for you space watchers.

There's a special chance this week to see five planets lined up in the night sky.

We’re on to a new year and our January moon is full THIS Friday, and while you’ve heard of Supermoons this one is the opposite: a Micromoon. Supermoons are simply full moons that are closer to Earth in orbit (perigee) while Micromoons are farther away (apogee). While Supermoons are generally 226,000 miles away from Earth, Micromoons are 250,000 miles away--this month’s full moon is 252,600 miles out! Here is a fifteen second video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory illustrating the two:

Leslie Phillips, the British actor best known for his roles in the bawdy “Carry On” comedies and as the voice of the Sorting Hat in the “Harry Potter” movies, has died.

On some clear, crisp nights planets can look as if you could reach out and touch them! That’s often true of everyone’s favorite planet, Venus, especially on beautiful evenings when Venus seems to be courting the moon.

I’ve had several viewers ask about our weekend sky (so crisp and clear!) and just what is off to the side of the crescent moon. That’s Venus and it will pass to the other side tonight. All month you’ll be able to see Venus up there and as the month progresses Saturn and Jupiter show up also:

A joint European-Japanese spacecraft is set to fly by Mercury for the first time on its path to deliver two probes into the planet's orbit in 2025.

Two spacecraft are set to swoop past Venus within hours of each other this week, using the maneuver to do a little bit of bonus science on the way to the center of our solar system.

Venus and Mars will align in planetary conjunction, nearly overlapping each other in the night’s sky on Monday.

A new study is throwing cold water on the possibility of life in the clouds of Venus.

NASA is returning to sizzling Venus, our closest yet perhaps most overlooked neighbor, after decades of exploring other worlds.

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2018, file photo, adult film actress Stormy Daniels attends the opening of the adult entertainment fair "Venus," in Berlin. When Donald Trump left the White House in January 2021, he remained "Individual-1" in the federal campaign finance crimes case against his former attorney, Michael Cohen. The prosecution stemmed from six-figure payments Cohen arranged to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to keep them quiet during the campaign about alleged affairs with Trump. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from porn star Stormy Daniels, who sought to revive a defamation lawsuit she filed against former President Donald Trump. The justices did not comment in leaving in place a lower court ruling dismissing the case.

AdIt used to be -- in the U.S.-- NASA was the only way to fund and send a robotic mission to another world, but not anymore. The company wants to send the first robotic mission to Venus in 2023. (Image credit: Rocket Lab) (Rocket Lab)Meanwhile, NASA is considering funding its own missions to the planet considered Earth’s twin. Currently there are two Venus missions under consideration and two more equally fascinating missions, one designed to study Jupiter’s moon Io and another to Neptune’s moon Triton. AdHere’s what launching a robotic mission to another planet looks like, in a nutshell, according to Wagner:“This is what a typical NASA mission is.

BERLIN – A spacecraft bound for Mercury swung by Venus on Thursday, using Earth's neighbor to adjust its course on the way to the solar system’s smallest and innermost planet. The fly-by is the second of nine so-called planetary gravity assists that the spacecraft needs for its seven-year trip to Mercury. Mercury’s extreme temperatures, the intense gravity pull of the sun and blistering solar radiation make for hellish conditions. BepiColombo will make one more fly-by of Venus and six of Mercury itself to slow down before its arrival in 2025. The last spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA’s Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year orbit.

Astronomers have found a potential sign of life high in the atmosphere of neighboring Venus: hints there may be bizarre microbes living in the sulfuric acid-laden clouds of the hothouse planet. They said it doesn't satisfy the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" standard established by the late Carl Sagan, who speculated about the possibility of life in the clouds of Venus in 1967. “It’s not a smoking gun," said study co-author David Clements, an Imperial College of London astrophysicist. After three astronomers met in a bar in Hawaii, they decided to look that way at the closest planet to Earth: Venus. ... Not a single process we looked at could produce phosphine in high enough quantities to explain our team’s findings.”That leaves life.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Mercury is putting on a rare celestial show next week, parading across the sun in view of most of the world. Unlike its 2016 transit, Mercury will score a near bull's-eye this time, passing practically dead center in front of our star. Earthlings get treated to just 13 or 14 Mercury transits a century. Mercury is 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) in diameter, compared with the sun's 864,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers.) Although the trek will appear slow, Mercury will zoom across the sun at roughly 150,000 mph (241,000 kph).