Orion, The Great Hunter

Apollo 16 rollout attracts a crowd at the Vehicle Assembly Building, 9 February 1972.

Two spiral galaxies, NGC 6040 and NGC 6039, are merging together at the right side of this Hubble image. NGC 6039 is seen face-on and is circular in shape. NGC 6040 seems to lie in front of the first one. In the lower-left corner, cut off by the frame, the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041 — a central member of the galaxy cluster that Arp 122 resides in — appears as light radiating from a point. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions

Andromeda, If It Was Brighter

One of the largest structures in the night sky is visible with the naked eye, but if you live in a city, it's literally hiding just out of sight. Even in a dark area, it's not the easiest to immediately see, but the above image has brightened it up for us, to show us what the galaxy would look like, if only the sky was dark enough and the galaxy was a bit brighter.

The moon comparison is the best one, that is something we can all see in the night sky (unless you live in the UK, where you see mostly clouds).

Now imagine that galaxy stretching several moon-spans across the sky. That I hope gives you a minor taste of what it's like when using a small telescope or even binoculars, you first come across it.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then it's well worth the search.

Near sunset, look for 3 objects which should be easy to locate, Venus and Jupiter (I'll come to this in a moment) low in the sky, the W of Cassiopeia and the Seven Sisters (Pleiades), and from that, you should find the location. Bare in mind it's several times the size of the moon, so you don't have to be too accurate, but if you can find the stars of Andromeda, that will help refine your search.

And finally that brings me on to the real star of the sky currently, Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets, very close together.

In fact, if you do have a really good pair of binoculars, or small telescope, this is a great time to view them. Venus often appears as a crescent like a phase of the moon, and Jupiter has it's 4 Galilean moons to spot.

Happy Spotting !

The four giant planets of our Solar System, as seen by NASA's James Webb Telescope.

Titan's high-level haze taken by Cassini on October 12, 2010.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Edited by J. Major.

Earth, which is about 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away in this image, captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft 🚀

Do you ever think about the infinite

Comet Leonard

NGC 6744

via APOD/NASA; Credit: NASA, ESA, and the LEGUS team