HD - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

A new NASA-funded planet-hunting instrument has been installed on the WIYN telescope, on Arizona's Kitt Peak. NEID (pronounced NOO-id) is a spectrometer that is one of the first instruments of its kind with the precision to detect small, terrestrial planets around nearby stars. NEID will also confirm the presence of planets discovered by NASA's TESS space telescope, and reveal details of their anatomy.

Eventually, scientists want to be able to find Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars, in an effort to find a world with life on it.

What are the skywatching highlights of January 2020? The peak of the Quadrantid meteor shower, Mars rises with its "rival" — the red giant star Antares — and the Moon and Venus pair up.

On Dec. 17, 2019, engineers took NASA’s next Mars rover for its first spin. The test took place in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This was the first drive test for the new rover, which will move to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the beginning of next year to prepare for its launch to Mars in the summer.

What can you see in the December sky? Beautiful pairings of Venus, Saturn and Mars with the crescent Moon throughout the month, at sunrise and sunset.

Could Mars ever have supported life? In the Australian Outback, scientists from NASA’s upcoming Mars 2020 mission and their counterparts from the joint European-Russian ExoMars mission visited the oldest convincing evidence for life on Earth to prepare for their own searches for signs of ancient life on Mars. The field lesson in astrobiology in the Pilbara region is being applied in the near term by NASA, ESA and Roscosmos for mission planning, and will also pay dividends when both rovers begin to send back science data and imagery from the Red Planet.

See how the odd orbits Neptune's inner moons Naiad and Thalassa enable them to avoid each other, as they race around the planet. Researchers call it a "dance of avoidance." An observer sitting on Thalassa would see Naiad in an orbit that varies wildly in a zig-zag pattern, passing by twice from above and then twice from below. This up, up, down, down pattern repeats every time Naiad gains four laps on Thalassa. This repeating pattern is called a resonance.

Highlights of the November sky include how to watch as Mercury transits the Sun on Nov. 11, plus how to observe the regular dimming and brightening of the "Demon star," Algol, with your own eyes. Additional information, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://go.nasa.gov/34hp376 . Algol animation is licensed as CC-BY-SA 3.0. Video credit NASA-JPL/Caltech.

NASA's InSight lander on Mars is trying to use its robotic arm to get the mission’s heat flow probe, or mole, digging again. InSight team engineer Ashitey Trebbi-Ollennu, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, explains what has been attempted and the game plan for the coming weeks. The next tactic they'll try will be "pinning" the mole against the hole it's in.

What can you see in the October sky? Join the global celebration of International Observe the Moon Night on Oct. 5th, then try to catch the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune, which are well placed for viewing in the late night sky.

In this month's sky, look for lovely crescent Moons at the start and end of the month. The September equinox brings the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere. And Mars is at solar conjunction, meaning it has disappeared from night skies! (When will it return?) More info at https://go.nasa.gov/2Hx3bMn