Jupiter

Sky-watchers got a beautiful show last month, with the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter decorating the western horizon at nightfall. There is more ahead. Venus and Jupiter continue to grow closer to each other and more spectacular on the horizon. Look to the west after sunset tonight; by late next week, the planets will be 3 degrees apart, according to EarthSky.org. The waxing crescent moon will return to join them by the end of the month. Read more about the opportunities for stargazing this month in this post at EarthSky .

Earth passed between the sun and Jupiter on Sunday night, making the gaseous giant appear its largest and brightest in just over a year. Three other planets are meanwhile lining up for a show in the early mornings. Jupiter reached what is known as opposition, when it is opposite the sun in our sky.  That is making it near its maximum brightness, much brighter than most stars and about as bright as the International Space Station on a good flyover, according to AstronomyNow.com . Not only that, but Jupiter is visible well above the horizon for about 11 hours each night, and several of its moons are visible with binoculars as well, according to the website.

Earth passed between the sun and Jupiter on Sunday night, making the gaseous giant appear its largest and brightest in just over a year. Three other planets are meanwhile lining up for a show in the early mornings. Jupiter reached what is known as opposition, when it is opposite the sun in our sky.  That is making it near its maximum brightness, much brighter than most stars and about as bright as the International Space Station on a good flyover, according to AstronomyNow.com . Not only that, but Jupiter is visible well above the horizon for about 11 hours each night, and several of its moons are visible with binoculars as well, according to the website.

In Monday pool play action at the Cal Ripken World Series in Aberdeen, the Ohio Valley squad from Mattoon, Ill., topped the Harford County team from Forest Hill, while the Southeast team from Jupiter, Fla., picked up its second victory by defeating the Midwest Plains representative from Lamar, Colo. Playing at Fenway Park Monday afternoon, Mattoon dropped the host Forest Hill team, 9-4. Mattoon improved to 1-2, while Forest Hill fell to 0-3. Davis Johnson was Mattoon's top offensive contributor, going 2-for-3 with a double, two RBIs and two runs.

Most of the world's telescopes on the ground and in space will be pointed at Jupiter this summer, watching for a cosmic collision that is certain to happen and waiting to give scientists their first view of the kind of catastrophic event that may have accounted for mass extinctions on Earth long ago and the eventual emergence of humans.A comet, now shattered into at least 21 icy chunks, is zeroing in on the largest planet in the solar system.Scientists have been tracking the course of the comet, Shoemaker-Levy, for more than a year.

In Monday pool play action at the Cal Ripken World Series in Aberdeen, the Ohio Valley squad from Mattoon, Ill., topped the Harford County team from Forest Hill, while the Southeast team from Jupiter, Fla., picked up its second victory by defeating the Midwest Plains representative from Lamar, Colo. Playing at Fenway Park Monday afternoon, Mattoon dropped the host Forest Hill team, 9-4. Mattoon improved to 1-2, while Forest Hill fell to 0-3. Davis Johnson was Mattoon's top offensive contributor, going 2-for-3 with a double, two RBIs and two runs.

They came, they squinted, they saw. Night after starry night this week, earthlings entered the bunker of telescopes at the University of Maryland's observatory and gawked at the effects of the comet-bashing of Jupiter.The observatory, usually a quiet outpost stashed off Metzerott Road in College Park, was downright popular this week. Hundreds of people filled its Open House to hear textbook lectures and stand in line at the $50,000, 20-inch telescope aimed at that news-making white dot to the southwest.

It must be daunting to conduct Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony. It's one of the most often performed, recorded and broadcast pieces in the symphonic repertory. All of us who listen to classical music -- even many of us who don't think we do -- walk around with it in our heads. That is why when many conductors lead this piece there is often a wooden quality to the interpretation, a sense of conducting by the numbers.But when David Zinman conducts Mozart he seems as comfortable as a fish in water.

The comet fragments crashing on Jupiter have proven so visually spectacular that it's justifiable referring to the results as plumes with a view. Watch newscasts, and CNN, for the latest incoming pictures from Jupiter -- and tonight, make sure to watch NBC's "TV Nation," the delightful new series from tenured troublemaker Michael Moore. A good new TV series premiering in the summertime? Maybe it's a side effect of the crashes on Jupiter.* "TV Nation" (8-9 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) Michael Moore is the guy whose guerrilla filmmaking tactics proved so devastatingly funny, yet still relevant, in "Roger & Me."

Astronomers reacted with whoops and slurps of champagne last night as photographs of the impact of the first fragment of comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter showed that it left a bright splotch on the planet's surface.Based on the photo, scientists estimated the size of the first fragment -- among the broken comet's smallest -- at about one kilometer, or 0.6-mile.That's bigger than many predictions, and suggested that the much bigger chunks of rock and ice due to hit the planet thisweek will produce a dramatic display for scientists around the world.

It has been hard not to notice Venus and Jupiter twinkling in the western sky on all the pleasant, clear nights we've had. The view is about to get a little more spectacular. The crescent moon begins to peek out tonight, and over the next several nights will provide some drama in the sky alongside the bright planets. Look just above the western horizon at dusk to find them. Venus is the higher planet, and Jupiter the lower. If you have a decent backyard telescope, you should even be able to see Jupiter's four largest moons orbiting the gaseous giant.

Sky-watchers got a beautiful show last month, with the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter decorating the western horizon at nightfall. There is more ahead. Venus and Jupiter continue to grow closer to each other and more spectacular on the horizon. Look to the west after sunset tonight; by late next week, the planets will be 3 degrees apart, according to EarthSky.org. The waxing crescent moon will return to join them by the end of the month. Read more about the opportunities for stargazing this month in this post at EarthSky .

On this night in 1610 in Padua, Galileo Galilei turned his small telescope toward Jupiter. He saw three "fixed stars" in a straight line - two on one side of Jupiter's disk, one on the other. The next night, all three were on the planet's right side. Galileo soon spied a fourth "star." The quartet seemed to shift positions, or duck behind the planet, nightly, always staying close. He concluded they were moons orbiting Jupiter. By March 12, he'd published his discovery, changing astronomy forever.

It's been nearly two years since Marylanders had their last opportunity to watch a total eclipse of the moon from start to finish. But at the end of 2010, they'll finally get another chance. The stargazers' calendar for 2010 shows the lunar eclipse on Dec. 21 - when the moon slides through the Earth's shadow - will be total from 2:40 a.m. until almost 4 a.m. It's not a convenient hour on any day, and especially taxing when it's cold and you have to work the next day. But if skies are clear, it will be well worth stepping outside to catch at least a few moments of the show.

With a flourish of new images - from exploding stars to colliding galaxies and a new impact scar on Jupiter - NASA officials finally pulled the wraps off the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday, almost four months after astronauts completed a final round of repairs and upgrades. "Hubble is back in action," said Heidi Hammel, senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.. "You're only getting the tiniest taste of what astronomers are planning to do with Hubble over the many years it's going to last."

Using the Hubble Space Telescope to peer straight into the hub of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore have found evidence of 16 more Jupiter-sized planets, each circling its own sun. These new planet candidates are the most distant - some 26,000 light years from Earth - of the more than 200 "extrasolar" planets detected so far. Their abundance, the astronomers say, suggests our galaxy alone may hold...

A Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist has discovered an oxygen atmosphere on Europa, the "ice-moon" of Jupiter. But don't pack your bags.It's 230 degrees below zero out there, 483 million miles from the sun. And the atmosphere at Europa's surface is as wispy as Earth's 150 miles above the ground, near where the space shuttle flies."