What's Up? The Space Place

 Hey, Space Placers! HUNTER'S MOON GREG REDFERN Check out the highlights for November 2025 skies. Move the clock back tonight and enjoy the longer hours of the night sky! Sky Guy Back In VA

 Hey, Space Placers! FULL STORY HERE. Sky Guy Back in the USA

 Hey Space Placers! While Earth-based telescopes lost sight of the comet during its close approach to the sun, coronagraphs on spacecraft like STEREO-A, SOHO, and NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite never stopped watching. The composite image, above, shows how the comet looked to these instruments.     CREDIT: SPACEWEATHER.COM " Spacecraft monitoring the sun witnessed a dramatic surge in the brightness of Comet 3I/ATLAS as it plunged toward its Oct. 29th perihelion. Qicheng Zhang (Lowell Observatory) and Karl Battams (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) reported the phenomenon in   a preprint   submitted to the   Astrophysical Journal Letters   on Oct. 28th. "The reason for 3I’s rapid brightening, which far exceeds the brightening rate of most  Oort cloud  comets, remains unclear," the authors say."  FULL STORY. Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is leaving the solar system ANOTHER story on our "alien" Comet 3I/ATLAS. Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS sped toward...

 Hey, Space Placers! View larger . | Transient flashes – momentary light bursts, circled in green – seen in a digitized  astronomical plate  from the Palomar Sky Survey on July 27, 1952. Note that the transients disappear in the 2nd image. Image via Villarroel et al./  Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific . CREDIT: EARTHSKY.ORG  Oh, this is a FASCINATING astronomical mystery! I would have published it on Halloween but I will be on travel getting back home. BE SURE TO WATCH THE VIDEO! Sky Guy in VA

Hey, Space Placers! Full story here. Also from SpaceWeather.com: 3I/ATLAS AT PERIHELION: Is Comet 3I/ATLAS really a spaceship? We’re about to find out. On Oct. 29th, the interstellar object will make its closest approach to the sun. Perihelion is the perfect time to perform a Solar Oberth maneuver or to deploy stealthy probes. If we see any unexpected non-gravitational acceleration, artificial lights, or excess heat (engine activity), it could point to alien tech. Otherwise, 3I/ATLAS is what it appears to be--a comet. Contrary to widespread reports, we can see 3I/ATLAS from Earth, so this will be a legitimate "acid test" of the spaceship hypothesis. All the evidence, not click bait, shows 3I/ATLAS to be a very interesting comet from a solar system other than our own. We will learn much more about it in the ensuing weeks. Sky Guy in the Atlantic Ocean

 Hey, Space Placers! In spiral galaxies like M33 (left), the link between visible matter and gravitational acceleration is well established. Faint dwarf galaxies such as Eridanus II (right) show lower accelerations. The study reveals that their gravitational field cannot be explained by their visible matter alone, and reinforces the need for dark matter. Credit: Credit: ESO/ DSS2 (D. De Martin); DES (S.E. Koposov), composition: AIP ( M. P. Júlio) STORY #1 Decades-old dark matter debate narrows thanks to dwarf galaxies STORY #2 Simulated Milky Way Galaxie  Credit: AIP/ A. Khalatyan Milky Way shows gamma ray excess due to dark matter annihilation Sky Guy in the Atlantic Ocea