Has The COVID-19 Pandemic Really Reduced Pollution In Areas Participating In Lockdowns? Is The Environment

We’re Upgrading Our X-ray Vision!

Think X-ray vision is a superpower found only in comics and movies? Unlike Superman and Supergirl, NASA has it for real, thanks to the X-ray observatories we’ve sent into orbit.

Now the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer – IXPE for short – has shot into space to enhance our superpower!

Meet IXPE

When dentists take X-ray pictures of a tooth, they use a machine that makes X-rays and captures them on a device placed on the opposite side. But X-rays also occur naturally. In astronomy, we observe X-rays made by distant objects to learn more about them.

IXPE will improve astronomers’ knowledge about some of these objects, like black holes, neutron stars, and the expanding clouds made by supernova explosions.

That’s because it will capture a piece of information about X-ray light that has only rarely been measured from space!

X-ray astronomers have learned a lot about the cosmos by measuring three properties of light – when it arrives, where it’s coming from, and what energies it has (think: colors). Picture these characteristics as making up three of the four sides of a pyramid. The missing piece is a property called polarization.

Polarization tells us how organized light is. This gives astronomers additional clues about how the X-rays were made and what matter they’ve passed through on their way to us. IXPE will explore this previously hidden side of cosmic X-ray sources.

What is polarization?

All light, from microwaves to gamma rays, is made from pairs of waves traveling together – one carrying electricity and the other magnetism. These two waves always vibrate at right angles (90°) to each other, with their peaks and valleys in sync, and they also vibrate at right angles to their direction of motion.

To keep things simple, we’ll illustrate only one of these waves – the one carrying electricity. If we could zoom into a typical beam of light, we’d see something like the animation above. It’s a mess, with all the wave peaks pointing in random directions.

When light interacts with matter, it can become better organized. Its electric field can vibrate in a way that keeps all the wave crests pointing in the same direction, as shown above. This is polarized light.

The amount and type of polarization we detect in light tell us more about its origin, as well as any matter it interacted with before reaching us.

Let’s look at the kinds of objects IXPE will study and what it may tell us about them.

Exploring star wrecks

Exploded stars create vast, rapidly expanding clouds called supernova remnants – like the Jellyfish Nebula above. It formed 4,000 years ago, but even today, the remnant’s heart can tell us about the extreme conditions following the star’s explosion.

X-rays give us a glimpse of the powerful processes at work during and after these explosions. IXPE will map remnants like this, revealing how X-rays are polarized across the entire object. This will help us better understand how these celestial cataclysms take place and evolve.

Magnifying supermagnets

Some supernovae leave behind neutron stars. They form when the core of a massive star collapses, squeezing more than our Sun’s mass into a ball only as wide as a city.

The collapse greatly ramps up their spin. Some neutron stars rotate hundreds of times a second! Their magnetic fields also get a tremendous boost, becoming trillions of times stronger than Earth’s. One type, called a magnetar, boasts the strongest magnetic fields known – a thousand times stronger than typical neutron stars.

These superdense, superspinning supermagnets frequently erupt in powerful outbursts (illustrated above) that emit lots of X-rays. IXPE will tell astronomers more about these eruptions and the extreme magnetic fields that help drive them.

Closing in on black holes

Black holes can form when massive stars collapse or when neutron stars crash together. Matter falling toward a black hole quickly settles into a hot, flat structure called an accretion disk. The disk’s inner edge gradually drains into the black hole. Notice how odd the disk appears from certain angles? This happens because the black hole’s extreme gravity distorts the path of light coming from the disk’s far side.

X-rays near the black hole can bounce off the disk before heading to our telescopes, and this polarizes the light. What’s exciting is that the light is polarized differently across the disk. The differences depend both on the energies of the X-rays and on what parts of the disk they strike. IXPE observations will provide astronomers with a detailed picture of what’s happening around black holes in our galaxy that can’t be captured in any other way.

By tracking how X-ray light is organized, IXPE will add a previously unseen dimension to our X-ray vision. It’s a major upgrade that will give astronomers a whole new perspective on some of the most intriguing objects in the universe.

Keep up with what’s happening in the universe and how we study it by following NASA Universe on Twitter and Facebook.

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Black Holes: Seeing the Invisible!

Black holes are some of the most bizarre and fascinating objects in the cosmos. Astronomers want to study lots of them, but there’s one big problem – black holes are invisible! Since they don’t emit any light, it’s pretty tough to find them lurking in the inky void of space. Fortunately there are a few different ways we can “see” black holes indirectly by watching how they affect their surroundings.

Speedy stars

If you’ve spent some time stargazing, you know what a calm, peaceful place our universe can be. But did you know that a monster is hiding right in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy? Astronomers noticed stars zipping superfast around something we can’t see at the center of the galaxy, about 10 million miles per hour! The stars must be circling a supermassive black hole. No other object would have strong enough gravity to keep them from flying off into space.

Two astrophysicists won half of the Nobel Prize in Physics last year for revealing this dark secret. The black hole is truly monstrous, weighing about four million times as much as our Sun! And it seems our home galaxy is no exception – our Hubble Space Telescope has revealed that the hubs of most galaxies contain supermassive black holes.

Shadowy silhouettes

Technology has advanced enough that we’ve been able to spot one of these supermassive black holes in a nearby galaxy. In 2019, astronomers took the first-ever picture of a black hole in a galaxy called M87, which is about 55 million light-years away. They used an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope.

In the image, we can see some light from hot gas surrounding a dark shape. While we still can’t see the black hole itself, we can see the “shadow” it casts on the bright backdrop.

Shattered stars

Black holes can come in a smaller variety, too. When a massive star runs out of the fuel it uses to shine, it collapses in on itself. These lightweight or “stellar-mass” black holes are only about 5-20 times as massive as the Sun. They’re scattered throughout the galaxy in the same places where we find stars, since that’s how they began their lives. Some of them started out with a companion star, and so far that’s been our best clue to find them.

Some black holes steal material from their companion star. As the material falls onto the black hole, it gets superhot and lights up in X-rays. The first confirmed black hole astronomers discovered, called Cygnus X-1, was found this way.

If a star comes too close to a supermassive black hole, the effect is even more dramatic! Instead of just siphoning material from the star like a smaller black hole would do, a supermassive black hole will completely tear the star apart into a stream of gas. This is called a tidal disruption event.

Making waves

But what if two companion stars both turn into black holes? They may eventually collide with each other to form a larger black hole, sending ripples through space-time – the fabric of the cosmos!

These ripples, called gravitational waves, travel across space at the speed of light. The waves that reach us are extremely weak because space-time is really stiff.

Three scientists received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for using LIGO to observe gravitational waves that were sent out from colliding stellar-mass black holes. Though gravitational waves are hard to detect, they offer a way to find black holes without having to see any light.

We’re teaming up with the European Space Agency for a mission called LISA, which stands for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. When it launches in the 2030s, it will detect gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes – a likely sign of colliding galaxies!

Rogue black holes

So we have a few ways to find black holes by seeing stuff that’s close to them. But astronomers think there could be 100 million black holes roaming the galaxy solo. Fortunately, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will provide a way to “see” these isolated black holes, too.

Roman will find solitary black holes when they pass in front of more distant stars from our vantage point. The black hole’s gravity will warp the starlight in ways that reveal its presence. In some cases we can figure out a black hole’s mass and distance this way, and even estimate how fast it’s moving through the galaxy.

For more about black holes, check out these Tumblr posts!

⚫ Gobble Up These Black (Hole) Friday Deals!

⚫ Hubble’s 5 Weirdest Black Hole Discoveries

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Photograph of the Apollo 13 Spacecraft Being Returned to the Prime Recovery Ship, USS Iwo Jima, 4/17/1970

Series: Color Photograph Files, 1965 - 2002. Record Group 255: Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1903 - 2006. 

Apollo 13 was intended to be the third Apollo mission to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida on April 11, 1970. Two days into the flight, damaged wire insulation inside the oxygen tank in the service module ignited, causing an explosion which vented the oxygen tank into space. Without oxygen, the service module became inoperable and the lunar mission quickly turned into a mission to safely return the crew to Earth. The astronauts worked with Mission Control to shut down the command module in order to conserve the remaining oxygen, forcing all three astronauts into the lunar module. The astronauts continued to work with Mission Control to combat one technical failure after another until, on April 17, 1970, the crew landed safely in the South Pacific Ocean.

source: phillyarchives.tumblr.com

Reinventing the Wheel

Planning a trip to the Moon? Mars? You’re going to need good tires…

Exploration requires mobility. And whether you’re on Earth or as far away as the Moon or Mars, you need good tires to get your vehicle from one place to another. Our decades-long work developing tires for space exploration has led to new game-changing designs and materials. Yes, we’re reinventing the wheel—here’s why.

Wheels on the Moon

Early tire designs were focused on moving hardware and astronauts across the lunar surface. The last NASA vehicle to visit the Moon was the Lunar Roving Vehicle during our Apollo missions. The vehicle used four large flexible wire mesh wheels with stiff inner frames. We used these Apollo era tires as the inspiration for new designs using newer materials and technology to better function on a lunar surface.

Up springs a new idea

During the mid-2000s, we worked with industry partner Goodyear to develop the Spring Tire, an airless compliant tire that consists of several hundred coiled steel wires woven into a flexible mesh, giving the tires the ability to support high loads while also conforming to the terrain. The Spring Tire has been proven to generate very good traction and durability in soft sand and on rocks.

Spring Tires for Mars

A little over a year after the Mars Curiosity Rover landed on Mars, engineers began to notice significant wheel damage in 2013 due to the unexpectedly harsh terrain. That’s when engineers began developing new Spring Tire prototypes to determine if they would be a new and better solution for exploration rovers on Mars.

In order for Spring Tires to go the distance on Martian terrain, new materials were required. Enter nickel titanium, a shape memory alloy with amazing capabilities that allow the tire to deform down to the axle and return to its original shape.

These tires can take a lickin’

After building the shape memory alloy tire, Glenn engineers sent it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Life Test Facility. It performed impressively on the punishing track.

Why reinvent the wheel? It’s worth it.

New, high performing tires would allow lunar and Mars rovers to explore greater regions of the surface than currently possible. They conform to the terrain and do not sink as much as rigid wheels, allowing them to carry heavier payloads for the same given mass and volume. Also, because they absorb energy from impacts at moderate to high speeds, there is potential for use on crewed exploration vehicles which are expected to move at speeds significantly higher than the current Mars rovers.

Airless tires on Earth

Maybe. Recently, engineers and materials scientists have been testing a spinoff tire version that would work on cars and trucks on Earth. Stay tuned as we continue to push the boundaries on traditional concepts for exploring our world and beyond.  

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

We marked the 20th anniversary of Pathfinder's landing on Mars this week. 

We have had an active robotic presence there ever since—in fact, no one under 20 has experienced a day without NASA at Mars—but the Pathfinder mission was the first-ever robotic rover to explore the Red Planet. Below are 10 things to know about this iconic mission as we celebrate two decades of unprecedented science and discovery.

1. A Date to Remember

Pathfinder launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Dec. 4, 1996, and landed at Mars' Ares Vallis on July 4, 1997. The landing site, an ancient flood plain in Mars' northern hemisphere, is among the rockiest parts of the planet. Scientists chose it because they believed it was a relatively safe surface to land on and contained a wide variety of rocks deposited during a catastrophic flood.

2. Precious Cargo 

Pathfinder delivered to Mars a tiny, 23-pound (11.5 kilogram) rover named Sojourner, which carried scientific instruments to analyze the Martian atmosphere, climate and geology. To put its small size in perspective, the mechanisms at the end of the Curiosity Rover's robotic arm are heavier than all of Sojourner. You can check out a 360 video of Pathfinder and Sojourner here.

3. Who Named the Rover? 

The name Sojourner was chosen after a year-long, worldwide competition in which students up to 18 years old were invited to write about a historical heroine and how she would translate their accomplishments to the Martian environment. Twelve-year-old Valerie Ambroise of Bridgeport, Connecticut, submitted the winning essay on Sojourner Truth, a Civil War-era abolitionist who made it her mission to "travel up and down the land" advocating for the rights of all people to be free and participate fully in society.

4. Quite the Entrance 

Pathfinder's landing was innovative and unprecedented. It entered the thin Martian atmosphere assisted by parachute to slow its descent and with a giant system of airbags to cushion the impact. This mission marked the first time this airbag technique was used. Spirit and Opportunity later used the same method successfully.

5. Mobile Matters 

The wireless modem between Pathfinder and Sojourner was a commercial, off-the-shelf product. The project team acquired several and stress-tested them until they found the best ones to send off to Mars.

6. It's in the Details 

Sojourner had bumpers—actual mechanical fenders—painted with black and white stripes. It also had two forward-facing black-and-white cameras, and one rear-facing camera (all one-third of a Megapixel). And Sojourner's tiny wheels measured just 12.5 centimeters in diameter.

7. Viral-worthy

Pathfinder was widely regarded as one of the first "internet sensations." There was so much web traffic from around the world, the entire internet backbone of France crashed under the load.

8. We're Getting Warmer 

Among the many scientific discoveries from Pathfinder and Sojourner: Rounded pebbles and cobbles at the landing site suggested that Mars might have had running water during a warmer past when liquid water was stable on the planet. Early morning water ice clouds also were seen in the lower atmosphere.

9. Long Live the Mission 

The lander and the rover both outlived their design lives—the lander by nearly three times, and the rover by 12 times.

10. Pathfinder's Photo Album 

Go back in time and see historical photographs of Pathfinder's assembly process here.

People of OSIRIS-REx

As OSIRIS-REx closes in on its target destination—asteroid Bennu—anticipation is building for the first-ever, close-up glimpse of this small world. It took thousands of people to come this far. Get to know a few members of the team:

1. Carl Hergenrother, Astronomy Working Group Lead & Strategic and Tactical Scientist

Job Location: University of Arizona, Tucson Expertise: Asteroids & Comets Time on mission: Since before there was a mission Age: 45 Hometown: Oakland, New Jersey

“When you’re observing Bennu with a telescope, you see it as a dot. … So when it actually becomes its own little world, it’s really exciting—and almost a little sad. Up until that point, it can be anything. And now, there it is and that’s it.”

2. Heather Roper, Graphic Designer

Job Location: University of Arizona, Tucson Job Title: Graphic Designer Expertise: Visual Communications Time on mission: 5 years Age: 25 Hometown: Tucson, Arizona

“I really like the challenge of visually depicting the science of the mission and getting to show people things that we can’t see.”

3. Jason Dworkin, Project Scientist

Job Location: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland Expertise: Origin-of-life Chemistry Time on mission: Since before there was a mission Age: 49 Hometown: Houston, Texas

"In 10th grade, I had to do a science fair project for biology class. … I wanted to expand on chemistry experiments from old journal papers; but that could have been dangerous. I got in touch with … a pioneering scientist in origin-of-life research and asked for advice. He was worried that I would accidentally injure myself, so he invited me into his lab . . . that helped set my career.”

4. Sara Balram Knutson, Science Operations Lead Engineer

Job Location: University of Arizona, Tucson Expertise: Aerospace Engineering Time on mission: 6 years Age: 31 Hometown: Vacaville, California

“My dad was in the Air Force, so I grew up being a bit of an airplane nerd. When I was in high school, I really liked math, science, and anything having to do with flight. I looked for a field where I could combine all those interests and I found aerospace engineering.”

5. Nancy Neal Jones, Public Affairs Lead

Job Location: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland Expertise: Science Communications Time on mission: 7 years Age: 51 Hometown: New York, New York

“We’re going to a pristine asteroid to take a sample to bring to Earth. This means that my children and grandchildren, if they decide to go into the sciences, may have an opportunity analyze the Bennu samples.”

6. Javier Cerna, Communications System Engineer

Job Location: Lockheed Martin Corporation, Littleton, Colorado Expertise: Electrical Engineering Time on mission: Since before there was a mission Age: 37 Hometown: Born in Mexico City, and raised in Los Angeles, and Las Cruces, New Mexico

“One thing we do is evaluate how strong the signal from the spacecraft is—kind of like checking the strength of the WiFi connection. Basically, we’re ensuring that the link from the spacecraft to the ground, and vice versa, stays strong.”

7. Jamie Moore, Contamination Control Engineer

Job Location: Lockheed Martin Corporation, Littleton, Colorado Expertise: Chemistry Time on mission: 5 years Age: 32 Hometown: Apple Valley, Minnesota & Orlando, Florida

“I was there for just about every deployment of the sampling hardware to make sure it was kept clean and to evaluate the tools engineers were using. I even went to Florida with the spacecraft to make sure it stayed clean until launch.”

8. Mike Moreau, Flight Dynamics System Manager

Job Location: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; Littleton, Colorado Expertise: Mechanical and aerospace engineering Time on mission: 5 years Age: 47 Hometown: Swanton, Vermont

“I grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont, which is a world away from working for NASA. But I can trace a lot of my success as an engineer and a leader back to things that I learned on my dad’s farm.”

9. Johnna L. McDaniel, Contamination Control Specialist

Job Location: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida Expertise: Anti-Contamination Cleaning Time on Mission: 4 months Age: 53 Hometown: Cocoa, Florida

“The clothing requirements depend on the payload. With OSIRIS-Rex, we could not wear any items made with nylon. This was because they have amino acid-based polymers in them and would have contaminated the spacecraft. I even had a special bucket for mopping.”

10. Annie Hasten, Senior Financial Analyst

Job Location: Lockheed Martin Corporation, Steamboat Springs, Colorado Expertise: Business Time on Mission: 1.5 years Age: 30 Hometown: Littleton, Colorado

“I think it’s a pleasure to work with people who are so intensely passionate about their jobs. These engineers are doing their dream jobs, so you feed off of that positive energy.”

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Why Webb Needs to Chill

Our massive James Webb Space Telescope just recently emerged from about 100 days of cryogenic testing to make sure it can work perfectly at incredibly cold temperatures when it’s in deep space. 

How cold did it get and why? Here’s the whole scoop...

Webb is a giant infrared space telescope that we are currently building. It was designed to see things that other telescopes, even the amazing Hubble Space Telescope, can’t see.  

Webb’s giant 6.5-meter diameter primary mirror is part of what gives it superior vision, and it’s coated in gold to optimize it for seeing infrared light.  

Why do we want to see infrared light?

Lots of stuff in space emits infrared light, so being able to observe it gives us another tool for understanding the universe. For example, sometimes dust obscures the light from objects we want to study – but if we can see the heat they are emitting, we can still “see” the objects to study them.

It’s like if you were to stick your arm inside a garbage bag. You might not be able to see your arm with your eyes – but if you had an infrared camera, it could see the heat of your arm right through the cooler plastic bag.

Credit: NASA/IPAC

With a powerful infrared space telescope, we can see stars and planets forming inside clouds of dust and gas.

We can also see the very first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe. These objects are so far away that…well, we haven’t actually been able to see them yet. Also, their light has been shifted from visible light to infrared because the universe is expanding, and as the distances between the galaxies stretch, the light from them also stretches towards redder wavelengths. 

We call this phenomena “redshift.”  This means that for us, these objects can be quite dim at visible wavelengths, but bright at infrared ones. With a powerful enough infrared telescope, we can see these never-before-seen objects.

We can also study the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. Many of the elements and molecules we want to study in planetary atmospheres have characteristic signatures in the infrared.

Because infrared light comes from objects that are warm, in order to detect the super faint heat signals of things that are really, really far away, the telescope itself has to be very cold. How cold does the telescope have to be? Webb’s operating temperature is under 50K (or -370F/-223 C). As a comparison, water freezes at 273K (or 32 F/0 C).

How do we keep the telescope that cold? 

Because there is no atmosphere in space, as long as you can keep something out of the Sun, it will get very cold. So Webb, as a whole, doesn’t need freezers or coolers - instead it has a giant sunshield that keeps it in the shade. (We do have one instrument on Webb that does have a cryocooler because it needs to operate at 7K.)

Also, we have to be careful that no nearby bright things can shine into the telescope – Webb is so sensitive to faint infrared light, that bright light could essentially blind it. The sunshield is able to protect the telescope from the light and heat of the Earth and Moon, as well as the Sun.  

Out at what we call the Second Lagrange point, where the telescope will orbit the Sun in line with the Earth, the sunshield is able to always block the light from bright objects like the Earth, Sun and Moon.

How do we make sure it all works in space? 

By lots of testing on the ground before we launch it. Every piece of the telescope was designed to work at the cold temperatures it will operate at in space and was tested in simulated space conditions. The mirrors were tested at cryogenic temperatures after every phase of their manufacturing process.

The instruments went through multiple cryogenic tests at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Once the telescope (instruments and optics) was assembled, it even underwent a full end-to-end test in our Johnson Space Center’s giant cryogenic chamber, to ensure the whole system will work perfectly in space.  

What’s next for Webb? 

It will move to Northrop Grumman where it will be mated to the sunshield, as well as the spacecraft bus, which provides support functions like electrical power, attitude control, thermal control, communications, data handling and propulsion to the spacecraft.

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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What is a Supermoon Lunar Eclipse?

We’ve told you that on Sept. 27 a supermoon lunar eclipse will occur in the U.S. And much of the world, but what does that mean?

One important note, is that this event can be referred to in many different ways: 

Supermoon Lunar Eclipse

Super Blood Moon

Harvest Moon Eclipse

Supermoon Eclipse

All slightly different names, but apply to the same spectacular event that will occur this weekend. 

Since it’s rare that both a supermoon and an lunar eclipse occur at the same time, let’s break it down. 

1) Supermoon

A supermoon is a full or new moon that falls closest to the fall equinox, and is at its closest approach to the Earth. This results in the moon appearing up to 14% larger in diameter.

2) Lunar Eclipse 

A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly behind the Earth into its shadow. This can give the moon a red tint.

3) A Supermoon Lunar Eclipse!

The combination of these two events does not happen very often. In fact, since 1900 a supermoon lunar eclipse has only happened 5 times! The last time this occurred was 1982, and if you miss the event this year, your next opportunity won’t come until 2033.

This year, the event will be visible from the Americas, Europe and Africa on the night of Sept. 27. Here’s a full schedule of the supermoon eclipse:

If it’s cloudy in your area on Sept. 27, don’t worry! NASA Television will be providing a live stream of the event, so you can tune in and enjoy the show. 

For more information and resources on the supermoon lunar eclipse, visit our page on NASA.gov.

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@mothdog: What is something everyone needs to know about the International Space Station and science in space?

What’s Up for June 2016?

What's Up for June? Saturn at its best! Plus, good views of Mars, Jupiter and Jupiter's moons continue from dusk to dawn.

You don't have to stay up late to see Jupiter, Mars and Saturn this month, because they're all visible soon after sunset. Jupiter is the brightest of the three, visible in the western sky all evening. 

The four Galilean moons are easily visible in binoculars or telescopes. If you think you're seeing 5 moons on June 10th, you're not. One of them is a distant star in the constellation Leo.

For telescope viewers, the time near Mars' closest approach to Earth, May 30th this year, is the best time to try to see the two moons of Mars: Phobos and Deimos. It takes patience, very steady skies and good charts! Mars is still large and bright in early June, but it fades as speedy Earth, in its shorter orbit around the sun, passes it.

Saturn has been close to Mars recently. This month Saturn reaches opposition, when Saturn, Earth and the sun are in a straight line with Earth in the middle, providing the best and closest views of the ringed beauty and several of its moons. You'll be able to make out cloud bands on Saturn, in delicate shades of cream and butterscotch. They're fainter than the bands of Jupiter. Through a telescope you'll see Saturn's rings tilted about as wide as they get: 26 degrees.

You'll also have a ring-side view of the Cassini division, discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, namesake of our Cassini spacecraft, orbiting Saturn since 2004 and continuing through September 2017. When you look at Saturn through a telescope, you can't help but see several of its 4 brightest moons, and maybe more. If you just see one, that's Titan, 50% larger than our own moon. A telescope can also reveal more moons, like Saturn's two-colored moon Iapetus. It takes 3 months to orbit Saturn, and it's fairly easy to see.

There's a bright comet visible this month, Comet PanSTARRS. It's best seen from the southern hemisphere, but it's also visible from the U.S. low in the morning sky. Comet PanSTARRS can be seen through a telescope near the beautiful Helix Nebula on June 4, but it is visible all month.

Watch the full June “What’s Up” video for more: https://youtu.be/M7RtIa9zBYA

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