Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i BBC Sky at Night

In a major new discovery, scientists have detected bio-essential sugars – including ribose and, for the first time in an extraterrestrial source, glucose – in pristine samples returned to Earth from asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The international team of US, Japanese and NASA researchers found ribose – the sugar backbone of RNA – and glucose, the six-carbon sugar that fuels living cells on Earth. “This changes everything we thought we knew about where life's raw materials could have originated,” says the study's lead researcher Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University. “All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples. The new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present…

Airbus ordered an immediate software update for its A320 family of planes after an in-flight incident revealed that intense solar radiation could corrupt essential flight controls. Regulators issued emergency guidance, prompting many operators to briefly ground aircraft while fixes were applied. The scope was large: Airbus estimates around 6,000 jets worldwide were affected. Most required a straightforward software update that took around two hours, while a smaller group needed more extensive hardware modifications. The action was prompted after an investigation into an incident in October in which JetBlue flight 1230 from Cancún to Newark had to make an emergency landing in Florida. The A320 involved suffered a flight-control issue that caused a sudden drop in altitude, leaving some passengers with non-life-threatening injuries. During the investigation, a vulnerability to solar flares…

A peculiar class of fungi known for thriving in extreme radiation environments is raising questions about whether such organisms could one day be engineered into living shields for astronauts. Interest in radiation-resistant fungi surged after the discovery of Cladosporium sphaerospermum growing on the walls of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A 2007 study found it appeared to turn radiation into energy, potentially in a similar way to plants using light during photosynthesis. In 2022, an experiment aboard the ISS showed that a thin layer of the fungus reduced radiation levels by roughly 2 per cent. Although small, the finding hinted at potential future applications. Cosmic radiation remains one of the greatest challenges for human space exploration, particularly for long-duration missions to Mars. Traditional shielding requires heavy materials like water, polyethylene…

Email us at inbox@skyatnightmagazine.com I know I'm only 12 (nearly 13), but I have taken great pics of the Moon I want to share with you. The first is of the Eyes of Clavius, which is a clair-obscur effect where two craters inside the crater Clavius look like eyes. In the second picture, I managed to get your December Moonwatch target Scheiner, along with craters Tycho and Clavius (captured on 30 November). In the third picture, you can see the Jewelled Handle clair-obscur effect, along with the rays of crater Copernicus. The final picture is Taruntius, your January Moonwatch target. I'm really pleased with myself! Bailey Redmayne, via email MESSAGE OF THE MONTH You should be pleased, Bailey. These are great shots for your age! Congratulations on getting so many…

As long as humans have looked up, we've pictured space as an ocean to be navigated – stars, planets and moons as destinations, islands of exile and adventure, where shipwrecked astronauts await rescue or cosmic empires clash. Popular culture in all its forms – but particularly in cinema – has imagined all manner of fanciful ways for us to sail the breadth of the heavens, from the outlandish to the futuristic – whether borne by geese, fired by cannons or hurled by warp drives. Reality, however, is trickier (and more expensive), bound as we are by the laws of physics rather than the more forgiving laws of storytelling. The Voyager probes, after almost 50 years of steady plodding, are only now brushing the outer shores of our Solar System. And…

In 2024, NASA's Perseverance rover spotted an arrowhead-shaped rock in Mars's Jezero Crater some 1 metre x 0.6 metres (3.2ft x 2ft) in size, coated with what look like colourful ‘leopard spots’. These patterns, NASA reported, might have been deposited by microbial life. Perseverance, along with its predecessor Curiosity, remain our best chance of uncovering ‘groundtruth’ evidence of life on Mars, if it ever existed. Beyond Mars, NASA's Europa Clipper, launched in 2024, is on course to reach Jupiter's icy moon in 2030, where it will seek further evidence of its putative ocean, assess its habitability and help pinpoint landing sites for future surface missions. Europe's Juice, also launched in 2024, will probe Callisto, Europa and Ganymede with radar, laser altimetry and magnetometry. Set to launch in 2028, NASA's Dragonfly…

Are most stars really in pairs and multiple systems? Astronomers aren't sure, because the answer depends on red dwarfs – the faint, hard-to-study stars that vastly outnumber Sun-like ones. Current estimates suggest about 50 to 60 per cent of red dwarfs are single, which could make solo stars the true majority. So why are so many red dwarfs loners? One reason could be that the low mass and weak gravity of red dwarf systems makes them more prone to disruption. Another is that smaller gas and dust globules are less likely to split into multiple star-forming cores in the first place. Star formation tends to proceed in a hierarchy, with the most massive stars in a new collapsing nebula forming first. As they emerge from their cocoons, powerful radiation and…

Venus Best time to see: 28 February, 30 minutes after sunset Altitude: 5° (low) Location: Aquarius Direction: West Venus is an improving evening planet. At the start of February mag. –3.8 Venus sets 30 minutes after sunset, but by the end of the month this will have increased to 1 hour and 20 minutes. A thin 1%-lit Moon sits between Mercury and Venus on 18 February. On 28 February, Venus and Mercury will be in conjunction, although Mercury will be dim. Mars Too close to the Sun to be seen. Jupiter Best time to see: 1 February, 22:48 UT Altitude: 60° Location: Gemini Direction: South Extremely well placed, reaching its highest position, when due south, under true darkness all month. Located in Gemini, close to the star Wasat (Delta (δ) Geminorum), Jupiter is close to its…

Minor planet 511 Davida reaches opposition on 23 February, when it will be north of Leo in the small constellation of Leo Minor. At mag. +10.6, Davida will be too faint for binoculars but within reach of small telescopes. It starts the month in Leo, 0.4° south of mag. +6.5 64 Leonis, then arcs gently northwest to finish the month 1° south of mag. +6.1 44 Leonis Minoris. This region is north of Leo's back and well placed for asteroid hunting all month. The Moon will be present at the start and end of February, so mid-month offers the best chance to track Davida. 511 Davida is a large asteroid measuring 357km x 294km x 231km, giving it a mean diameter of 298km. That ranks it in the top 10…

Once a Sun-like star dies, all that remains of it is a white dwarf. This is the star's core – once a nuclear furnace, now compacted under gravity. A white dwarf is only about the size of Earth, yet crams in anywhere up to 1.44 times the mass of our Sun, depending upon the mass of the star it came from. We call this maximum mass the Chandrasekhar limit – any more massive and it would explode as a supernova. Our Sun will leave behind a white dwarf of about half a solar mass. White dwarfs are born hot; one of the hottest is RX J0439.8-6809, located 30,000 lightyears away and blazing at 250,000°C (450,000°F). The closest white dwarf, on the other hand, is Sirius B, partner to the famous…

NOW OPEN FOR ENTRIES! The Royal Observatory Greenwich has officially opened entries for ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2026, the world's premier astrophotography competition – and this year's contest is shaping up to be bigger than ever. With entries open from 5 January to midday on 2 March 2026, the contest invites photographers worldwide to submit up to 10 of their best night-sky images of 2025 for a chance to be named Astronomy Photographer of the Year. The overall winner will take home £10,000, with category winners earning £1,500, runners-up £500 and highly commended entries awarded £250. Open to all ages and experience levels, the competition celebrates both technical excellence and artistic creativity. There's also a category for under 16s. So what are you waiting for? Get your entries…

If you want to capture Jupiter in all its intricate glory, there's one big challenge: the planet spins so fast that details blur during longer imaging runs. The good news is you can ‘turn back time’ on Jupiter using a technique called de-rotation. Jupiter is currently prominent in the evening sky, reaching a very respectable altitude for Northern Hemisphere observers. It's a bright planet, shining at magnitude –2.4, and thanks to its detailed, complex atmosphere that changes noticeably over time, it's a prime candidate for imaging. Gear up for detail However, if you point a smart telescope at it, you may be disappointed with what you see. A small telescope might fare better, delivering a reasonable – albeit miniature – view that you can capture by simply pointing a smartphone…

FREE BONUS CONTENT Find our extended Gallery at www.skyatnightmagazine.com/bonus-content PHOTO OF THE MONTH The Soul Nebula Ron Brecher, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, 22 November 2025 Ron says: “I used a colour camera and two Optolong filters to capture SII, Ha and OIII emissions, then processed them in the Foraxx palette. I'm very pleased with the result.” Equipment: QHYCCD QHY367C Pro camera, Sky-Watcher Esprit 70EDX refractor, Software Bisque Paramount MX mount Exposure: SII/OIII 172x 5’, Ha/OIII 191x 5’, 30h 15’ total Software: PixInsight Ron's top tips: “Thanks to new narrowband filters, modern one-shot-colour cameras can produce beautiful images in hues that used to be the exclusive domain of mono cameras, such as the true Hubble palette (SHO) or the Foraxx palette used here.” The Pleiades Amit Sharma, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK, 18 November…

What is a gamma-ray burst? Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are intense sources of high-energy radiation that we detect on Earth in the form of gamma rays. They were first detected in the 1960s by US military satellites looking for nuclear detonations on Earth, which saw bright bursts of gamma rays coming from the sky. They didn't know what they were, but that was how the term was coined. It wasn't until much later that we started to understand the physical processes that might cause them. How do we detect GRBs? Primarily we use widefield, high-energy monitoring, typically with space telescopes that see a very large part of the sky at a time. They scan everything at once and pick up anything that looks like a bright pulse compared to the background…

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 15 DECEMBER 2025 Meet NGC 4388, a glorious edge-on spiral galaxy that holds something of a cosmic mystery. Hubble previously captured it in 2016, but this new image reveals a feature that has never been observed before. Look just below right of centre and you'll see ghostly blue clouds of gas. These plumes are thought to consist of gas stripped from the galaxy as it zooms through the intracluster medium – the wisps of hot gas that inhabit the seemingly empty space between member galaxies in a galaxy cluster. Why the plume is glowing is less clear, but it may be because it's being blasted by powerful radiation from a supermassive black hole lurking at the galaxy's centre. FREE BONUS CONTENT Explore a gallery of these and…

A launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan has left Russia's only active pad certified for human spaceflight severely damaged, raising doubts over future crewed launches. The damage occurred on 27 November, when the rocket Soyuz MS-28 lifted off successfully from Baikonur, carrying two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut to the International Space Station. After lift-off, engineers discovered the pad's service platform had collapsed into the flame trench, disabling the facility for future crewed launches. “The launch pad was inspected, as is done every time a rocket is launched. Damage to several launch pad components was identified,” Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, said in a statement. The agency adds: “All necessary spare components are available and the damage will be repaired shortly.” However, experts have warned that repairs could take as…

An international team of scientists have found evidence that monster stars 1,000 to 10,000 times the mass of our Sun existed a mere billion years after the Big Bang. The find could answer a decades-old mystery: how supermassive black holes appeared so soon after the Universe's creation, when there hadn't been enough time for normal stars to produce them. Using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data, researchers found unusual chemical signatures in galaxy GS 3073: an extreme imbalance of nitrogen to oxygen that no known type of star can explain. Devesh Nandal from the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, co-author of the paper, explains: “Chemical abundances act like a cosmic fingerprint, and the pattern in GS 3073 is unlike anything that ordinary stars can produce. Its extreme nitrogen matches only one…

New high-resolution images from NASA and ESA show comet 3I/ATLAS in an unexpectedly active state, with a bright coma, jet-like features and evidence for both a dust tail and a plasma tail. The pictures, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), give astronomers a rare, multiangle look at only the third confirmed interstellar object to visit the Solar System. Hubble's view shows a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust around the nucleus and a faint jet structure. Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky, which allowed the agencies to get a crisp view of the coma. Closer in, the Juice probe imaged 3I/ATLAS with its NavCam, producing a teaser photo that shows a glowing coma and hints of two tails. Complete data on…

Back in 2013, I was living in North London with my best friend and two Italian dudes. One evening, Wendy, the best friend in question, found me staring out of the window. She asked what had me so transfixed. It was, of course, the Moon. Sometimes, especially when it's full, I just look up at our beautiful natural satellite and can't stop staring. The longer I look, the more detail I see. Here's an embarrassing fact: not only do I not own a telescope, but I didn't even look at the Moon through one until October 2021. I was heading to the North Yorkshire Moors for a weekend away and borrowed a lovely 10-inch Dobsonian from the University of Birmingham's student astronomical society. I set it up outside the holiday…

Movie spaceships have always walked an entertaining line between scientific credibility and the needs of the story. The clumsy ones fail in two predictable ways: by stretching dramatic licence until it snaps (think Mark Watney's daft rocket glove thruster scene in The Martian) or by flaunting ‘scientific accuracy’ so self-consciously that the story suffers as a result (Mark Watney's expositional video diaries, again in The Martian). Often the first rule of writing seems to get forgotten: show, don't tell. A movie's quality isn't necessarily a metric of its scientific accuracy. The best examples, like Alien's gritty Nostromo, weave science so seamlessly into the film that it disappears from view. We're gripped by the story because of the skill of the writer. Great science fiction has never been purely about science;…

In September 2025, NASA reported the first tantalising hints of a potential biosignature – a scientifically testable indicator of past or present extraterrestrial life – on the surface of Mars. The discovery by NASA's Perseverance rover of leopardskin-like spots on a rock from the Red Planet's Jezero Crater sparked great public excitement: it was the first persuasive evidence of biological activity on a world outside our own. But NASA cautioned that the find required “further study” before conclusions could be reached, raising the question: what might count as proof of alien life? The scientific community tends to employ ‘confidence of life’ detection scales: a multi-step ‘ladder’ that begins, as with Perseverance's discovery, with the initial detection of possible biosignatures. Other biosignatures may be observed indirectly, perhaps through the disequilibrium of…

The constellation of Leo, the Lion marches proudly across the winter night sky, sitting highest when due south, close to midnight during February. Leo's head is well defined by a classic asterism known as the Sickle. It looks like a backwards question mark, the ‘dot’ of which is bright Regulus (Alpha (α) Leonis). But at the other end, marking the top of Leo's head, is mag. +3.9 Rasalas (Mu (μ) Leonis). Its original name was Rasalasad Borealis, an awkward conjoining of Arabic and Latin, meaning the ‘northern part of Leo's head’. Rasalas is 124 lightyears from Earth and classed as a K2 IIIb CN1 Ca1 type star, meaning it's a red giant with an abundance of carbon and strong calcium lines in its spectrum. Rasalas certainly has more metal than…

Billions of years before our Sun dies, it's likely it will have already rendered Earth uninhabitable. As stars age, they grow increasingly luminous, and with that extra luminosity comes extra heating. In about a billion years, the Sun's increasing incandescence will start to evaporate the oceans, turning the atmosphere steamy. The resulting runaway greenhouse effect will only exacerbate the loss of the oceans. This is when most scientists think that life on Earth will come to an end. But a study by Yutaka Abe and Ayako Abe-Ouchi of the University of Tokyo, Norman Sleep at Stanford University and NASA's Kevin Zahnle has revealed how Earth could still retain its habitability after such a catastrophe. If our planet was able to lose most of its evaporated water to space before the…

Meteors are remnants from the creation of our Solar System that burn up when they hit Earth's atmosphere. As they vaporise, typically 80km to 120km (50–75 miles) above the ground, they leave a trail of electrically charged particles that reflect radio waves back to Earth – and that's something you can detect. The UK Meteor Beacon project does exactly that and it's open to anyone who wants to take part. This collaboration between the worlds of amateur astronomy and radio has established a transmitter near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, England. This transmitter beams upwards, illuminating a region with a diameter of over 400km (250 miles). When meteors streak through, the signal is reflected off their charged particles, producing ‘echoes’ that you can observe using simple, inexpensive equipment. If you live within…

STEP 1 On a clear, steady night, take multiple captures of Jupiter. For a colour camera, aim for around 90 seconds; for mono with RGB filters, keep to around 30–60 seconds. Going up to 50% longer isn't a major issue, but avoid unnecessary length. Then process your video with registration software, such as AutoStakkert! STEP 2 Once your captures are processed, open WinJUPOS and select ‘Recording > Image measurement’. This registers each image with its capture details, size and rotation. Click ‘Open image’ (F7) and open your first image. An overlay will appear; resize and orientate to match Jupiter's disc using the ‘Adj.’ tab. STEP 3 Press ‘F11’ to initiate auto-detection. If that fails, use the cursor keys to position the frame centrally over Jupiter's disc, then resize with ‘PgUp’…

VITAL STATS Price £631 per eyepiece Focal lengths 5.5mm, 9mm, 14mm, 19mm Apparent field of view 82° (all) Eye relief 19mm (all) Optical elements 7 Barrel size 1.25-inch and 2-inch Extras Dust caps Weight 587g, 547g, 556g, 581g Supplier First Light Optics www.firstlightoptics.com These four Nagler Type-7 eyepieces are based on Tele Vue's much-loved limited-edition Apollo 11 eyepiece created for the 50th anniversary of the Moon landings (indeed, Tele Vue's founder Al Nagler designed the optical system for the Apollo landing simulator). They aim to provide full-field sharpness across an expansive 82° field of view. With the promise of comfortable eye relief for spectacle wearers and parfocality across the series, we were excited to try them on some seasonal targets. We tested all four on two scopes: a William Optics…

An unprecedented surge in satellite launches is threatening space-based astronomy, with a new study warning that more than 96 per cent of images from space telescopes could be spoiled by satellites. Published in Nature and led by NASA scientists, the study models how planned megaconstellations of low-Earth-orbit satellites will affect four telescopes: the Hubble Space Telescope and SPHEREx, plus ESA's ARRAKIHS and China's Xuntian, currently both still in development. With orbiting satellites projected to reach roughly 560,000 by the late 2030s, researchers estimate that almost all images from SPHEREx, ARRAKIHS and Xuntian will be marred by streaks, light pollution or other interference. Hubble may avoid some of the impact, thanks to its narrower field of view, but roughly 40 per cent of its images are still at risk. Lead author…

A researcher from the University of Tokyo says he has detected what may be the first direct signal from dark matter, a finding that could reshape cosmology – if confirmed. Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Tomonori Totani and his team claim to have observed a faint, halo-like glow of gamma rays from the centre of the Milky Way, and that the signal matches predictions for radiation produced when dark-matter particles collide and annihilate each other. Dark matter has remained elusive since it was proposed a century ago to explain why galaxies don't fly apart. Because its particles are thought not to interact with electromagnetic forces, it doesn't absorb, reflect or emit light – making it invisible to conventional observation. By targeting regions where dark matter is concentrated,…

NASA's Perseverance rover has detected electric sparks in dust storms on Mars, suggesting the planet's atmosphere may be more electrically active than previously thought. This is the first direct evidence of electrical discharges on the Red Planet and could reshape our understanding of the Martian climate, but also complicate future missions and the search for evidence of past life. Dust storms have long been known to lift fine particles into Mars's thin atmosphere, but the new findings show those particles can build up enough static charge to trigger electrical discharges. On Earth, similar processes trigger lightning within dust storms or volcanic ash clouds. The detection occurred during the monitoring of dust devils near the rim of Jezero Crater, when Perseverance's SuperCam microphone picked up a series of sounds – brief,…

The Artemis programme is NASA's renewed effort to not only return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, but ultimately to establish a permanent lunar base. This sustained presence on the Moon is seen as a key stepping stone for human missions to Mars and beyond. This base will likely be built near the lunar south pole, where certain locations offer critical advantages, including uninterrupted sunlight during the month, direct communications with Earth, and possible access to water-ice in permanently shadowed craters. But there's one major hazard to any future Moon base: the constant rain of micrometeoroids. These fast-moving dust particles and fragments of rock weigh up to 10g (0.35oz) – that's far too small to create significant craters on the surface, but nonetheless…

Just because you share a delight in the night sky with the fellow astronomers in your club, that doesn't mean you're going to get on. There might be enough in common to share an evening enthusing over the latest smart telescope, but spend a few nights together in a telescope control room, or work together on a new club initiative, and suddenly you might find you're rubbing each other up the wrong way. Equally, your nocturnal activities may become a major source of strain in the relationship with your partner. When you receive a snarky comment for getting up at 3am (again) to tend to your telescope, or for spending “How much??!” on the latest gadget, what do you do? The simple truth is: ignore the problem at your peril!…

As far as we know, life in our Solar System emerged only here on Earth – the Sun's ‘Goldilocks’ planet – under conditions that were just right for liquid water to exist. Only here did life's ingredients take root. Only here did water, nutrients, an energy source, a clement atmosphere, survivable temperatures and pressures, and benign radiation fall happily into equilibrium. Not long after its formation, the earliest life stirred. Multilayered ‘microbial mats’, fossilised ‘stromatolites’ – sediments created by photosynthetic organisms – and precipitates from hydrothermal vents have been found that are at least 3.5 billion years old. Life, it seems, favoured Earth as enthusiastically as the fairytale Goldilocks favoured the baby bear's perfect porridge. But there are tantalising signs elsewhere in the Solar System that point to alien life…

When astronomers survey bright stars that have the same mass as our Sun or greater, they find that most have at least one companion. Stellar singletons like our Sun are the exception to the rule. So what made our local star a loner? Born to be social Thanks to gravity working on a variety of scales, stars are naturally gregarious. They're born in their hundreds or thousands inside collapsing clouds of gas and dust, and spend their early lives huddled together as star clusters that take millions of years to drift apart (and sometimes never do). Many stars remain bound for life on a closer level, as binaries or multiple-star systems, whose individual members orbit a shared centre of gravity. Telescopes can only pick out the individual stars in such…

PICK OF THE MONTH Mercury Best time to see: 19 February, from 30 minutes after sunset Altitude: 11° Location: Aquarius Direction: West-southwest Features: Phase, subtle surface features through larger scopes Recommended equipment: 100mm or larger Mercury is always a challenge, but February gives us a good chance. For evening appearances at this time of year, the steep angle of the ecliptic to the western horizon at sunset really works in our favour. Because Mercury, like all the main planets, is always relatively close to the ecliptic, this steep tilt means it stays above the horizon longer after sunset, giving us extra viewing time. Note: if you go hunting for Mercury, for safety always wait until the Sun has fully set. Greatest eastern elongation is when Mercury is at its farthest position from the Sun…

1. The Meissa Cluster If you look at Orion's head through binoculars, you'll see that it's a small colourful star cluster. The dozen or so stars you can resolve are dominated by brilliant white mag. +3.5 Meissa (Lambda (λ) Orionis). The other two bright stars in the field of view are the sapphire-blue mag. +4.4 Phi1 (φ1) and the yellow mag. +4.1 Phi2 (φ2) Orionis, which is actually a foreground star, not a true member of the cluster. □ SEEN IT 2. Collinder 65 Use the arrowhead of bright stars at the top of Orion – mag. +0.5 Betelgeuse (Alpha (α) Orionis), Meissa and mag. +1.6 Bellatrix (Gamma (γ) Orionis) – that point to a naked-eye misty patch 6.5° north-northwest of Meissa. 10x50 binoculars should reveal at least 50 stars,…

The end is inevitable. Eventually, our Sun will grow old and die. When it does, how much of the rest of the Solar System will it take with it? The fate of Earth hangs in the balance… The end will start when our Sun begins to exhaust the hydrogen fuel that powers its nuclear fusion reactions. Like all stars up to eight times the Sun's mass, its interior will run dry and begin to contract, while its outer layers will heat up enough for nuclear reactions to ignite in its hydrogen-rich outer envelope. This will prompt that outer envelope to expand and, across a billion years, the star will swell into a red giant, until eventually all fusion shuts down. Then, almost as a swansong, the outer layers will be…

Step 1 You'll be following this diagram to make your dipole. Start by cutting two lengths of copper wire to 1.34 metres – any wire with a conductor diameter of 1mm upwards is best. Make a 40mm loop at one end of each length of wire. Step 2 Strip 5mm of insulation from the other end of each of the two wires – you'll be connecting these ends to the terminal block later. With cable ties, secure the loops you made at the other ends. These will be for when you erect your dipole using cord. Step 3 Get your Wi-Fi extension coaxial cable (at least 10 metres long, to help keep the antenna away from electrical noise sources). Remove the female connector from one end, but keep the male…

Jupiter is one of winter's most exciting targets, not just for its ever-changing surface and moon transits, but for the fascinating features revealed by different filters. This planetary season, try a rewarding multi-night project: combine RGB and methane (CH4) data to reveal the gas giant in a striking new way. While RGB imaging is the most common way to capture Jupiter, a CH4 filter is perfect to try on this methane-rich planet. These ultra-narrowband filters in the near-infrared spectrum map the density and altitude of the planet's cloud structures. Areas rich in methane, where light is absorbed, appear dark, while high-altitude clouds – including the Great Red Spot – appear bright. Unless you have multiple telescope setups to capture RGB and CH4 simultaneously, you'll need to image the same face…