Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn will be bright enough to see without equipment. A telescope will reveal Uranus, Neptune, and ...

It’s along this arc that the planets, sun and moon appear to move over time. We call it the ecliptic because, as you might imagine, this is the only place where eclipses can occur.

The ecliptic is nothing more than a convenient way of finding the Moon, as well as finding the other planets, in the sky. If you could get on a spaceship and fly straight out from the Sun past the ...

Consider the ecliptic the long and winding road in the stars. Also, along and on either side of the ecliptic are thirteen constellations referred to as zodiac constellations.

We call this plane the ecliptic, which is defined specifically by Earth’s orbit around our star. So, Earth’s orbit is tilted 0° from the ecliptic because it defines the ecliptic.

Mercury reaches its point of greatest eastern elongation on Friday (July 4), presenting an excellent opportunity to spot the rocky planet during its evening apparition in the post-sunset sky.

For instance while the moon on Tuesday shows a first quarter phase, and lies near its maximum distance from the ecliptic, the Jan. 28, 2023, first quarter moon crosses the ecliptic. No eclipse occurs.

Two by two If you have been keeping track, this will be the second eclipse in less than a month. On March 13-14, we had a total eclipse of the moon. The moon crossed the ecliptic — the apparent ...

The ecliptic is also the reason that we on Earth sometimes observe planets appearing to approach closely to each other in the sky "while they careen around the cosmic racetrack," according to NASA.