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It's time to get ready to watch a spacecraft slamming into an asteroid.

You can watch all the action from NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Mission (DART) live here at Space.com and on NASA TV(opens in new tab), including on impact day today (Sept. 26). In the weeks leading up to the impact, you can also tune in to media briefings on the mission's goals and progress.

DART will slam into Dimorphos, the moonlet of a near-Earth asteroid called Didymos. If successful, the spacecraft will alter the path of Dimorphos in its orbit around Didymos; just how much Dimorphos' orbit changes will be confirmed in the months and years after impact.

The mission aims to test out planetary defense methods in a safe environment, as the activities pose no threats whatsoever to Earth. Here's how you can follow the action live.

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Jupiter will be directly opposite the sun as seen from Earth on Monday (Sept. 26), allowing skywatchers to see the solar system’s largest planet in incredible detail during an event known as opposition.

During the opposition Jupiter, Earth, and the sun are aligned in such a way that both planets are on the same side of the star with Earth sitting between these two massive bodies. As the gas giant reaches opposition while rising from the east at the same time the sun sets in the west, it will also be at its closest approach to Earth ,  known as perigee. This closest approach will bring Jupiter to around 367 million miles from Earth, the gas giant’s closest to our planet since 1963.

During opposition the planet will be in the Pisces constellation and be visible for most of the night, rising when the sun sets and disappearing when the sun rises. You can watch an online webcast of Jupiter at opposition on Tuesday (Sept. 27) beginning at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) thanks to the Virtual Telescope Project(opens in new tab).

According to In-The-Sky.org(opens in new tab), Jupiter will be visible overnight from New York between 7:33 p.m. EDT (2333 GMT) on Sept. 26 and 06:08 a.m. (1008 GMT) on Tuesday (Sept. 27). The planet will appear from an altitude of 7 degrees above the eastern horizon moving to 49 degrees above the southern horizon (its highest point )  at 12:51 a.m. EDT (0451 GMT) on Tuesday (Sept. 27) morning before sinking below the western horizon. For skywatchers living in New York City, The Gothamist has collected some tips on how to view the planet from NYC(opens in new tab) specifically.

Wherever you happen to be, the best way to see Jupiter in opposition will be with binoculars or a telescope from a dark and dry area with high elevation. Good binoculars should be enough to see the banding across the center of the gas giant and even some of its larger moons. Viewing with a large telescope should allow the planet’s ‘Great Red Spot—a storm so wide it could swallow two Earths side-by-side.

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For the first time in history, a spacecraft from Earth has crashed into an asteroid to test a way to save our planet from extinction.

The spacecraft, NASA's Double Asteroid Rendezvous Test (DART) probe, slammed into a small asteroid 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth tonight (Sept. 26) in what the U.S. space agency has billed as the world's first planetary defense test. The goal: to change the orbit of the space rock — called Dimorphos — around its larger asteroid parent Didymos enough to prove humanity could deflect a dangerous asteroid if one was headed for Earth.

That's something the dinosaurs couldn't do 65 million years ago, when the massive Chicxulub asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula and led to their extinction.

"The dinosaurs didn't have a space program to help them, but we do," Katherine Calvin, NASA's chief scientist and senior climate advisor, said before the crash. "So DART represents important progress in understanding potential hazards in the future and how to protect our planet from potential impacts."

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Getting things ready for the Jupiter Opposition tonight.



Clouds. I need to do some software installations and setup so I will wait it out and hope the clouds go away. Have a nice Single Malt and a Maduro to help pass the time.


The portable observatory. 20 year old "Dew Box" made by an old astronomy club member. The table is a collapsible camping table that has been to every star party and RC Helicopter fun fly over the past couple of decades.



Clouds are starting to thin out. probably won't get any photos tonight. Photographing the planets takes a different setup.

Eyepiece - 17mm Televue Nagler 4 (the one in the first photo) It provides approximately 48x magnification

Jupiter was so bright, I probably should have reached for a variable density filter to try to filter out the brightness. Unreal. I have observed Jupiter extensively over the past 25 years through much larger telescopes and I don't remember ever seeing it so bright.

6 moons visible with the largest and closest to the planet, being resolved into perfectly round spheres.

Banding detail is excellent but the seeing conditions were not perfect so you had to be patient and wait for those fleeting moments of clarity. When that happened, the detail, color variances, and swirls of the bands popped into view as did the great red spot.

Wonderful view in mentioned 17mm but the 12mm Astro-Physics SPL eyepiece at 68X magnification won the night for the stunning view it provided. Still able to fit all 6 moons into the field of view, the detail was magnified just enough to survive the seeing conditions. I attempted a few views with a 5mm Astro-Physics SPL at 163x magnification which only showed 4 moons but magnified the view substantially. It did provide very quick moments of clarity but I was pushing the magnification beyond what the seeing conditions permitted.