Jupiter is well-placed for viewing during April 2015. It is in the constellation Cancer all month and can be spotted in the evening sky.
Credit: Starry Night Software

On Saturday and Sunday, you can finish the day by stepping outside and enjoying a view of the rendezvous of two of the brightest objects in the night sky — the moon and the planet Jupiter.

About 45 minutes after the sun sets on both nights, the eye-catching celestial duo will be visible in the southwest sky, roughly two-thirds of the way up from the horizon to the point directly overhead (called the zenith).

The moon will officially reach first-quarter phase on Saturday evening (April 25) at 7:55 p.m. EDT (2355 GMT). The terminator — the line separating the light half of the moon (on the right) from the dark half — will appear perfectly straight, and Jupiter will be about 9 degrees above and to the left of the moon’s left. (Reminder: Your clenched fist held at arm’s length measures about 10 degrees.)

via Moon and Jupiter Rendezvous This Weekend: How to See Them.

(CNN)The massive meteorite split in two shortly before smashing into Earth, wiping out large numbers of species.

The devastating event took place on our planet many millions of years ago, but researchers are only now beginning to discover what happened.

In a remote part of Central Australia, the two pieces of asteroid left what geophysicists say is the largest impact zone ever found on Earth, spreading over an area 400 kilometers (250 miles) wide.

“The two asteroids must each have been over 10 kilometers across — it would have been curtains for many life species on the planet at the time,” said lead researcher Andrew Glikson of the Australian National University.

The team published its research in the journal Tectonophysics this month.

The crater caused by the asteroids vanished long ago. But Glikson said the researchers stumbled across scars from the impacts during drilling for geothermal research.

via Study: Largest ever asteroid impact found in Australia – CNN.com.

Mercury’s dark surface was produced by a steady dusting of carbon from passing comets, a new study says.

Mercury reflects very little light but its surface is low in iron, which rules out the presence of iron nanoparticles, the most likely “darkening agent”.

First, researchers modelled how much carbon-rich material could have been dropped on Mercury by passing comets.

Then they fired projectiles at a sugar-coated basalt rock to confirm the darkening effect of carbon.

Their results, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, support the idea that Mercury was “painted black” by cometary dust over billions of years.

The effect of being intermittently blasted with tiny, carbon-rich “micrometeorites”, the team says, is more than enough to account for the mysterious, dull surface seen on Mercury.

via Mercury ‘painted black’ by passing comets – BBC News.