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[Music]

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what's up for march

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mars and friends in the evening and a

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brilliant pair of planets

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returns in the first week or so of march

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you'll find mars near the pleiades star

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cluster high in the west

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in the hours after sunset nasa's

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perseverance rover successfully landed

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on mars on february 18th

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and in addition to this latest surface

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explorer orbiters from two other nations

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arrived in orbit around the red planet

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last month

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making 2021 a truly international year

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of mars exploration

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you may also notice a couple of other

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reddish objects forming a line with mars

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that is the stars aldebaran which forms

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the angry eye of taurus the bull

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and beetlejuice the shoulder of orion

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and speaking of beetlejuice astronomers

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using nasa's hubble space telescope and

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other observatories

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have determined the cause of the star's

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dimming last year was likely due to a

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cloud of dust ejected by the aging red

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giant

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and while scientists think the star has

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moved into burning helium instead of

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hydrogen in its core

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they think it's unlikely to explode in a

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supernova any time soon

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hopefully you managed to catch a glimpse

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of jupiter and saturn as they came

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ultra close in their great conjunction

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in december

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not long after this the two planets left

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the evening sky as they passed behind

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the sun as seen from earth

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well now the pair is back this time as

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morning planets

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in the second half of march jupiter and

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saturn re-emerge as a bright pair in the

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pre-dawn sky

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they won't be as close as in december

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but they're still an

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absolute joy to observe so if you're up

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early

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grab a warm drink and step outside to

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commune with the largest planets in our

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solar system

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here are the phases of the moon for

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you can catch up on all of nasa's

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missions to explore the solar system and

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beyond at nasa.gov

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i'm preston dykes from nasa's jet