This month, four bright planets will engage in a fascinating dance with each other in the morning sky.

Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will be involved in a series of conjunctions, joined at the end of the month by a very thin, waning crescent moon.  We could even refer to this as a “celestial summit meeting,” or more precisely, a series of summit meetings during May 2011.

Twice during May three planets will converge to form a “trio.”

According to Belgian calculator Jean Meeus, a trio is when three planets fit within a circle with a minimum diameter of 5 degrees.  Such a limit was one that Meeus chose more or less arbitrarily, but as he notes, “We have to make a choice.”

On Wednesday (May 11), Mercury, Venus and Jupiter will converge within 2.05-degrees of each other, followed just 10 days later by another trio, this time formed by Mercury, Venus and Mars, which will crowd within a 2.13-degree circle.  Then late in the month, on three successive mornings, May 29th, 30th, and 31st, the waning crescent moon will arrive, sweeping past Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury stretched out across the eastern sky from upper right to lower left.

What might ancient sky watchers from 500 or 1,000 years ago have ascribed to such a series of gatherings as this?

Most likely, they would have felt a mixture of fear and wonder.  A fine example was a case in 1186 A.D. when an unusual gathering of the five planets visible to the naked eye resulted in a near-panic across the whole of Europe after religious leaders predicted that worldwide disasters would result!

Even today, in our modern world, similar fears sometimes arise.

You need only Google-search the date May 5, 2000, and you will find a number of different websites that predicted a variety of disasters attributed to the combined gravitational and tidal forces associated with a gathering of the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

One website proclaimed that it would be “one of the most exciting, powerful and transformative celestial events of our millennium according to astronomy and astrology experts.”

In many ways, these words sound all too similar to the hype and tripe that has been bandied about during these past few years concerning the Mayan Long Count calendar in 2012.

Needless to say, we all survived the recent 2000 celestial summit and despite what you might hear or read in the coming days ahead, absolutely nothing cataclysmic will take place (at least nothing that can be directly attributed to this impending dawn gathering of the moon and planets).

Tough to see

The only tragedy regarding this display is that those living north of the equator will have a difficult time seeing it.

At first glance there doesn’t appear to be any problem concerning the visibility of these objects.  Their elongations from the sun will range from 18 degrees to 26 degrees, which should place them all in dark skies.  Unfortunately, during May, as seen especially from mid-northern latitudes, the ecliptic is oriented at a shallow angle relative to the eastern horizon at dawn.

As a result, the moon and planets will rise into view during late twilight and will lie very low to the east-northeast horizon by sunrise. To see them, you’ll have to make sure not to have any potential obstructions to your visibility such as trees or buildings in that direction.

But coming above the horizon so near to sunrise will also mean that you’ll have a fighting chance of catching only Venus (magnitude -4) and Jupiter (magnitude -2) with unaided eyes.  Whether you will be able to glimpse zero-magnitude Mercury is debatable, and certainly binoculars will be needed if you have any hope of seeing Mars (magnitude +1).

The crescent moon will also prove to be a visual challenge, being only 2 percent illuminated on May 31.  Low-lying clouds or haze near the horizon on any given morning will only reduce your chances of success.

In contrast, those of our SPACE.com readers in the Southern Hemisphere, where the ecliptic at dawn appears at a somewhat steeper angle, will see this ever-changing array somewhat higher and in a somewhat darker sky; more like mid-twilight as opposed to late twilight in the north.

Indeed, those living in far southern locations such as Cape Town, South Africa; Melbourne, Australia; or Dunedin, New Zealand, will have a much better chance of seeing and enjoying this month-long dance of the planets.

Joe Rao from Space.com

Astronomers have detected a failed star – a brown dwarf!!

This newly discovered brown dwarf is identified as CFBDSIR 1458+10B, and is the dimmer member of the binary brown dwarf system, which is located only 75 light-years from Earth.

Brown dwarfs lack enough mass for gravity to trigger the nuclear reactions that make stars shine, but they’re more massive than what’s typically considered to be a planet.

The system was detected from observations made by the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The telescope’s powerful spectrograph was used to study the object’s infrared spectrum and measure its temperature, which was found to be extraordinarily cold by brown dwarf standards.

In fact, CFBDSIR 1458+10 is the coolest brown dwarf binary system found to date, astronomers said.

“We were very excited to see that this object had such a low temperature, but we couldn’t have guessed that it would turn out to be a double system and have an even more interesting, even colder component,” said Philippe Delorme of the French National Center for Scientific Research and the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France.

Delorme is the co-author of a paper on the brown dwarf finding that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The dimmer of the two failed stars has been found to have a temperature of approximately 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius), which is the boiling point of water and not much different from the temperature inside a sauna.

Our sun, in comparison, averages a temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius), researchers have said.

“At such temperatures we expect the brown dwarf to have properties that are different from previously known brown dwarfs and much closer to those of giant exoplanets – it could even have water clouds in its atmosphere,” said Michael Liu of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, who is the lead author of the study. “In fact, once we start taking images of gas-giant planets around sun-like stars in the near future, I expect that many of them will look like CFBDSIR 1458+10B.”

The hunt for cool objects in the cosmos is an active field of astronomy. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope recently identified two other very faint objects as other possible contenders for the coldest known brown dwarfs, but the temperatures of these stars have not been measured as precisely.

The brown dwarfs seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope have temperatures that range from 350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit.  Future observations will better determine how the objects found by Spitzer compare to CFBDSIR 1458+10B.

Liu and his colleagues are planning to observe this newly detected brown dwarf again to better determine its properties, and to begin mapping the binary’s orbit, which, after about a decade of observation, should allow astronomers to determine the system’s mass.

A brown dwarf star that contradicts the perception of all stars being hot has been discovered by U.S. astronomers. This brown dwarf star is not hot, but rather about room temperature, they say.

Like normal stars, brown dwarfs form from collapsing gas clouds, but they don’t become massive enough to sustain nuclear reactions, so they briefly shine red from the heat of formation then fade.

Still, before discovering this latest star, the coolest known brown dwarfs were determined to be hot enough to roast any astronauts who might approach too close, NewScientist.com reported Monday.

Pennsylvania State University astronomers used NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope to detect the glow of this brown dwarf just 63 light years from Earth with a temperature of only 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

The object, orbiting a white dwarf star, has seven times the mass of Jupiter, a figure that would normally classify it as a planet.

Planets, however, form in discs of gas and dust around stars, researchers say, and this object — dubbed WD 0806-661 B –lies too far from its star to be deemed a planet if it formed where it now is.

While hotter than Jupiter, which is at minus 236 degrees F., it is much cooler than the next coolest known brown dwarf star, measured at 212 degrees F.

This means that WD 0806-661 B will act as a “missing link” to reveal how temperature affects the atmosphere and features of objects that are roughly the size of Jupiter, the astronomers said.

Nibiru Tyche, Planet X Brown Dwarf:

JUPITER ISLAND – Tiger Woods is finally moving into his dream compound!

According to sources, Tiger spent the last year working on the ultimate bachelor pad with a handpicked team of exclusive architects and interior decorators. “His dream team” included Hugh Hefner and the designers behind the Playboy Mansion, a Las Vegas nightclub designer, a set designer from the Bronx Zoo, and a high-price stripper who goes by Cee-Cee-Me.

Woods has told friends that he really wants to get back on top of both his games – the golf and the ladies.

The compound has received a lot of attention because of its custom short-game practice facility, which features four greens and six bunkers.

But the real amenities at Tiger’s love den go way beyond the golf course and beachfront property. The outdoor “Tiger Garden” includes a mangrove swamp and a tropical rainforest hut for sudden downpours. Strategically-placed cameras stream live footage into a posh video-editing suite that is complete with carpeted tiger stripe walls.

Inside, guests will be escorted to one of many themed rooms, including “Neck of the Woods” which features a full-time masseuse, and Tiger’s personal favorite “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger” which features several secret places for quiet moments alone or with the host.

Woods is due to move in sometime in March, in advance of the Masters tournament.

Woods is also in talks with Nike to launch a line of “Tiger’s Paradise” visors to be sold at retail outlets.

On December NASA announced that they have found evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars and Jupiter.

NASA made a major a public announcement on Thursday, December 2nd, 2010, at 2 PM Eastern time.

NASA first announced that researchers conducting tests in California discovered the first known microorganism that can thrive and reproduce using toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”

NASA then went out to make an even bigger announcement one that has sent shockwaves around the globe – they have found conclusive, undisputable evidence of life on Mars and  Jupiter.

NASA had been teasing the public for weeks about the announcement, saying only that there is a major  “astrobiology discovery.”   They  hinted at the discovery of the microorganism, but they kept the discovery of alien life a secret – until yesterday.

A NASA press release had claimed that the NASA discussion will involve an “astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial.  Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.”

WWN’s own P’Lod was at NASA when the announcement was made.  He has been helping NASA identify the different alien life forms that they have discovered.

The news conference was held at the NASA Headquarters in Washington and was broadcast on NASA Television and on the agency’s website at www.nasa.gov.

NASA also revealed (and confirmed) that there is, in fact, an alien invasion under way.  They did say that the aliens seemed to be “friendly” at this point.  “But there are a increasing number of alien spaceships landing on Earth,” the NASA spokesperson said.

New York University astrobiologist, Tom Hillstrom, has confirmed that NASA has been carefully examining pictures from the Hubble telescope alongside a new Google Universe map and have seen aliens walking across the surface of Mars and some were even seen jumping rope.

“The Martians seem to be happy beings,” said Hillstrom.  “Hopefully, we’ll be able to learn something from them.”

We’ll see.  NASA will be making a follow-up announcement on December 27th, to discuss in greater detail their findings about the alien invasion.

WASHINGTON, DC – Bernanke finally admits how he predicted the end of the recession: Astrology!

Critics and economists have hounded Ben Bernanke since his report on Tuesday, wondering how he could say the recession would be over this year, and 2010 would be a “year of recovery.”  Last night, the Federal Reserve Chairman revealed that his predictions came from a combination of applied economic theory and consulting ancient star charts.

While making no promises, Bernanke said that if the Obama administration and the Fed are able to stabilize the financial markets, the planets are in alignment for the recession to end this year.

“Mercury is in retrograde, likely to stop by the end of the year.  That is when Jupiter and Venus will take over as the dominant planetary influences, which is a condition we haven’t seen since 1997.”

Until now, Bernanke has used a star-sign mood pocket watch to determine how interest rates should be adjusted with the Federal Reserve.  The pocket watch was given to him by Alan Greenspan and has played a key role in determining US economic policy for decades.

This is not the first time clairvoyance has influenced national politics.  President George Bush went to war with Iraq only after being told they had WMDs by an old gypsy woman in Crawford, Texas.  It was later discovered the gypsy woman was a prominent stockholder with Halliburton.

Bernanke has been a longtime believer in the power of the stars, and used astrology to get a near perfect score on the SAT and graduate valedictorian.  At age eleven, he won the state spelling bee by wearing an energy harnessing pyramid on his head for a week.  After losing the helmet in the raucous spelling bee after-party, he only ranked 23rd in the nationals.

Economic markets, domestic and abroad, are closely tied to the movements of the Federal Reserve.  Last week the Dow Jones jumped 500 points when Bernanke said he “had an itchy money finger.”  News that it was just allergies sent the Japanese markets to near bankruptcy.

Bernanke went on to say “In these difficult times, no stone can be left unturned in finding a way to get our country back on track.”  He then threw salt over his shoulder, picked up his rabbit’s foot, and left the meeting.

NEW HAVEN, CT – Astronomers have announced that Jupiter and Venus will shine unusually brightly during a conjunction tonight.

But Weekly World News has discovered that the shine will be from residents of both planets mooning Earth.

Jupiterians and Venusians will come together, and millions of of aliens living on both planets will in unison expose their pale backsides towards us.  Nations of life forms will work in shifts to coincide with the revolution of each planet.

The reasoning behind this interplanetary prank yields many questions.  Why have residents of two planets coordinated such a grand effort to moon our own?  And why are Earth’s governments covering it up?  Weekly World News reporters will continue to investigate.