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General Introduction To the Year 2009

What's up in 2009? With a Mars campaign, for the opposition, starting in September and lasting well into 2010 -and with the opposition proper in January 2010- Venus will first be an evening star and then a morning one, as Saturn, the ringed planet will display the rare show of the rings about seen variedly edge-on all year long, reach a point when this occurs (albeit the real edge-on moment will unluckily be unobservable for cause of too great proximity with the Sun). Uranus, this year, in February, is reaching its aphelion, its farthest Sun, on an orbit which last 84 years. As far as great astronomical events are concerned, 2009 is presenting us with two solar eclipses -one annular over the Indian Ocean and shores, the other total, from India to China and the western Pacific- as it will too display, amazingly, 4 lunar eclipses -three of them penumbral, and one partial (which will just take place on December 31st!). In space, varied Earth-observing missions are to launch, as the exoplanets are a target, with two NASA missions scheduled to leave in 2009. NASA too will take the opportunity of a Mars opposition to target the Red Planet with a large, six-wheeled rover, named the 'Mars Science Laboratory' keeping following the life track at Mars. In 2009, at last, we're beginning to enter into a long span of the 50th -and then, mostly, the 40th- anniversaries of both the Soviet and US premieres of the space age, and of the U.S. lunar Apollo program!