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<\/p>\nThe moon and sun share top billing in 2026.<\/p>\n
Kicking off the year\u2019s cosmic wonders is the moon, drawing the first astronauts to visit in more than 50 years as well as a caravan of robotic lunar landers including Jeff Bezos\u2019 new supersized Blue Moon. A supermoon looms on January 3 and an astronomical blue moon is on the books for May.<\/p>\n
The sun will also generate buzz with a ring-of-fire eclipse at the bottom of the world in February and a total solar eclipse at the top of the world in August. Expect more auroras in unexpected places, though perhaps not as frequently as the past couple years.<\/p>\n
And that comet that strayed into our turf from another star? <\/p>\n
While still visible with powerful backyard telescopes, the recently discovered comet known as 3I\/Atlas is fading by the day after swinging past Earth in December. <\/p>\n
Jupiter is next on its dance card in March. Once the icy outsider departs our solar system a decade from now, it will be back where it belongs in interstellar space.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s our third known interstellar visitor. Scientists anticipate more.<\/p>\n
“I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s taken this long to find three,” said NASA\u2019s Paul Chodas, who\u2019s been on the lookout since the 1980s. And with ever better technology, “the chance of catching another interstellar visitor will increase”. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a rundown on what the universe has in store for us in 2026.<\/p>\n
Next stop, moon<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s upcoming moonshot commander Reid Wiseman said there\u2019s a good chance he and his crew will be the first to lay eyeballs on large swaths of the lunar far side that were missed by the Apollo astronauts a half-century ago. <\/p>\n
Their observations could be a boon for geologists, he noted, and other experts picking future landing sites.<\/p>\n
Launching early in the year, the three Americans and one Canadian will zip past the moon, do a U-turn behind it, then hustle straight back to Earth to close out their 10-day mission. No stopping for a moonwalk \u2014 the boot prints will be left by the next crew in NASA\u2019s Artemis lunar exploration programme.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Kim Shiflett\/AP)<\/p>\n
More robotic moon landings are on the books by China as well as US companies. <\/p>\n
Early in the year, Amazon founder Bezos is looking for his Blue Origin rocket company to launch a prototype of the lunar lander it\u2019s designing for NASA\u2019s astronauts. <\/p>\n
This Blue Moon demo will stand eight metres taller than what delivered Apollo\u2019s 12 moonwalkers to the lunar surface. The Blue Moon version for crew will be almost double that height.<\/p>\n
Back for another stab at the moon, Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines are also targeting 2026 landings with scientific gear. The only private entity to nail a lunar landing, Firefly Aerospace, will aim for the moon\u2019s far side in 2026.<\/p>\n
China is targeting the south polar region in the new year, sending a rover as well as a so-called hopper to jump into permanently shadowed craters in search of ice.<\/p>\n
Eclipses<\/p>\n
The cosmos pulls out all the stops with a total solar eclipse on Aug. 12 that will begin in the Arctic and cross over Greenland, Iceland and Spain. <\/p>\n
Totality will last two minutes and 18 seconds as the moon moves directly between Earth and the sun to blot out the latter. <\/p>\n
By contrast, the total solar eclipse in 2027 will offer a whopping 6 1\/2 minutes of totality and pass over more countries.<\/p>\n
For 2026, the warm-up act will be a ring-of-fire eclipse in the Antarctic on Feb. 17, with only a few research stations in prime viewing position. South Africa and southernmost Chile and Argentina will have partial viewing. <\/p>\n
A total lunar eclipse will follow two weeks after February\u2019s ring of fire, with a partial lunar eclipse closing out the action at the end of August.<\/p>\n
Parading planets<\/p>\n
Six of the solar system\u2019s eight planets will prance across the sky in a must-see lineup around February 28. A nearly full moon is even getting into the act, appearing alongside Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune will require binoculars or telescopes. <\/p>\n
But Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn should be visible with the naked eye shortly after sunset, weather permitting, though Mercury and Venus will be low on the horizon.<\/p>\n
Mars will be the lone no-show. The good news is that the red planet will join a six-planet parade in August, with Venus the holdout.<\/p>\n
Supermoons<\/p>\n
Three supermoons will lighten up the night skies in 2026, the stunning result when a full moon inches closer to Earth than usual as it orbits in a not-quite-perfect circle. <\/p>\n
Appearing bigger and brighter, supermoons are a perennial crowd pleaser requiring no equipment, only your eyes.<\/p>\n
The year’s first supermoon in January coincides with a meteor shower, but the moonlight likely will obscure the dimmer fireballs. The second supermoon of 2026 won\u2019t occur until Nov. 24, with the third \u2014 the year\u2019s final and closest supermoon \u2014 occurring the night of Dec. 23 into Dec. 24. This Christmas Eve supermoon will pass within 356,740 kilometres of Earth.<\/p>\n
Northern and southern lights<\/p>\n
The sun is expected to churn out more eruptions in 2026 that could lead to geomagnetic storms here on Earth, giving rise to stunning aurora. Solar action should start to ease, however, with the 11-year solar cycle finally on the downslide.<\/p>\n
Space weather forecasters like Rob Steenburgh at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration can\u2019t wait to tap into all the solar wind measurements coming soon from an observatory launched in the fall.<\/p>\n
“2026 will be an exciting year for space weather enthusiasts,” he said in an email, with this new spacecraft and others helping scientists “better understand our nearest star and forecast its impacts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The moon and sun share top billing in 2026. Kicking off the year\u2019s cosmic wonders is the moon,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-206007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}