On October 30 and 31, 2019, watch for 2 brilliant luminaries - the crescent moon and dazzling planet Jupiter - to pop out near one another as dusk gives way to nightfall.

Physicists have pondered how the cold, uniform matter of the inflationary early universe became the ultrahot, complex mixture of matter, space and time that led to the universe we know. New work simulates a bridge between cosmic inflation and ... everything else.

Eerie denizens of the ocean depths star in this video from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome said he just managed to capture an image of a small asteroid - labeled 2019 UB8 - coming very close on October 29, at about half the moon's distance. Details here.

What kicked off a rapid cooling on Earth 12,800 years ago? Some geologists believe a fragmented comet or asteroid collided with Earth and caused the change. Read more from a scientist whose fieldwork at a South Carolina lake adds to the growing pile of evidence.

To maximize your chances of catching the young moon on October 28, find an unobstructed horizon in the direction of sunset. Binoculars will come in handy! On October 29-31, the moon will be easier to see, from all parts of the globe.

China's Yutu-2 rover has sent back a new image of the unusual "gel-like" material it found last July, which seems to confirm that it's not gel at all. Instead, it now appears it's probably impact glass from a meteorite impact.

The European Space Agency was asking this question late last week, as multiple fires burned across the globe. Read more about 2019 fires, and fire-tracking via satellite, here.

Saguaro cactus in the starlight, in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona.

The planet Uranus, 7th planet outward from the sun, comes closest to Earth for the year on October 27, 2019. It reaches opposition - when it's most directly opposite the sun as viewed from Earth - on October 28.