A total lunar eclipse kicks off March. Jupiter is well placed most of the night, while Venus shines brilliantly and Uranus is ...

The well-known star Betelgeuse is Orion the Hunter’s alpha star. Shining at magnitude 0.5, this aging sun lies roughly 500 to 600 light-years away. It’s also one of the best candidates for the next ...

Mars’ moons are easily visible at night from the Red Planet. Larger Phobos is brighter, while smaller Deimos is still brighter than any star.

The longer nights of August beckon with several treats this month. Saturn and Neptune undergo their second conjunction of the year, appearing together in a low-power telescope eyepiece. Telescopic ...

Through the early 1900s, astronomers disagreed on whether the universe was home to a multitude of galaxies, so-called “island universes,” or contained entirely within the boundaries of the Milky Way ...

A recent story in The Planetary Science Journal reported that scientists at the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and colleagues have produced the first global map ...

Already high in the east as darkness falls, Jupiter still dominates the constellation Gemini. The gas giant’s large moon Ganymede transits the disk this evening, with its shadow following a few hours ...

This composite image — the largest ever produced by the ALMA array in Chile, shows the Central Molecular Zone of gas in the nucleus of the Milky Way. Each color depicts a different molecule: sulphur ...

Tektites are natural glasses formed by the high-energy impact of large meteorites against Earth’s surface. Recently, a team of researchers found a new strewn field of them in the Brazilian state of ...

In July 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell noticed a “bit of scruff” in the radio data she was receiving at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. Together with her Ph.D. advisor Antony Hewish, she zeroed ...

Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, is currently in Taurus, located roughly 5° south-southwest of the Pleiades star cluster (M45). Glowing at magnitude 5.8, the ice giant requires binoculars or a ...

Recent months have featured a few stories about how Albert Einstein’s theories, or the ideas underpinning them, have all been confirmed to a new degree of accuracy. That’s usually the case: Scientists ...