Space News & Blog Articles

The Perseid meteors come rushing in, and peak Perseid night ends with the waning crescent Moon triangulating with Castor and Pollux. Vega and Sagittarius culminate after dark. Scorpius lays itself down.

This week, James Webb Space Telescope reveals new details in the Ring Nebula and shows that the most distant known star isn't alone. Meanwhile, patient astronomers have collected 17 years' worth of images of the super-Jupiter Beta Pictoris b.

The Perseids are here! With no Moon to spoil the show it's time to break out the lawn chairs, sit back, and watch the comet dust fly.

Where is all of the water around hyperactive comets coming from? A recent article asked if it could be “Ice, Ice, Maybe?” and concluded that it likely isn’t.

The nearest black holes might be hiding just around the corner, 150 light-years away in the Hyades star cluster.

It’s August and that means one of the year’s most beloved celestial events will grace the skies. The Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend on Saturday night−Sunday morning, August 12−13.

We're approaching the peak of the Perseid meteors. Vega claims the zenith as the Teapot claims the south. In twilight, Mars has a friendly but not very intimate date with Mercury.

Amateur astronomy need not be a race through an astronomical task list, but rather a kindling of joy.

Get involved in an extraordinary experiment to test Einstein's theory of General Relativity — and you can do it from your backyard.

NASA detected a faint "heartbeat" signal from Voyager 2, after an erroneous command caused the spacecraft to lose contact with Earth.

Many skywatchers look forward to seeing the Perseid meteors every August, and this month’s Sky Tour episode why they’ll be especially good this year. You’ll also learn what's so special about the full Moon that falls on the night of August 30–31.

Images capture the birth of stars and planets in multiple results from space- and ground-based telescopes.

Find some of our favorite resources for the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse, including apps, video explainers, children's activities, and books.

Venus turns super-interesting and then disappears. Mercury lingers behind it in twilight. So does little Mars in third place. On the other side of the sky, the Moon passes Saturn.

Stargazers will be interested not only in the annular eclipse this October but also in the dark skies in parks along the eclipse path!

With Venus approaching inferior conjunction in August here's a foolproof way to follow its thinning crescent as the planet transitions from Evening Star to Morning Star.

The white dwarf J2033 seems to switch rapidly between two compositions.

A galaxy 600 million light-years away appears to be trailing gas in a string 1.2 million light-years long, but explaining its origins presents a challenge.

Comet Pons-Brooks, a dim comet on its way to a great apparition next spring, suddenly sprang into action overnight, brightening by five magnitudes. Now you can see it in a 4-inch telescope.

Dust is usually the product of generations of star formation. So what is all this dust doing in the early universe, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang?

Low in twilight, Mercury consorts with Venus and squeaks by Regulus. The waxing gibbous Moon does what it does every July: crosses Scorpius and Sagittarius.