Think there are habitable super-Earths out there? Think again. Here in our Solar System, we have two very distinct types of planets: small, terrestrial, rocky worlds, with thin (or no) atmospheres […]

And after years of mystery, we finally know where they come from. Here on Earth, thunderstorms and accompanying lightning strikes represent tremendous releases of energy. It was way back in 2011 […]

What we’ve seen isn’t necessarily what we get, but the most common world doesn’t look like ours. There’s a very common myth out there in astronomy: the idea that the Sun […]

The night sky is already noticeably different, and bigger changes are ahead. For all of human history until the launch of Sputnik, the only objects in the night sky were naturally […]

The newest record-setting quasar houses an enormous black hole. No one knows how. In every scientific field, we’re always on the lookout for whatever new discovery might reveal what’s currently beyond […]

If you thought it was just one rich region in space, look deeper and wider. Shining brilliantly in January’s skies is the Great Orion Nebula. By 10 PM every night in […]

A single lifetime is more than enough to take you to the limits of the Universe. Right now, there are only three things limiting how far our spacecrafts can take […]

No matter how your year went, Hubble’s views of the Universe never disappoint. Year after year, Hubble’s telescopic views are unparalleled. Saturn, its rings, and 5 of its moons are […]

And what can it teach us about our Solar System’s earliest days? In many ways, astronomy is unique among the sciences. In every other field, you have the ability to design […]

Learn how to get the best views no matter where you are. Every year, no matter what else is occurring on Earth or in the heavens, you can rely on two […]

Don’t wait until Christmas to gift a telescope this year. All throughout the year, two bright lights have stood out in the post-sunset skies. Earlier this year, on March 31, 2020, […]

How many potentially habitable planets are there? We sincerely don’t know. One of the most compelling scientific goals humanity has set for itself is to find extraterrestrial life: biological activity originating […]

There’s more light than we can account for, and we’ve just measured it robustly for the first time. When we look out at the darkest night skies available on Earth, even […]

We haven’t discovered life beyond our Solar System yet, but we’re closer than ever before. Over the past 30 years, we’ve gone from zero exoplanets to thousands. With each new […]

As long as it remains operational, we’ll have a chance to conduct groundbreaking science with it. In the history of spaceflight, only five spacecraft ever launched by humanity possess enough energy […]

If there’s no phosphine, there’s no indirect evidence for biological activity there. In one of the biggest surprises in the history of planetary science, a September 2020 study announced the presence […]

Halley’s comet only visits every ~76 years, but its meteors arrive twice each year. The most famous comet of all — Halley’s comet — returns to our inner Solar System every ~76 years. Halley’s comet […]

We’re Earth’s first intelligent, technologically advanced civilization. But maybe not the last. For most of our planet’s history, life in some form has existed on our world. Planet Earth formed some […]

At its biggest for the next 15 years, it’s still much smaller than the Moon. On October 6, 2020, Mars makes its closest approach to Earth until 2035. Earth orbits in […]

The Twin Jet nebula, shown here, is a stunning example of a bipolar preplanetary nebula. At the center, a dying star is in the final stages of life where it […]

We just found a system that we can’t explain. Here’s what’s going on. One of the most fascinating facts about the Universe is that there’s so much of it out there. […]

We’re still not sure what the ultimate question is. Here are 5 excellent candidates. One of the most amusing stories in all of science fiction is Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s […]

In 2006, the IAU demoted Pluto. Here’s what we know today. In 2006, the last planet in our Solar System suffered an unforgettable insult, as Pluto — known for generations as our ninth […]

The view is different for each of us, but this perspective unites us all. From anywhere on Earth, the entire sky rotates a full 360° every 24 hours. From Earth, star […]

The largest moon around our last planet didn’t originate with Neptune. When it comes to the moons of our Solar System, there’s only one planet that doesn’t fit in with our […]

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will truly usher in a new era of astronomy. If you want to find the very first galaxy of all, you have to understand not […]

It likely isn’t the rare occurrence we once thought it was. In our Solar System, there’s one overwhelming source of mass that all the planets orbit around: our Sun. Each planet […]

Everything is being driven apart. But there’s hope of reaching what’s currently so far away. For the first 7.8 billion years, the Universe unfolded exactly as scientists would have expected in […]

There could have been life on Mars in the past, but that’s only the beginning of the story. For as long as humanity has been watching the skies, we’ve been fascinated […]

There are exposed planetary cores orbiting stars, and we may have already found them. When we take a look at the planets in our Solar System, there’s a pretty clear difference […]