Year of the Comet
Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)

PANSTARRS information

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)

ISON information

Web Extras
Go deeper into the stories of Astronomy magazine. These online features bring you additional research, interviews, photos, and more our editors turned up while creating the stories for this issue.
August 2012
Curiosity
NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory — aka Curiosity — will explore Gale Crater to see if the Red Planet could support life now or in the past.
By Richard Talcott // Published: June 25, 2012
Block-Island
Earth isn’t the only planet that features rocks from space.
By Robert Burnham // Published: June 25, 2012
Lunokhod-1
NASA’s four martian rovers all took engineering inspiration from the Soviet Union’s 1970s Moon missions.
By Robert Burnham // Published: June 25, 2012
Mars
Man’s perception of Mars has changed greatly over 5,000 years.
By Karri Ferron // Published: June 25, 2012
Caltech-Curiosity
The most capable robotic mission ever sent to the Red Planet.
By Kimm Fesenmaier // Published: June 25, 2012
04_Crater-Lake
See even more of Wally Pacholka’s amazing landscape astrophotography.
By Bill Andrews // Published: June 25, 2012
07_Coathanger
This famous asterism is full of beautiful deep-sky targets.
By Michael E. Bakich // Published: June 25, 2012
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