Astronomy Magazine: Space News, Observing, Planets, Galaxies

Top Stories

How Roman will unlock the universe

Robotic Spaceflight, Science

Roman Space Telescope lifts off

Human Spaceflight, Science

Microbes may make it on the Moon

Astrophotography, Telescopes and Equipment

ZWO unveils the Seestar S50 Pro

Picture of the Day

A rounded, richly textured cloud of orange and gold gas fills the left side of the frame, its lower edge tapering to a bright point like a torch flame. Blue-tinted dust and haze spread across the right side, with faint dark filaments threading through a dense star field on a black background.

The Hidden Nebula’s glowing edge

Patrick Cosgrove from Honeoye Falls, New York

Sharpless 2–140 is sometimes called the Hidden Nebula for the way it appears to be partially swallowed by the neighboring dark cloud LDN 1204, adjacent to the bright shock front of ionized gas. It glows about 3,000 light-years away in Cepheus. The imager took just over 12 hours of exposure with a 5.2-inch f/5.6 refractor in the Hubble palette, plus RGB data for the stars.

In the Sky

A detailed telescopic photograph of NGC 7331, a large spiral galaxy shown nearly edge-on and tilted slightly, with a bright golden core, blue spiral arms with dusty brown lanes, and a diffuse outer halo. Several smaller background galaxies are visible to the left, including a group of four elliptical and lenticular galaxies known as the Deer Lick Group. The field is scattered with orange and white foreground stars against a black background.

The Sky Today on Friday, September 11: Visit the Deer Lick Group

What’s Launching This Week

What’s Launching This Week

SpaceX closes out SES’s O3b mPower constellation

Today in the History of Astronomy

A rectangular postage stamp with a red perforated border features an illustrated portrait of a man in a white spacesuit filling the right foreground. To the left, two connected grey spacecraft with solar panels extend diagonally above a blue-and-white view of Earth against a dark starry sky. Bold lettering, numerals, and small colored flags frame the upper corners and right side under even, bright lighting.

Human Spaceflight, Today in the History of Astronomy

Sept. 10, 1933: The birth of Yevgeny Khrunov

More News

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from September 11 to 18: Catch the zodiacal light

A promotional graphic on a dark blue starfield background. On the left in gold and white text: "Starmus VIII, The Search for Truth," "First Time in Spain, Artemis II Astronauts," the names Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen, and "October 2026, Tenerife, Canary Islands." On the right, three astronauts in orange spacesuits with helmets removed stand close together, smiling toward the camera, with a NASA patch and name tag visible on the center suit. A row of small sponsor and institutional logos runs along the bottom.

Artemis 2 crew lands at Starmus VII — 15 years after Armstrong, Aldrin, and Leonov launched its lengacy

An artist's illustration of 'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object detected passing through the solar system, depicted as a long, thin, reddish-brown elongated rock tumbling through space near a bright glowing sun. A diffuse dust or gas trail streams behind it, and the starry black background of deep space surrounds the scene.

Why aren’t free-floating planets captured when they fly past stars?

Robotic Spaceflight

Scientists watch as two satellites burn

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