Astronomy Magazine: Space News, Observing, Planets, Galaxies

Top Stories

A rocket climbs into a black night sky, leaving a bright golden-white trail that curves slightly as it rises. The glow reflects off calm water in the foreground, forming a bright vertical streak on the surface, with a dark, flat horizon line separating sky and water.

Solar System, Space Exploration

An abandoned SpaceX rocket is about to crash into the Moon

Andromeda’s star formation is slowing down

A dark, curved planet with a warm orange-brown atmospheric glow fills the lower right of the frame, its horizon lit by a small, bright orange star glowing near the center of the image. The black background is scattered with faint white stars, with a soft orange haze surrounding the star.

Astronomers just found the first atmosphere on a rocky exoplanet in the habitable zone

Robotic Spaceflight

Is NASA’s Swift Boost Mission spinning away?

Picture of the Day

A close-up view of the Sun's surface shows a swirling, fibrous texture in deep orange and red, resembling flowing fur or fabric. A dark, arching loop of cooler gas curves across the center, and the tiny black silhouette of the space station, with its solar panels and modules visible, sits just to its upper right.

Caught in transit

Tianyao Yang, taken from Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu, China

The International Space Station transits the active Sun, captured here next to sunspot groups AR4498 and AR4500. The imager used software to model the station’s path to ensure it would cross those sunspot regions from the viewing location. The transit lasted 0.58 second, which the imager recorded at 135.3 fps with 0.3-millisecond exposures at a gain of 504 with 4-inch f/7.6 Hα solar telescope and 5x Barlow.

In the Sky

Saturn and moons on August 5, 2026, at 4 AM EDT

The Sky Today on Wednesday, August 5: Iapetus at superior conjunction

What’s Launching This Week

What’s Launching This Week

A classified NRO launch and a Chinese triple-header set to launch this week

Today in the History of Astronomy

A medium close-up photograph shows a man wearing a dark cap and a light-colored suit inside a dimly lit cabin. Bright light illuminates the right side of his smiling face, while the rest of the scene remains in deep shadow. In the background, a row of warm orange lights glows to his right, and a metallic interior surface with a small instruction panel is visible above him.

Human Spaceflight, Today in the History of Astronomy

Aug 5, 1930: The birth of Neil Armstrong

More News

A wide-field telescopic photograph of the North America Nebula (NGC 7000) region, showing sweeping clouds of red and pink hydrogen emission gas interwoven with dark dust lanes against a densely star-filled background. A bright concentration of stars is visible along the left edge, and the characteristic shape of the nebula's dark "Gulf of Mexico" region is visible as a dark void near the center.

Astrophotography

Which filter should I use?

An artist's illustration of the ESA Comet Interceptor mission, showing the large main spacecraft in the foreground with its deployed solar panels, flanked by two smaller sub-probes, all approaching a comet whose bright white nucleus and two-toned tail — blue ion tail and golden dust tail — dominate the upper right of the image against a starry black background.

Science, Solar System

Could we send a spaceship to Comet 3I/ATLAS to collect samples and bring them back for analysis?

A side-by-side pair of lunar eclipse images. On the left, a total solar eclipse shows the Moon as a black disc surrounded by the Sun's white corona, with several pink solar prominences visible along the edge. On the right, a total lunar eclipse shows the Moon glowing in deep red and orange hues — a "blood moon" — with a bright sliver of normal white moonlight still visible along the upper right edge.

August 2026: What’s in the sky this month? Solar and lunar eclipses, plus the Perseid meteors

Astrophotography

How one student captured the universe without light

Astronomy Newsletter

Get newsletters, updates and special offers via email from Astronomy.com!

Product Recommendations

Visit The Space Store

Popular Explorations