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Observational astronomer Wen-Fai Fong’s research always starts with fireworks. “I study explosions in the night sky,” Fong says. “In astronomy, we call them transients.” Fong focuses on two kinds of brilliant transient...

Hi folks, tune in every week of 2023 for the best in astronomy from Astronomy Editor Dave Eicher, brought to you by Celestron. This Week in Astronomy is a video series that covers all the latest sky events, scientific results, overviews of cosmic mys...

Scientists and government agencies have been worried about the space junk surrounding Earth for decades. But humanity’s starry ambitions are farther reaching than the space just around Earth. Ever since the 1960s with the launch of the Apollo program...

Friday, February 3 A bright, nearly Full Moon rises with the heads of Gemini the Twins this evening. As the stars begin to appear, you can spot 1st-magnitude Pollux and Castor sitting (in that order) directly above the Moon in the eastern sky. Cas...

I think all craters are cool, I’m just going to start with that. I am very biased. Impact craters occur on every planetary body in our solar system, no matter the size. By studying impact craters and the meteorites that cause them, we can learn about...

Despite being one of the most venerable and prominent objects in the night sky, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) still has surprises. And a group of amateur astronomers have uncovered the latest: a previously unknown emission nebula lying just southeast of...

When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) blasted off from French Guiana Dec. 25, 2021, astronomers anticipated it would deliver breathtaking images of distant galaxies and star-forming regions, as well as analyze the chemical makeups of exoplanet a...

Amid the burning Arizona sands, three peaks form a triangle of superlatives surrounding Tucson. Atop Mount Graham sits the world’s largest optical telescope. Mount Hopkins is home to North America’s second-largest single-mirror telescope....

Terence Dickinson, author of numerous popular books on astronomy and accomplished astrophotographer, passed away Feb. 1, 2023, following a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 79 years old. Dickinson’s interest in astronomy began when he was ...

Stars form when massive clouds of cold gas and dust fragment, condense, and collapse. As the density in a small part of the cloud grows high enough, the pressure skyrockets until it ignites the fusion process that forms the fiery heart of a new star....

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope image of the star-filled globular cluster NGC 2031 is furthering scientists’ understanding of “stellar contamination,” or possibly a rejuvenated class of stars called “blue stragglers.&rdquo...

“The first thing we know about the universe is that it’s really, really big,” says cosmologist Michael Turner, who has been contemplating this reality for more than four decades now. “And because the universe is so big,” he says, “it’s often beyond t...

Three bright planets are visible every evening in February, and two more can be spotted with binoculars. Venus, Jupiter, and Mars are strung across the western sky after sunset; the first two set earlier, while Mars remains long into the night. The s...

Alexander James decided to study the Sun when he was a graduate student at the University of Southhampton in the U.K. His reasoning was simple: “I wanted to do something that would have a direct impact and application to helping society,”...

On the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia was set to return to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center following a 16-day orbital mission packed with scientific experiments. But just 15 minutes after breaching Earth’s atmosphere — while still at...

Some 540 million years ago, diverse life forms suddenly began to emerge from the muddy ocean floors of planet Earth. This period is known as the Cambrian Explosion, and these aquatic critters are our ancient ancestors. All complex life on Earth evolv...

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently snapped an unexpected — and adorable — image of a martian formation that bears a striking resemblance to the face of a woodland creature more commonly found on Earth: a bear. The new image was captured Dec...

The largest black holes in the universe can have masses hundreds of millions of times that of the Sun. So, it understandably takes a lot of force to move one of those things. Nonetheless, new research reveals that it’s surprisingly common for ...

What’s in a world? Astronomer Laura Kreidberg doesn’t know, but she’s dying to find out. Kreidberg, 33, focuses on exploring the clouds of alien worlds to help astronomers analyze and catalog their astounding diversity, history, a...

Hi folks, tune in every week of 2023 for the best in astronomy from Astronomy Editor Dave Eicher, brought to you by Celestron. This Week in Astronomy is a weekly video series that covers all the latest sky events, scientific results, overviews of cos...

Every January, a tight-knit clutch of families and friends head for a barren, disused area of Cape Canaveral to reflect and remember. With almost religious reverence, they lay bright splashes of winter blooms near a gaunt concrete and steel hulk that...

There are hundreds of millions of asteroids in our solar system, which means new asteroids are discovered quite frequently. It also means close encounters between asteroids and Earth are fairly common. Some of these close encounters end up with the a...

Friday, January 27 Cetus the Whale stands above the southwestern horizon these winter nights. This large constellation — the fourth largest of all 88 — covers some 1,231 square degrees and contains several well-known stars. One such star is Mira, ...

Earth’s core has long been a place of mystery to scientists. The core of our planet sits just over 1,800 miles below the surface and exists as a ball of seething hot metal, specifically iron and nickel. It possesses many unique qualities — including ...

Over the past six months, we Earthlings have seen some pretty awe-inspiring images through the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Since the telescope's first image was revealed to the public in July, 2022, JWST has captured images of ancient galaxies...

As backyard observers may know, some modest telescopes lack the optics or aperture to cleanly resolve deep-sky objects like nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies. This leads to fuzzy images, often making it difficult to characterize exactly what you&r...

Growing structures made of mushrooms on the Moon might seem like something straight out of a Ray Bradbury story. But it turns out to be more practical, and is happening more promptly, than you might think. Just two years from now, a project is slate...

We know more about the Moon than the deep sea. This idea has been repeated for decades by scientists and science communicators, including Sir David Attenborough in the 2001 documentary series The Blue Planet. More recently, in Blue Planet II (2017...

Fittingly located in the constellation Tucana the Toucan, the bird-shaped nebula NGC 346 was recently observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Astronomers targeted NGC 346 — which is tucked in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galax...

When asked what first drew her to physics, you might expect theoretical cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein to say that it was looking up at stars or learning about planets. But it was something much closer to Earth. “I love math,” she s...

A vast amount of rocks and other material are hurtling around our solar system as asteroids and comets. If one of these came towards us, could we successfully prevent the collision between an asteroid and Earth? Well, maybe. But there appears to be o...

Science is such a forward-looking endeavor that it’s all the more rewarding when long, challenging efforts finally come to fruition. And 2022 was a year with many payoffs, as researchers began unlocking the secrets of our solar system’s a...