The Sun, along with more than 1,500 other stars, journeyed from the middle of the Milky Way to its current position a few billion years ago.

Look north this evening a couple hours after sunset and you’ll easily spot the large shape of the Big Dipper as it sits upside-down in the sky, appearing to pour from its cup into that of the smaller ...

French astronomer Charles Messier did not intend to be remembered for his discoveries of galaxies, nebulae, and stars clusters when he looked to the sky in the 1750s. Dubbed the “Ferret of Comets” by ...

Today our focus is on the evening sky as Venus and Saturn sit close together in the west. About 30 minutes after sunset, brilliant Venus should be visible some 7° above the horizon. Tonight, ...

Look north this evening for Ursa Major the Great Bear, whose back half is best known as the Big Dipper. The two stars on the far end of the cup from the handle are called the Pointer Stars: These are ...

French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier was a tutor and an assistant at the Paris Observatory when the director, François Arago, asked him to investigate irregularities in Uranus’ orbit. Using extensive, ...

To many of you, Observable Space — formerly PlaneWave — needs no introduction. Starting as a breakaway from Celestron in southern California in 2006, PlaneWave was founded by Rick Hedrick and Joe ...

In 2018, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission reached asteroid 101955 Bennu. Two years later, the spacecraft snagged a sample of its surface, which has since been returned to Earth. Now, astronomers are getting ...

The Galilean moon Callisto disappears behind Jupiter in an occultation early this morning. The catch is that the event is only visible from the western half of the U.S., but observers farther east can ...

From Mars, Earth transits the Sun four times in a 284-year cycle. The transits occur in either May or November at intervals of 100.5, 79, 25.5, and 79 years. During these events, Earth and the Moon ...

A total lunar eclipse, sometimes called a Blood Moon, occurs over much of the world this morning, including the U.S. Total lunar eclipses can only take place during the Full Moon. Full Moon officially ...

February 24 was the date a new information pipeline began for astronomers around the world. Their computers received a deluge of cosmic notifications — 800,000 alerts about new asteroids, supernovae, ...