The vernal equinox occurs at 10:46 A.M. EDT, bringing astronomical spring to the Northern Hemisphere as the Sun stands directly over Earth’s equator. On this day, the Sun also sits at the celestial ...

NASA’s Van Allen Probe A re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, March 11, at 6:37 a.m. EDT, marking the final chapter for a spacecraft that reshaped scientists’ understanding of the radiation ...

The Moon passes 4° north of Jupiter at 8 A.M. EDT. By evening, they are high overhead in Gemini the Twins, now nearly 8° apart as the Moon sits near Pollux, the slightly brighter of the two brothers’ ...

This article originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of Astronomy. Only one star, the Sun, lies close enough to resolve through amateur telescopes. Observing the Sun provides a superb daytime ...

A vertical dark band cutting through a bright nebula marks the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star IRAS 04302+2247. Observations of such disks will help astronomers understand how small ...

As close as we astronomers love to feel to space, one thing stands between us and the outer reaches: Earth’s atmosphere. More than 60 miles (97 kilometers) of gases separate us from the cosmos, and it ...

This is the ideal night to run the 2026 Messier marathon. This annual event challenges observers to view every object in Charles Messier’s catalog in a single night, from sundown to sunup. According ...

Saturn reaches opposition at 2 A.M. EDT, visible all night and offering stunning views of its rings and moons. The ringed planet now rises around sunset and is highest around local midnight, when it ...

Visible in Scotland, the total solar eclipse of Aug. 2, 1133, featured nearly 4½ minutes of totality. This eclipse provides just one of many historical examples of people wrongly associating a ...

French inventor Louis Daguerre, pioneer of the early photography process of daguerreotypes, is believed to have captured the first photo of the Moon on Jan. 2, 1839. However, the quality and other ...

Asteroid 7 Iris is drifting through Sextans, passing close to a close pair of stars that provides an anchor for those looking to watch the space rock’s movement across the sky. Step outside early this ...

High in the south this evening is Canis Minor the Little Dog, shining above the bright star Sirius, which lies closer to the horizon. True to its name, the Little Dog is a little constellation, ...