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.

The distant ice giant Uranus is located in Taurus right now, not far from the famous (and easy-to-find) Pleiades star cluster, cataloged as M45. Tonight, the planet also sits a short distance due ...

Planning to run this year’s Messier marathon? March 14/15 and 21/22 are the best nights to give it a go. Your ideal order will differ with latitude, but this is a good place to start. Be sure to set ...

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 ...

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 ...

Io transits Jupiter’s broad disk late tonight, beginning at midnight EST. On the East Coast, Jupiter is still 40° high in the west at local midnight, readily visible as the brightest point of light in ...

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, ...

Asteroid 7 Iris reaches opposition at 1 P.M. EST today. Now shining at 9th magnitude, you can best spot the main-belt world after dark, rising higher in the hours after sunset. By 10 P.M. local time, ...

A newly discovered comet has astronomers excited, with the potential to be a spectacular sight in early April. C/2026 A1 (MAPS) was spotted by a team of four amateur astronomers with a remotely ...

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 ...