Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn’s smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would […]

Only Mercury is missing from a Solar System parade of planets in this early evening skyscape. Rising nearly opposite the Sun, bright Mars is at the far left. The other […]

An unassuming region in the constellation Taurus holds these dark and dusty nebulae. Scattered through the scene, stars in multiple star systems are forming within their natal Taurus molecular cloud […]

What happens after a star explodes? A huge fireball of hot gas shoots out in all directions. When this gas slams into the existing interstellar medium, it heats up so […]

It was a new year, and the sky was doubly red. The new year meant that the Earth had returned to its usual place in its orbit on January 1, […]

Eclipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can nearly align. Then the full and new […]

Recorded during 2024, this year-spanning series of images reveals a pattern in the seasonal drift of the Sun’s daily motion through planet Earth’s sky. Known to some as an analemma, […]

The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system. Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest — called Proxima Centauri — is actually the nearest […]

What do you think this is? Here’s a clue: it’s bigger than a bread box. Much bigger. The answer is that pictured NGC 4753 is a twisted disk galaxy, where […]

Is this what will become of our Sun? Quite possibly. The first hint of our Sun’s future was discovered inadvertently in 1764. At that time, Charles Messier was compiling a […]