What would it look like to land on Saturn’s moon Titan? The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe set down on the Solar System’s cloudiest moon in 2005, and a time-lapse […]

Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few […]

Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies a some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust […]

Does the Moon ever engulf Mars? Yes, but only in the sense that it moves in front, which happens on rare occasions. This happened just yesterday, though, as seen from […]

Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to […]

Comet ATLAS is really bright now, but also really close to the Sun. Outside the glow of the Sun, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) would be one of the more remarkable […]

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 […]