Chicago, in a way, is like a modern Stonehenge. The way is east to west, and the time is today. Today, and every equinox, the Sun will set exactly to […]

The defining astronomical moment of this September’s equinox is at 12:44 UTC on September 22, when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving south in its yearly journey through planet […]

For northern hemisphere dwellers, September’s Full Moon was the Harvest Moon. On September 17/18 the sunlit lunar nearside passed into shadow, just grazing Earth’s umbra, the planet’s dark, central shadow […]

Spanning light-years, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula floats in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, […]

New stars are born from the remnants of deadstars. The gaseous remnant of the gravitational collapse and subsequent death of a very massive star in our Milky Way created the […]

Cosmic clouds form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. The clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula’s […]

Why does this large crater on Mercury have two rings and a smooth floor? No one is sure. The unusual feature called Vivaldi Crater spans 215 kilometers and was imaged […]

Have you ever seen the Man in the Moon? This common question plays on the ability of humans to see pareidolia — imagining familiar icons where they don’t actually exist. […]

Only natural colors of the Moon in planet Earth’s sky appear in this creative visual presentation. Arranged as pixels in a framed image, the lunar disks were photographed at different […]