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 […]

What’s that black dot crossing the Sun? The planet Mercury. Mercury usually passes over or under the Sun, as seen from Earth, but last month the Solar System’s innermost planet […]

Why does this galaxy have a ring of bright blue stars? Beautiful island universe Messier 94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the Hunting […]

Does Mars have a north star? In long exposures of Earth’s night sky, star trails make concentric arcs around the north celestial pole, the direction of our fair planet’s axis […]

Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon’s icy surface likely hides a deep, global […]

This week’s ongoing conjunction of Venus and Jupiter may have whetted your appetite for skygazing. Tonight is the main course though. On November 28, a young crescent Moon will join […]

What are those two bright objects on the horizon? Venus and Jupiter. The two brightest planets in the night sky passed very close together — angularly — just two days […]

Do you see the bat? It haunts this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the […]

Put on your red/blue glasses and gaze across the western Ocean of Storms on the surface of the Moon. The 3D view features Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad visiting the […]