An unusual type of solar eclipse occurred in 2012. Usually it is the Earth’s Moon that eclipses the Sun. That year, most unusually, the planet Venus took a turn. Like […]

The Earth’s dark umbral shadow is shaped like a cone extending into space. Of course its circular cross section at the distance of the Moon is more easily seen during […]

This atmospheric picture of a distant horizon looks toward the tall Trisul peaks of India’s snowy Himalayan mountains. Taken from a remote location on January 31, brightest star Sirius shines […]

Sixty years ago, on January 31, 1958, the First Explorer was successfully launched by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency on a Jupiter-C rocket. Inaugurating the era of space exploration for […]

Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure […]

Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually […]

Staring toward the heavens, one of the many lagunas in the Atacama Desert salt flat calmly reflects a starry night sky near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, planet Earth. Cosmic […]

On sol 1943 of its journey of exploration across the surface of Mars, the Curiosity Rover recorded this selfie at the south rim of Vera Rubin Ridge. Of course a […]

By chance, a collision of two galaxies has created a surprisingly recognizable shape on a cosmic scale, The Cartwheel Galaxy. The Cartwheel is part of a group of galaxies about […]

What if you could look out from the center of our Galaxy — what might you see? Two scientifically-determined possibilities are shown in the featured video, an immersive 360-degree view […]