StarDate

Moon and Saturn

If you’re searching for life on another world, you don’t want to find life that’s hitchhiked from Earth. But preventing contamination isn’t easy. Over the past few decad

Harvest Moon

The Moon is full today. But it’s not just any old full Moon. It’s the best-known of them all: the Harvest Moon – the subject of books, music, and lots of fall festivals.

Neptune Opposition III

Neptune has lost its vibrancy. The planet itself hasn’t changed – only our perception of it – the result of a bit of creative license exercised 37 years ago. Neptune is

Neptune Opposition II

The largest moon of Neptune was an agent of chaos. It wasn’t born with Neptune itself. Instead, it was captured by the giant planet. As it spiraled in, it might have hit

Neptune at Opposition

It’s not often that someone hands an astronomer a major discovery. But that’s what happened 180 years ago today. German astronomer Johann Galle, the director of Berlin Ob

Solar Sounds

The Sun speaks to us. It tells us about conditions deep inside it, far below its surface. That helps scientists understand how the Sun is put together, how it works, and

Fall Equinox

Day and night will be just about equal the next few days for the entire world. That’s because fall arrives in the northern hemisphere tomorrow. It’s the September equinox

Errai

In Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar,” Caesar makes a bold proclamation: But I am constant as the northern star, / Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality / There is no f

Circumpolar Stars

Two well-known star patterns highlight the northern sky this evening. The Big Dipper is low in the north-northwest at nightfall, and in the northeast at first light tomor

Stellar Flotilla

A thousand spacecraft could head for our closest neighboring planetary system in just a few decades. Don’t book your ticket just yet, though – each craft would weigh abou

Turbulent Planet

The winds on a giant planet more than 200 light-years from Earth are like the Big Bad Wolf: they’ll huff and puff and blow your house down. And if that’s not enough of a

Moon and Antares

The Moon huddles close to the heart of the scorpion this evening – the star Antares. It’s among the 15 brightest star systems in the night sky. If our eyes could see all

More Pegasus

The first planet ever discovered orbiting a Sun-like star is nothing like anything in our own solar system. But it helped astronomers learn more about the history of the

Pegasus

Pegasus has a bit of an identity crisis. The stars that outline its body – the Great Square – don’t all belong to the flying horse. In fact, the brightest of the four sta

Moon and Venus

The United States and China both plan to land astronauts on the Moon in the next few years. And scientists from both countries are working on the best landing sites – pla

Capricornus

The roster of constellations includes some weird and wonderful creatures. There’s a dragon, a unicorn, and two centaurs. But perhaps the weirdest of all is Capricornus, t

Demolished Planets

Young star systems are dangerous places. A planet can be pelted by giant asteroids and comets. It can collide with its siblings, and be kicked out of the system by close

Lemon Planet

A planet orbiting a dead star 750 light-years from Earth is a real lemon. The planet is shaped like a lemon – a result of the extreme gravity of its parent star. The sys

More ‘G’ Stars

The Sun belongs to a rare class of stars: Class G. Members of this class account for only seven or eight percent of all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. A star’s class

G Stars

Under a dark sky, far from city lights, the eye alone can see thousands of stars. They come in a variety of brightnesses and colors. Yet only a few of those pinpoints are