StarDate

Sagittarius marks the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. So the constellation is packed with stars, star clouds, and star clusters. But one of the clusters doesn’t belong to the Milky Way at a…

Mars won’t exactly roll out the red carpet for human explorers. In fact, the Red Planet could be deadly. It’s bitterly cold, the air is too thin to breathe, there’s no ozone layer to block the Sun’s …

Astronomers generally don’t play many official practical jokes. But an Italian astronomer played one more than two centuries ago. And the joke is still there for everyone to see. It’s in Delphinus, t…

Zeta Tauri is the kind of star that few of us really notice. It’s at the tip of one of the horns of Taurus, the bull. But it shines at only third magnitude. That’s no problem under dark skies, but to…

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

The line from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is true not only on Earth, but across the solar system. Water is everywhere. But it’s not in a form you…

The east coast of Florida first heard the roar of a rocket heading toward space 75 years ago today. It failed. But it set the stage for thousands more launches – payloads intended for Earth orbit, th…

A big storm on the Sun in May of 2024 caused big trouble for satellites. And they could face even bigger troubles in the coming decades.

The storm was an especially powerful outburst of energy and pa…

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is one of the most intriguing features in the solar system. It’s a storm that’s big enough to swallow Earth – but getting smaller.

Winds at its perimeter blow much faster tha…

The three brightest objects in the night sky team up during the early morning twilight tomorrow: the Moon and the planets Venus and Jupiter. Venus is the “morning star,” to the upper right of the Moo…

Since the start of the Space Age, we’ve learned a lot about the other planets of the solar system. But perhaps we’ve learned the most about Venus. That’s a bit of a surprise when you consider that Ve…

The Moon and the Seven Sisters huddle up in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. The Moon will “occult” the sisters – the brightest stars of the Pleiades star cluster. The stars form a tiny dipper that…

There are several ways to envision the celestial scorpion. The main way is to look for the outline of the scorpion, which is low in the south at nightfall at this time of year. Its curving body reall…

Astronauts and cosmonauts have been sharing time in orbit for three decades. But their first mission together began much earlier, with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. An Apollo spacecraft linked up wi…

An astronomical trio lines up low in the east at first light tomorrow. Two of its members are easy to pick out: Venus, the brilliant “morning star,” with the true star Aldebaran close to its right. B…

If you ever find yourself floating above the clouds of Saturn, gazing upon the planet’s magnificent rings, you might feel like you need to get your eyes checked. Even at noon, when the Sun is highest…

Only about one in five Americans was born before the “Mars Era” – before the first spacecraft visited the Red Planet. That first encounter took place 60 years ago today, beginning six decades of Mars…

A brilliant “new” star blazed into view more than a thousand years ago. It’s the brightest star ever recorded, and may be the brightest ever seen by human eyes.

Supernova 1006 first appeared in late …

A couple of bright cousins of Antares, the heart of the scorpion, skitter to its lower right on July evenings. They’re the brightest stars of Lupus, the wolf.

The stars of Lupus originally formed par…

Newly forming planetary systems are busy and messy. They contain disks of gas, ice, and dust that are broken into wide bands. The supply of dust is replenished by frequent collisions between “exocome…

When it comes to the night sky, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. Consider Venus and Aldebaran, which are low in the east at first light. Venus is the brilliant “morning star.” Aldebaran s…