StarDate

Thunderstorms generate what may be nature’s most impressive displays: lightning. And there’s plenty of it; lightning strikes Earth millions of times every day.

Although lightning is common, it’s also…

If you throw a rock into a still pond, waves ripple outward. They jiggle the leaves and bugs on the surface, shaking things up a bit. And the same thing happens in the stars. In fact, a giant region …

The star that marks the heart of the scorpion is at death’s door. Sometime in the next million years or so, Antares is expected to explode as a supernova.

But astronomers don’t know exactly when that…

The Moon will step on the head of the scorpion tonight. It will pass directly in front of one of the stars that outlines the head, blocking it from view – an event called an occultation.

Pi Scorpii i…

Antimatter may power more than just starships. It might also have helped rev up the BOAT – an exploding star nicknamed “the Brightest Of All Time.”

It was seen in October of 2022, in Sagitta, the arr…

A giant tarantula creeps through a nearby galaxy. It’s not trying to be stealthy, though – it’s the galaxy’s brightest feature. In fact, it’s the most impressive stellar nursery in the entire Local G…

Fireworks will light up the skies of many cities and towns this week – celebrations of Independence Day.

For a real fireworks display, though, you might want to visit one of the Milky Way’s companion…

The Sun is an impressive star. Its mass ranks in the top 10 percent of all the stars in the galaxy. But the bright star that snuggles up to the Moon the next couple of evenings puts the Sun to shame.…

When it comes to Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the more things change – well, the more things change. Over the course of a year, our distance from the Sun varies by about three million miles. But tha…

Lots of star clusters adorn the evening skies of summer. That’s because the glowing path of the Milky Way climbs high into the sky. It’s the combined glow of millions of stars that outline the disk o…

Mars and the Moon stage a spectacular encounter this evening. The Moon will slide just a fraction of a degree from the planet, which looks like a bright star.

Something we’ve learned about both of th…

The crescent Moon and two bright pinpoints stairstep up the western sky this evening. Regulus, the star that represents the heart of the lion, is to the upper left of the Moon. And the planet Mars is…

Two decades before astronauts walked on the Moon, American movie-goers got a good preview of what the trip might look like. “Destination Moon” was the first big space movie. And it was the first to a…

Early in its history, the inner solar system was chaotic. Violent collisions might have destroyed many small worlds, while perhaps creating others – including the Moon. It probably formed when a plan…

It would be fascinating to get close to Cygnus X-3. Unfortunately, it also would be deadly. The system is bathed in X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. It features powerful “jets” that blast into space…

425 years ago, a “new” star flared to life near the neck of Cygnus, the swan. The star slowly faded, then flared twice more during the 17th century. It’s remained visible ever since. And someday soon…

Cygnus, the swan, soars gracefully through summer nights. Its brightest star, Deneb, is in the northeast at nightfall. It marks the swan’s tail. The swan’s body stretches to the right, parallel to th…

The Royal Observatory at Greenwich has been one of the most important skywatching sites in history – not so much for what it told us about the stars, but for its role right here on Earth. Its locatio…

The only astronomical object most of us notice in the daytime sky is our star, the Sun. Its light makes the sky bright, which overpowers the other stars and almost everything else. But there are a co…

The Sun is at a standstill. Oh, it’s still orbiting the center of the galaxy at an impressive clip – about half a million miles per hour. And it’s still moving across the sky as Earth turns on its ax…