A gravel country lane gently winds through this colorful rural night skyscape. Captured from Monroe County in southern West Virginia on the evening of October 10, the starry sky above is a familiar sight. Shimmering curtains of aurora borealis or ...
The second solar eclipse of 2024 began in the Pacific. On October 2nd the Moon's shadow swept from west to east, with an annular eclipse visible along a narrow antumbral shadow path tracking mostly over ocean, making its only major landfall ...
Five bright comets are compared in these panels, recorded by a coronograph on board the long-lived, sun-staring SOHO spacecraft. Arranged chronologically all are recognizable by their tails streaming away from the Sun at the center of each field ...
What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy M106? A swirling disk of stars and gas, M106's appearance is dominated by blue spiral arms and red dust lanes near the nucleus, as shown in the featured image taken from the Kuwaiti ...
Can you find the Sun? OK, but can you explain why there’s a big dark spot in the center? The spot is the Moon, and the impressive alignment shown, where the Moon lines up inside the Sun, is called an annular solar eclipse. Such an eclipse ...
A bright comet is moving into the evening skies. C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) has brightened and even though it is now easily visible to the unaided eye, it is so near to the Sun that it is still difficult to see. Pictured, Comet ...
Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, grew a spectacularly long and filamentary tail. The magnificent tail spread across the sky and was visible for several days to Southern Hemisphere observers just after sunset. The amazing ion tail showed ...
While hunting for comets in the skies above 18th century France, astronomer Charles Messier diligently kept a list of the things encountered during his telescopic expeditions that were definitely not comets. This is number 27 on his now famous ...
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is growing brighter in planet Earth's sky. Fondly known as comet A3, this new visitor to the inner Solar System is traveling from the distant Oort cloud. The comet reached perihelion, its closest approach ...
The second solar eclipse of 2024 began in the Pacific. On October 2nd the Moon's shadow swept from west to east, with an annular eclipse visible along a narrow antumbral shadow path tracking mostly over ocean, crossing land near the southern ...