Galaxy Chronicle

Supermoon: What It Really Is, Why It Happens, and When to Catch the Next One

A supermoon is a full moon that lines up with the Moon's closest approach to Earth, making it look a little bigger and noticeably brighter than an ordinary full moon. At its best, a supermoon can appear up to 14% larger and about 30%...

What Is a Constellation? A Beginner’s Guide to the Sky’s 88 Star Patterns

A constellation is a group of stars that forms a recognizable pattern in the night sky, one we've given a name, usually after a mythological figure, animal, or object. There are 88 of them officially recognized, and together they map out the entire sky....
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Neptune’s Tiny Moons Contain a Mineral That Shouldn’t Exist Out There, and It’s Rewriting Their History

Larissa and Galatea, two small, dark moons orbiting close to Neptune, sit in a...

Our Galaxy’s Oldest Known Secret Just Got Uncovered, and It’s Named After Hercules

"Our home is the Milky Way galaxy, but we do not know how our...

A 14-Year-Old Watched Her Hero Launch on TV. Today, She’s Making the Same Kind of History Herself.

In 1996, a 14-year-old girl in France sat in front of a television watching...

149 Years Ago Today, a Foggy Washington Sky Nearly Cost Us a Discovery

On the night of August 17, 1877, at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington,...

A Physicist Spent 10 Years Measuring Gravity Without Being Allowed to Know His Own Results

Stephan Schlamminger stood on a conference stage in July 2024, holding a sealed envelope...

There’s a Recording of Someone Falling in Love, a Billion Miles From Earth

Attached to the side of both Voyager spacecraft, now drifting through interstellar space, sits...

NASA Destroyed a Perfectly Working Spacecraft on Purpose. Here’s Why That Was the Right Call.

On September 15, 2017, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory watched a signal...

The $10 Billion Telescope With 344 Ways to Die

On Christmas morning 2021, a rocket lifted off from French Guiana carrying humanity's most...

The Photo That Needed an Earth-Sized Camera to Take

Nobody had ever seen a black hole. Not because telescopes weren't powerful enough in...

The Week Humanity Watched a Comet Die on Live Television

For seven days in July 1994, astronomers around the world barely slept. Twenty-one pieces...

A Musician’s Hobby Doubled the Size of the Known Solar System Overnight

For nearly six thousand years of recorded human history, the solar system ended at...

Astronomers Just Answered a Question That’s Haunted Exoplanet Hunters for 20 Years

For two decades, the search for another Earth has run into the same maddening...

Latest articles

Supermoon: What It Really Is, Why It Happens, and When to Catch the Next One

A supermoon is a full moon that lines up with the Moon's closest approach...

What Is a Constellation? A Beginner’s Guide to the Sky’s 88 Star Patterns

A constellation is a group of stars that forms a recognizable pattern in the...

How Many Planets Are There? The Real Answer Is Bigger Than Eight

There are eight planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,...

What Is a Galaxy? A Simple Guide to the Great Islands of Stars

A galaxy is an enormous collection of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter, all...