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Galaxies & Deep Space

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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The Closest Black Holes to Earth, Ranked

Somewhere in the Milky Way, roughly 100 million stellar-mass black holes are drifting through...

Is There Life on Other Planets? Here’s What the Evidence Actually Shows

NASA puts it about as plainly as an agency can: so far, the only...

Some Black Holes Might Be Older Than the Big Bang Itself

For almost a century, cosmologists have traced everything back to one single starting point....

Types of Galaxies: Spiral, Elliptical, and Irregular Explained

Every galaxy you've ever seen a photo of falls into one of a small...

What Is a Brown Dwarf? The Star That Never Quite Made It

Somewhere between a planet and a star sits a category of object that never...

How Will the Universe End? The Three Leading Theories

Every star will eventually burn out, every galaxy will drift apart, and given enough...

How Many Galaxies Are in the Observable Universe?

Point the Hubble Space Telescope at what looks like a completely empty patch of...

What Is a Wormhole? Cosmic Shortcuts That Might Not Actually Exist

Science fiction loves wormholes, tunnels through space and time that let a ship skip...

What Is the Fermi Paradox? Where Is Everybody?

In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi was having lunch with colleagues at Los Alamos, chatting...

What Is a Magnetar? The Strongest Magnets in the Universe

Somewhere out there sits a stellar remnant so magnetically powerful it could, in theory,...

What Is a Quasar? The Brightest Objects in the Entire Universe

Point a telescope at a quasar and you'd see what looks like an ordinary,...

What Is Dark Energy? The Mysterious Force Pulling the Universe Apart

In just two weeks, NASA is launching a telescope specifically built to chase down...

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...