The Little Dipper: How to Find Ursa Minor and the North Star That Sits at Its Tip

Almost everyone has heard of the Little Dipper, and almost everyone assumes it's easy to find. Then they go outside, look up, and realize...

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....

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...

What Is Uranus’s Distance from the Sun? The Complete Guide to the Ice Giant’s Orbit

When you look up at the night sky Uranus is totally invisible to the...

The Orion Nebula (M42): A Stellar Nursery You Can See With Your Own Eyes

Most of the jaw-dropping objects in deep space are hopelessly out of reach. You...

How Far Is the Sun From Earth? The 93-Million-Mile Answer and Why It Keeps Changing

The Sun sits an average of about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from...

How Old Is the Universe? The 13.8-Billion-Year Answer and How We Measured It

The universe is about 13.8 billion years old. More precisely, 13.787 billion years, give...

Saturn: Size, Distance From the Sun, and Its Slow, Tilted Orbit

Saturn is the planet everyone recognizes instantly thanks to its rings, but the numbers behind it are just as striking as the view through...

Cassiopeia Constellation: How to Find the Vain Queen’s W in the Night Sky

Some constellations take real effort to trace. You squint, connect faint dots, and hope...

Jupiter’s Most Volcanic Moon Turns Out to Be Weirdly Fluffy

Io looks like it should be one of the toughest, densest places 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,...

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...

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...

How Far Is the Sun From Earth? The 93-Million-Mile Answer and Why It Keeps Changing

The Sun sits an average of about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from...

Mars: Size, Distance From the Sun, and Orbit

Mars gets more attention than almost any other planet, and for good reason, it's...

When Is the Next Solar Eclipse: Your Guide to the Ring of Fire and the Eclipse of the Century

The Short Answer The next solar eclipse is an annular "ring of fire" on February...

See the Most Detailed Real Picture of the Sun’s Surface Ever Taken

Every so often, a new image comes along that completely resets what we thought...

How Vast Is the Universe? Discovering Exactly How Space Is Big

Try, just for a second, to actually picture the size of the universe. Most...

James Webb Telescope Latest Discoveries Explained Today

Did you know that light from the first stars takes over 13 billion years...

How Many Black Holes Are Actually in the Milky Way?

Roughly one in every thousand stars in the Milky Way is massive enough to...

A Tiny Probe the Size of a Cellphone Could Make Asteroid Gravity Measurements : spc gravity

What if one of the most important things we learn about an asteroid comes...

Why Does Uranus Rotate on Its Side Learn the Science Behind It

Ever thought a planet could just tip over? Our solar system looks like a...

What Is the Speed of Light?

Light is one of those things we see every day without really thinking about...

Planets

What Is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?

There is a massive mountain range running through the Atlantic Ocean that most people will never see. It is not on a map of mountain peaks like the Rockies or the Appalachians. It is hidden under thousands of feet of seawater and stretches for thousands...

The Leo Constellation: How to Spot the Lion and the Backward Question Mark in Its Mane

Most constellations need a generous imagination to see the thing they're named after. Leo...

How a Happy Accident Uncovered Mars’s Yellow Brimstone Crystals

Some of the biggest discoveries in space exploration don't come from a carefully planned...

Astronomers Discover Earth’s Nearest Black Hole

For most of human history, black holes felt like something that only existed in...

Why Is the Night Sky Dark If There Are Billions of Stars Out There?

It sounds like a silly question at first. Of course the sky is dark...

Space Missions

The Black Hole That Was Never Supposed to Be Found

It was a Saturday in November 2025 when an algorithm flagged something strange in the outskirts of a galaxy 750 million light-years away, a...

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...

How Far Is the Sun From Earth? The 93-Million-Mile Answer and Why It Keeps Changing

The Sun sits an average of about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from...

Perseid Meteor Shower 2026: Your Complete Guide to This Year’s Best Show

If you've been waiting for the right year to finally see the Perseids at their absolute best, this is it. The Perseid meteor shower 2026 peaks on the night of August 12 into the early morning of August 13, and the timing this year...

What Is Dark Energy? A Friendly Guide to Cosmic Mystery

Did you know that everything we can see in the entire cosmos makes up less than five percent of its total contents? The rest...

Planet Earth

Types of Galaxies: Spiral, Elliptical, and Irregular Explained

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

Astronomers Discover the Nearest Black Hole to Earth

Black holes have a reputation for being distant, exotic objects, the kind of thing...

The Mystery of the Ring Around the Moon: What Causes This Winter Phenomenon?

Step outside on a cold, clear night sometime this winter and look up. If...

What Is a White Dwarf? The Compact Corpse of a Dying Star

Most stars don't explode when they die. Instead, they shrink down into something small,...

How to See the Northern Lights: Your Complete Guide to Catching the Aurora in 2026

Seeing the northern lights in person is one of those experiences that reorganizes your sense of what the sky can do. Photos are beautiful, but they don't prepare you for the moment curtains of green and pink actually start rippling and dancing overhead, silent...

All Articles

Scientists Just Found the Same Swirl in Your Coffee Cup Happening All Over the Sun

Stir cream into coffee and watch the edges curl into tiny spirals. Wind blowing...

A Half-Built Telescope Was Just Being Tested. It Found Something Nobody Had Ever Seen.

In November 2025, a team in Chile pointed a telescope that wasn't even finished...

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,...