3+ day, 21+ hour ago   (495+ words) giving astronomers a new counterpart to the planet’s famous northern hexagon. The southern pattern appears to be evolving, raising a question that a single striking image cannot answer: will it become another enduring feature of the planet’s weather? A study…...

2+ day, 15+ hour ago   (924+ words) Hubble has found a growing ten-sided atmospheric wave around Saturn’s south pole—the first large regular-sided jet seen there. Saturn has long been known for a strange shape in its clouds. A vast hexagon circles the planet’s north pole, holding…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago   (565+ words) Earth’s shadow will cover about 93 percent of the full Moon during the 27–28 August 2026 deep partial eclipse. It will be visible from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and western Asia. The full Moon will pass through Earth’s shadow on the night of…...

5+ day, 18+ hour ago   (637+ words) Satellite constellations can leave bright trails across telescope images. Here is what that means for astronomy and the night sky. Satellites are changing the night sky in a way that has little to do with the old glow of city…...

3+ week, 1+ day ago   (757+ words) Avi Loeb has proposed a Galileo Observatory at Carl Sagan’s former Ithaca home, linking public astronomy with a transparent search for UAP evidence. Carl Sagan’s former home could one day host a small observatory dedicated to watching the sky. Avi…...

3+ week, 15+ hour ago   (679+ words) Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a storm system wider than Earth, turning inside the planet’s cloud tops for centuries of recorded observation. It is not a solid mark on the surface. Jupiter has no solid surface beneath the visible clouds;…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (752+ words) A parsec is a distance defined by parallax. Here is how astronomers use the unit to measure the space between stars and galaxies. What is a parsec? It is a unit of distance used by astronomers to describe the space…...

3+ day, 20+ hour ago   (511+ words) Venus can reach its greatest brilliance while a telescope shows only a crescent. A nearly full Venus exposes more of its sunlit hemisphere, yet that does not necessarily deliver more light to Earth. The missing part of the explanation is…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (804+ words) Why do planets orbit the Sun instead of falling into it? The short answer is that gravity pulls the planets inward while their sideways motion carries them forward. The combination produces a curved path. A planet is always falling toward…...

22+ hour, 14+ min ago   (251+ words) Tiny minerals inside one of the most pristine meteorites ever found still carry a record of magnetism from the solar system’s first 200,000 years. Tiny mineral grains inside an Antarctic meteorite may preserve the oldest evidence yet of a magnetic field…...