18+ hour, 4+ min ago   (132+ words) Explanation: This sight was worth getting out of bed early. Just over four years ago, Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rose before dawn to the delight of northern sky enthusiasts awake that early. Up before sunrise on July 8th, the featured photographer was…...

1+ day, 1+ hour ago   (126+ words) [Note: Catching up for yesterday] Explanation: Bright sunlight glints as long dark shadows mark this image of the surface of the Moon. It was taken on July 20, 1969, by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first to walk on the lunar surface....

1+ day, 17+ hour ago   (962+ words) In 1989, Voyager 2 discovered six previously unknown moons around Neptune. Five of them are tiny satellites that travel just beyond the planet’s main rings. Their small size and great distance from Earth have made them especially difficult to study in detail....

2+ day, 17+ hour ago   (312+ words) Explanation: Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name,…...

3+ day, 16+ hour ago   (142+ words) Explanation: What does this image look like to you? Many see a giraffe facing right, with neck stretched high and long legs mid-stride (but some may see a squirrel instead). The featured image shows LDN 1295, also called the Giraffe Nebula,…...

4+ day, 11+ hour ago   (898+ words) Most Christians believe the universe is billions of years old. Some treat the six days of creation as a metaphor. Others latch onto explanations such as Gap Theory or Day-Age Theory to reconcile. But there is one theory that I’ve…...

4+ day, 17+ hour ago   (131+ words) Explanation: Is this star winking at us? The central object in today’s animation is not one but two stars. XZ Andromedae, indicated by the bold lines, is an Algol-type eclipsing binary with a nearly edge-on orbit from Earth’s perspective. The…...

5+ day, 18+ hour ago   (375+ words) Explanation: Why are Saturn’s poles geometric? Saturn’s North Pole has been known to be surrounded by a hexagonal (6 sides) cloud since discovery in 1987 in data taken by NASA’s Voyager spacecrafts, which quickly flew past the ringed world in the early…...

6+ day, 12+ hour ago   (513+ words) The newly identified atmospheric wave appears to be strengthening, giving scientists a rare chance to watch an unusual feature develop on Saturn. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a giant 10-sided pattern encircling Saturn's south pole, giving scientists a rare…...

6+ day, 17+ hour ago   (326+ words) NASA has decided to develop a more basic version of the lunar spacesuit for the first Moon landings, aiming to meet a 2028 target date. The agency is working with Axiom Space to build what it calls the Sortie Suit, which…...