The surface and atmosphere is colored by ferric oxides. Beneath a very thin layer, mere millimeters deep in places, it’s not red anymore.
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Despite Betelgeuse’s recent faintening and brightening, I’d bet on these stars instead. Betelgeuse, a nearby red supergiant, will someday explode. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way should […]
After a wait of 397 years in orbit, we’re finally getting a truly ‘Great’ Conjunction. Recently, December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn finally met. Looking towards the southwest skies from […]
The solar system has some strange stuff in it. Learning how it ended up that way can tell us where we’re going.
Based on the atoms that they’re made out of, the innermost planet should always be the densest. Here’s why Earth beats Mercury, hands down.
And what can it teach us about our Solar System’s earliest days? In many ways, astronomy is unique among the sciences. In every other field, you have the ability to design […]
It peaks the nights of August 11–13, but it’s no longer the year’s most reliable meteor shower. Every year, beginning in mid-July, planet Earth commences passing through an enormous debris […]
Already 14 billion miles from the Sun, Voyager 1 is speeding away at 38,000 mph.
Galaxies can have regions both hotter and colder than the background radiation of the Universe. When we talk about the depths of space, we get this picture in our heads […]
In 2006, the IAU demoted Pluto. Here’s what we know today. In 2006, the last planet in our Solar System suffered an unforgettable insult, as Pluto — known for generations as our ninth […]
At its biggest for the next 15 years, it’s still much smaller than the Moon. On October 6, 2020, Mars makes its closest approach to Earth until 2035. Earth orbits in […]
All scientific theories, at some level, are wrong. That’s why consensus is so vital. There are two important and common words that, when used scientifically, have a very different meaning than […]
Whether they’re gas giants or rocky planets makes all the difference for life. Over the past 30 years, we went from not knowing if there were planets like ours around other […]
And why, even at its faintest, it always outshines every other star and planet. If you’ve been looking to the west after sunset recently, you may have noticed that there’s one […]
A tiny layer of microscopic dust is the only reason it appears red. When we look out at our planet Earth from space, we see a myriad of diverse colors. The […]
Conjunctions this close are rare, but give humanity an opportunity to view our Solar System’s faintest planet. With eight planets orbiting our Sun, any two will eventually appear close together from […]
Find a clear western horizon after sunset, and this ‘triple treat’ of a dance can be yours. Every once in a while, the night sky provides a spectacular feast for our […]
Catch Saturn at its biggest and brightest, and view its rings while you still can. Right now, in Earth’s skies, Saturn appears at its biggest and brightest. A view of tonight’s […]
The view from beyond Pluto is far enough from Earth that we can see the stars shift. NASA’s New Horizons, humanity’s first spacecraft to encounter Pluto, is more than 4.3 billion […]
On the morning of March 31, 2020, these three worlds will be at their mutual closest in 20 years. For the past few weeks, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter have all shone […]
It doesn’t propagate at infinite speeds, and that’s a problem for Newton. When you look at the Sun, the light you’re seeing isn’t the light that’s being emitted right now. Instead, […]
A historic NASA probe sends back a treasure-trove of information from billions of miles away.
What makes Uranus and Neptune-like worlds so fascinating? If you only knew. What do we really know, and what mysteries are left to solve, about the outer worlds of our Solar […]
If you understand gravity well enough, you might not even need a telescope to revolutionize astronomy. In science, advances arise at the intersection of theory and real-world observation. One of […]
The first planet beyond ‘naked eye’ astronomy will pass within just 1° of Mars. Although there are eight major planets in the Solar System, most of us never see Uranus or […]
We just found a system that we can’t explain. Here’s what’s going on. One of the most fascinating facts about the Universe is that there’s so much of it out there. […]
All the other planets have craters, icecaps, clouds, or a rich, banded structure. But not Uranus. The eight major planets of the Solar System all possess their own unique features. The […]
Even though it was the crowning achievement of Einstein’s career, he was only a small part of the full story. If you were a physicist in the early 20th century, there […]
Since the late 1800s, what we know has advanced light years ahead.
It likely isn’t the rare occurrence we once thought it was. In our Solar System, there’s one overwhelming source of mass that all the planets orbit around: our Sun. Each planet […]