Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter, born May 6, 1872, studied mathematics and physics at the University of Groningen, developing an interest in astronomy there and furthering it with work at Cape ...

Without our satellite, Earth’s geology, biology, and climate — even human philosophy — would be vastly different.

Venus and Jupiter are the top evening features for your observing run after sunset in May. Jupiter also hosts a handful of exciting double transits — and double shadow transits — involving Europa and ...

Just over 40 years ago, in his novel Contact, astronomer Carl Sagan imagined what it would be like to detect radio signals beamed from other intelligent lifeforms in the galaxy. In the story, these ...

The evening sky presents quite a show this month. The bright planets Venus and Jupiter shine prominently in the northwest as the sky darkens. It’s best to look for Venus first. The brilliant planet ...

On May 1, 1949, astronomer Gerard Kuiper spotted a new moon of Neptune while examining photographic plates from McDonald Observatory’s 82-inch telescope. It would be the last moon discovered at that ...

Saturn, rising early in the morning, has now become a bit easier to spot in the predawn sky. About 45 minutes before sunrise on May 1, it has reached an altitude of nearly 4° above the eastern horizon ...

Venus ends the month of April near a pair of 4th-magnitude stars in Taurus the Bull: Kappa (κ) and Upsilon (υ) Tauri. The bright planet now lies to the upper right of 1st-magnitude Aldebaran, the Bull ...

Astronomers have discovered a new member of a rare and mysterious class of solar system objects known as sednoids — a subset of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs) with exceptionally distant, ...

This week, Astronomy magazine Editor Emeritus Dave Eicher invites you to look to the southeast on the night of May 3 to see the Moon rise alongside Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius. Good luck!

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere aren’t just affecting climate on Earth — they could also make weather in space more dramatic, says new research. A team led by scientists from the ...