The bestselling author discusses his inspiration, creative process, and favorite scientific tidbits behind the feature film.

Amateur astronomers dubbed this object M110 in the 1960s, so we choose not to include it. Charles Messier’s list stops at 103 objects. Historically, that should be the last word, but it would be hard ...

The Sun, along with more than 1,500 other stars, journeyed from the middle of the Milky Way to its current position a few billion years ago.

Today is a busy day! Mercury passes 2° south of Mars at 2 A.M. EDT — we’ll observe the pair in the evening sky, along with a Titan transit of Saturn. But first, the Orionid meteor shower peaks as the ...

Look north this evening a couple hours after sunset and you’ll easily spot the large shape of the Big Dipper as it sits upside-down in the sky, appearing to pour from its cup into that of the smaller ...

The simple answer is that Saturn’s rings do cast shadows on the planet’s surface! NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, took the dramatic image of the rings’ shadows on ...

The distant ice giant Uranus is located in Taurus right now, not far from the famous (and easy-to-find) Pleiades star cluster, cataloged as M45. Tonight, the planet also sits a short distance due ...

Look north this evening for Ursa Major the Great Bear, whose back half is best known as the Big Dipper. The two stars on the far end of the cup from the handle are called the Pointer Stars: These are ...

Sixty-five years ago, the USSR shocked the world by sending the first robotic emissary from Earth to the Moon. The September 1959 impact of Luna 2 on northeastern Mare Imbrium was a stunning ...

Planning to run this year’s Messier marathon? March 14/15 and 21/22 are the best nights to give it a go. Your ideal order will differ with latitude, but this is a good place to start. Be sure to set ...

French astronomer Charles Messier did not intend to be remembered for his discoveries of galaxies, nebulae, and stars clusters when he looked to the sky in the 1750s. Dubbed the “Ferret of Comets” by ...