Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is ancient. It was born perhaps 13.6 billion years ago — just a couple...More »
★Stargazing: November 28
Spica, the brightest star of Virgo, rises far below the Moon in the wee hours of tomorrow, but will be...More »
▶StarDate Radio: November 28 — Moon and Spica
The heart of the Sun is a toasty 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, atoms of hydrogen ram into...More »
★Stargazing: November 27
Camelopardalis, the giraffe, wraps around Polaris, the north star. Its main outline is in the north-northeast at nightfall. It stands...More »
▶StarDate Radio: November 27 — Mars 2
Mars has many ways to “get” a visiting probe. It’s cold, it’s dry, and its air is thin, for example....More »
▶StarDate Radio: November 26 — Camelopardalis
The constellation named for the giraffe is tall, as you might expect. But it isn’t bright. None of its stars...More »
★Stargazing: November 26
The bright star Regulus crouches to the right of the Moon at first light tomorrow, and much farther to the...More »
★Stargazing: November 25
Regulus, the bright heart of the lion, huddles near the Moon the next couple of nights. It rises below the...More »
▶StarDate Radio: November 25 — Moon and Regulus
Regulus, the star at the heart of the lion, has a small, faint companion. Astronomers have known about it for...More »
▶StarDate Radio: November 24 — Big Changes
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was like a cosmic reset button. It killed off most of the life...More »
★Stargazing: November 24
The V-shaped face of Taurus gazes down tonight. The brightest star in the V is Aldebaran, the bull’s orange eye....More »
▶StarDate Radio: November 23 — DART
A NASA spacecraft whose launch window opens tomorrow is being sent on a suicide mission. It will destroy itself by...More »
★Stargazing: November 23
Pollux, the brighter “twin” of Gemini, is close to the upper left of the Moon in mid-evening, with the other...More »
Current Magazine
In the November/December issue, we take you inside efforts to send robotic probes back to the Moon, and explain why astronomers are looking for odd black holes that might be left over from the birth of the universe.
Updated 2021 Sky Almanac
We've updated the digital version of the Almanac, adding new events in space exploration, revising dates for others, and making additional changes to keep it fresh and up to date.
This year offers up some beautiful skywatching treats, including two good lunar eclipses and several planetary conjunctions. You can find all the details on these and many others in our 2021 Sky Almanac. We also tell you about some amazing dead or dying stars—some of them spectacular, all of them fascinating.
