Astronomy

New peer-reviewed research reporting strange lights in the pre-space-age sky is sparking curiosity and controversy

A comet’s brightness depends on how it’s made, how and when we see it, and even a bit of unpredictable luck

A comet visible to the naked eye will make its closest approach to Earth on October 21

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories suggests a supervolcanic exomoon may lurk around the giant exoplanet WASP-39b

Science in meter and verse

If you pick the right time, our home world and our moon could be easily visible from the Red Planet

Space scientists look back on three decades of exoplanet discoveries—from rows of massive ‘super-Earths‘ to worlds with perfectly synchronized orbits

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is poised to tell us whether Earth-like planets are common—if it can get off the ground

Many asteroids are related, but their family trees can be hard to trace

It’s a crowded galaxy, the latest exoplanet tally shows

Gauging the mass of a black hole is tricky, but astronomers have devised multiple methods to measure the heft of these galactic gluttons

A swarm of galaxies called the Bullet Cluster is the biggest, best natural laboratory for studying dark matter that astronomers have ever seen