We’re one step closer to taking vacations in space, it seems, after Virgin Galactic showed off its latest launch vehicle Tuesday at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture event in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Named WhiteKnightTwo but nicknamed...

Each week, Astronomy magazine Senior Editor Michael Bakich , a master at explaining how to observe, posts a podcast about three objects or events you can see in the sky. In each episode, Michael highlights: One object you can see without any...

Astronomy contributor John Chumack was finally able to capture the Jupiter impact site with his 10-inch telescope from his backyard in Dayton, Ohio. And he was nice enough to share an image and a Jupiter rotation movie with us. Below is how he put the...

Just in time to keep the Apollo 11 anniversary celebration from dying out, out comes a book called Moonfire . Though, calling it a book seems like kind of an understatement. Not content to simply reproduce Of a Fire on the Moon , Norman Mailer’s gripping...

Now that the September 2009 issue of Astronomy is in-hand (or will be shortly), we’ve updated Astronomy.com with our newest web extras to give subscribers exclusive complementary information to the issue. Take a sneak peek inside the September 2009 Astronomy...

Along with the other 186 people on our ship, the Victoria Prince, I found myself reporting from China during our last week with very limited Internet capability. Thus, I could not send images with the final blog posts during the week of July 20. To make...

In a twist on the amateur-astronomer-helps-professionals storyline, Yale astronomers discovered a group of galaxies by enlisting citizen scientists’ help not with stargazing, but computer gazing. The galaxies, dubbed the “Green Peas” because of their...

Here's my final blog from the China 2009 eclipse tour the Astronomy magazine editors have conducted, along with Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates. Sunday we travel to Shanghai, board a plane in the afternoon, and fly back to Chicago and then to Milwaukee...

Astronomy magazine contributor and longtime imager John Chumack had some luck spotting the new Jupiter impact site from his home in Dayton, Ohio, July 24, and he was nice enough to share his account with us: Even though the seeing sucked, and the sky...

It looks like gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) just became even more inscrutable. And that’s saying something for the brightest — and potentially most destructive — known objects in the universe. Even though it’s still a mystery just how these things work, scientists...

Today our group of travelers left our ship, climbed aboard buses, and made a 2.5-hour journey from our dock to Huang Shan, Yellow Mountain , a national treasure of China. Although the weather was hardly favorable, with rain coming down strongly or sometimes...

Each week, Astronomy magazine Senior Editor Michael Bakich , a master at explaining how to observe, posts a podcast about three objects or events you can see in the sky. In each episode, Michael highlights: One object you can see without...

Carefully following weather reports and satellite imagery through the hours leading up to the great Asian solar eclipse , we knew we might well be in trouble. Rather than pushing on eastward to Wuhan, we stopped our ship, the Victoria Princess , at the...

As you’ve probably heard, last Sunday, July 19, amateur Australian Astronomer Anthony Wesley discovered a dark spot on Jupiter . After alerting the professional astronomers, it turned out the spot, about the size of the Pacific Ocean, likely resulted...

The day following the fantastic total eclipse, our 187 travelers on the Victoria Princess spent a good part of the day in Wuhan, a large city midway between Chongquing and Shanghai. We climbed aboard buses and traveled to the Hubei Provincial Museum...

Hi, this is Bill Andrews, latest addition to the Astronomy staff and (I hope) author of several subsequent blog posts here. Before I dive right into any celestial happenings, I just wanted to give a little bit of my background and what it's like...

Astronomy magazine Columnist and Contributing Editor Stephen James O’Meara sent us this account of the July 22 eclipse from his home in Hawaii: My wife Donna and I had a beautiful eclipse as seen from the Big Island of Hawaii –– even though the Sun was...

** Editor’s note: Dave Eicher prepared this blog just hours before last night’s eclipse. Check out our solar eclipse page to read a recap of Dave’s Twitter ( @AstronomyMag ) updates throughout the eclipse. Stay tuned for a full report and eclipse images...

Astronomy magazine Editor Dave Eicher and Senior Editors Rich Talcott and Michael Bakich are in China to witness the eclipse. They will send back live reports via the magazine's Twitter page at http://Twitter.com/AstronomyMag . Not a fan of Twitter...

Tuesday morning we continued our adventure in China, hoping for a good eclipse day tomorrow . On Sunday we traveled down to Chongquing, a huge city of 8 million in the inner part and 32 million in the surrounding area. It is one of the centers of manufacturing...

One of the greatest historical sites in the world lies tucked outside the huge city of Xian, near an obscure “mountain.” The mountain is actually a vast burial mound where Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, is entombed. But no one knew this until the...

The longest total solar eclipse anyone now alive will experience happens July 22. Depending on the weather, millions of people may see the Moon cover the Sun in the daytime. But not in North America. As the lead astronomer for a trip organized by Astronomical...

Each week, Astronomy magazine Senior Editor Michael Bakich , a master at explaining how to observe, posts a podcast about three objects or events you can see in the sky. In each episode, Michael highlights: One object you can see without any optical...

Day two of substantial sightseeing on our Chinese eclipse tour started with a bang as we boarded buses, left Beijing, and headed high into the mountains northwest of the city. There we were stunned to see huge sections of the only structure built by humans...

Perplexed by planets? Confused by cosmology? Baffled by black holes? Then send in your questions to Astronomy magazine at askastro@astronomy.com . If you have an astronomy question about observing, the planets, stars, cosmology, or astronomy history,...