Although the fall season doesn’t officially start for another few weeks, it is time to head back to school (for those who didn’t already start last week). College students probably have just spent an arm and a leg on books, room and board, and tuition...

Two stories last week suggest that the NASA of tomorrow will be substantially different from the NASA of today. The New York Times had a story August 24 questioning whether NASA could possibly reach its stated goals of another Moon landing by 2020 given...

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...

Each year Astronomy magazine publishes an article highlighting what we consider the top 10 astronomy stories of the previous year. I’ve started working on the article for 2009 and thought I’d share a few of our ideas for the big stories. We also want...

A guest blog from Lynne Hillenbrand, Caltech’s executive officer of astronomy The Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics on the campus of the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, is home to many of the world's pioneers...

Now that the October issue of Astronomy is in the mail, we’ve updated Astronomy.com with our newest web extras to give subscribers exclusive complementary information on the issue. Take a sneak peek inside the October issue . Also, watch Editor Dave Eicher's...

As I’m sure we all know, Pluto, the former ninth planet in our solar system, suffered a demotion 3 years ago when the International Astronomical Union reclassified it as a dwarf planet . I won’t get into the specifics behind the decision, but I will say...

My 4-year-old godson, Dylan, lives in Las Vegas. His mother, Jennifer, recently bought him an astronomically themed lunch box. On it were the planets of our solar system. After studying the image for some time, Dylan asked his mother why his lunch box...

In my newest video, I give you an overview of dark matter , that mysterious stuff that makes up some 90 percent of the universe’s mass. During the last few decades, astronomers have gained convincing evidence that stars, gas, and dust aren’t all there...

Longtime Astronomy contributor John Chumack of Dayton, Ohio, sent us a video we had to share with you. It shows 3 nights of Perseid meteor activity beginning with the evening of August 11 and continuing through the morning hours of August 14. During that...

An interesting story on Slate.com takes this, the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei ’s first telescope, to wonder why we call him by his first name . After all, its subhead points out, “We don’t go around saying ‘Albert’ discovered relativity.” (Briefly...

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...

I’m a big fan of anything that brings people face to face with amazing science, and it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening in The World At Night (TWAN) , an international program to display beautiful images of the night sky in American malls. Exhibiting...

Guest blog from Laurance R. Doyle, SETI Institute Principal Investigator Ever forget to wonder about the stars? Robert Eklund’s First Star I See Tonight: An Exploration of Wonder will remind you. This book reminds me why I went into astronomy to begin...

Aliens and science don’t usually go together. Maybe it’s the, let’s say, “disheveled” look of the overly eager UFO enthusiasts and abductees. Both professional and amateur astronomers alike are quick to distance themselves from talk of UFOs. But that...

Here's the latest update on the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) project from “Our man in Cape Town,” Benne Holwerda, researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. One of the elementary (but difficult) things for a telescope to do is...

Titan’s always been pretty exciting. This saturnian satellite is the second-largest moon in the solar system (bigger even than Mercury and Pluto), and the only moon to have a thick atmosphere, complete with weather patterns. Sure, the extremely cold temperatures...

NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity recently discovered a roughly watermelon-sized meteorite , the largest ever found on the Red Planet. Even though Opportunity drove by it 2 weeks ago in a Mars region called Meridiani Planum, the rover team decided to have...

Normally, every few months I post a blog sharing the results of some of the more interesting polls we do on the Astronomy.com home page. But this time, I want to focus on only one poll result because, well, I thought maybe you all could provide some insight...

Even though it’s technically been out a few weeks already, I saw the movie Moon recently. What better way to celebrate the 40-year anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing than by watching a movie all about the Moon and the lonely guy who works there in a mining...

Holy cow, what an amazing picture! Thierry Legault , a well-known astrophotographer, recently captured this literally (in my case) breathtaking image of the space shuttle Endeavor docked with the International Space Station (ISS) as the two vehicles passed...

The European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) just released a striking set of images focused on an unusual star, HD 87643, near the constellation Carina the Keel . The main image (to the right) centers 87643 within...

Ever wondered what an astronaut really does all day? Curious about zero-g hygiene? Want to know what someone on the International Space Station (ISS) thinks should happen to the ISS? Then you should ask! The crew members of the next shuttle mission (pictured...

Like many recently, I was pretty surprised to learn official plans call for the deorbiting and destruction of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015. The international team won’t even be done building the thing until 2011! What gives? I’d thought...