The Hunt for Life in Alpha Centauri
This oddball system of three stars might be our best chance at finding nearby life in the Universe.
To Find a New World, Watch How a Planet Dances with Its Star
Finding a tiny planet around bright stars dozens or hundreds of light-years from Earth is extremely difficult.
Explaining GRB 221009A, the Greatest Cosmic Explosion Humanity Has Ever Seen
The brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed, GRB 221009A behaved in unexpected ways that might help us understand how they occur.
Could You Stand on the Surface of Jupiter? Exploring the Enigmatic Outer Planets
The outer planets’ clouds hide the weirdness within.
NASA’s Deepest 3D Fly-through of the Universe
From the present day all the way to less than 400 million years after the Big Bang, we're seeing how the Universe grew up like never before.
Deimos: A Chip Off the Old Martian Block?
A new space probe suggests that the moonlet Deimos isn’t a captured asteroid after all.
Trouvelot’s Total Lunar Eclipse
Immigrant artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot used his skills to accurately represent the details—and the sublimity—of our solar system.
How to See the Invisible Universe
Telescopes that detect long-wavelength signals offer clues about the Big Bang, the centers of black holes, and the origins of life.
The Secrets of Jupiter’s Incredible Great Red Spot
Astronomers have worked out that Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a massive storm system, but what keeps a storm going for hundreds of years?