Space & Astronomy

NASA interns and contributors have helped identify celestial objects through systematic sky surveys and computational analysis. When an intern flags a potential planet, the find...

At various times, the planet Venus or, less often, Mercury is commonly the brightest planet seen in the western sky after sunset. This guide explains what people mean when they...

Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun, making it the outermost classical planet in our solar system. This ice giant orbits at an average distance of about 30 astronomical un...

When NASA reports it has found a new galaxy, it means a celestial object meeting the criteria for a galaxy has been observed, measured, and confirmed using space-based instrumen...

The changing phases of the moon are a direct result of the Moon’s orbit around Earth and the way sunlight falls on its near and far sides. As the Moon circles our planet, the...

A solar eclipse in the USA follows precise astronomical and geographic rules rather than a simple single time. The moment of greatest eclipse, the narrow path of totality, and t...

A super moon occurs when a full moon or new moon coincides with perigee, the point in the Moon’s elliptical orbit closest to Earth. At perigee, the Moon can appear slightly la...

Stars die when they exhaust the nuclear fuel that counteracts gravity. The exact outcome depends primarily on mass. Lower-mass stars like the Sun expand into red giants, shed th...

Retrograde motion is an apparent effect caused by the relative positions and speeds of Earth and other planets as they orbit the Sun. From Earth, a planet can appear to drift we...

An eclipse happens when one celestial body moves into the shadow of another. For the 2026 calendar, the year includes a total solar eclipse, a penumbral lunar eclipse, and an an...