Year of the Comet
Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)

PANSTARRS information

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)

ISON information

Astronomy 101

Understand the interesting and odd concepts — from the Big Bang to black holes — that make up science.

Hypernova gamma-ray burst illustration
In this video, explore the brightest events in the universe: gamma-ray bursts.
By Sarah Scoles
Astro-101_CMB
In this video, explore one of the major pieces of evidence that our universe began in what’s called the Big Bang — the cosmic microwave background.
By Liz Kruesi
Johannes-Kepler

In this episode, learn about the basic scientific rules that govern the motion of planetary orbits.

By Liz Kruesi
Astronomical-Distances
In this episode, learn how astronomers make sense of the enormous expanses in our universe.
By Bill Andrews
star-formation
In this video, explore the basic types and life cylces of the most common objects in the universe.
By Liz Kruesi
Astro-101_Planets
In this episode, explore the variety of worlds both within our stellar neighborhood and throughout the galaxy and learn about the controversy around the definition of a planet.
By Bill Andrews
Tycho-Supernova
In this video, learn about some of the brightest booms since the Big Bang and the various mechanisms that cause them.
By Bill Andrews
ASY82611Astro101NeutronStarsV1241_800
In this video, explore the various superdense remnants of massive stars, which hold between 1 and 3 times the Sun’s mass and are so dense that a teaspoon of their matter weighs about a billion tons.
By Liz Kruesi
Astro-101_NGC-604
In this episode, learn what astronomers have come to know about some of the most beautiful objects in the night sky — the various collections of gas and dust that permeate our universe.
By Bill Andrews
M74
To understand some of the biggest objects in the universe, astronomers have come up with a classification system for galaxies based on their shape and the number of stars they hold.
By Liz Kruesi
Dark energy video still
In the third installment of our Cosmology 101 video series, Astronomy magazine Associate Editor Liz Kruesi focuses on dark energy.
By Liz Kruesi
Black hole video still
Astronomy magazine Senior Editor Richard Talcott introduces the Astronomy 101 video series with a look at one of the weirdest objects in the universe: black holes.
By Richard Talcott
Dark-matter-video-still
Astronomy magazine Associate Editor Liz Kruesi gives an overview of dark matter, that mysterious stuff that makes up some 90 percent of the universe's mass.
Cosmology 101: Big Bang theory video
Most of the confusion about the Big Bang revolves around two different incorrect ideas. The first is that the Big Bang theory discusses the origin of the universe. The second is that the Big Bang was an explosion. In this video, Associate Editor Liz Kruesi explains what the Big Bang theory really states.
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