Astronomy Magazine: Space News, Observing, Planets, Galaxies

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Our increasingly cluttered skies

$Photograph of two interacting galaxies merging into a single large, glowing white-gray, wing-shaped structure at center, with tidal arcs sweeping to the left and a bright knot of overlapping material at right. Thin orange-brown dust lanes and pink-red star-forming regions trace through the brighter parts. Many white, blue, and orange stars, some with long vertical blue diffraction streaks, and numerous small background galaxies are scattered across the dark field.$

Galaxies, Science

Gemini North reveals Twin Spirits in Pegasus

Solar System

Mysterious gas on Mars suggests magma below

Photograph of the Sun’s limb in golden-yellow false color, with the bright, mottled, swirling solar surface filling the right side of the frame and fading into a dark, hazy edge at left. A small, round, black dot, likely Mercury transiting the Sun, sits just inside the limb at left of center.

Science, Solar System

What would happen if a planet crashed into the Sun?

Picture of the Day

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A diagonal string of bright white suns descends from the upper left of a deep blue twilight sky, shrinking into thin orange crescents and ending in a dark disk ringed by fire just above the horizon. A wedge of darker sky fans upward from that point. Below, dark trees stretch to the horizon, and in the foreground stands a ruined stone enclosure with a large T-shaped stone monument.

Taula eclipse

Josh Dury, taken from Menorca, Spain

The Aug. 12, 2026, total solar eclipse sets over Talatí de Dalt, a late Bronze Age settlement on the Spanish island of Menorca. The Sun’s partial phases march down to the horizon, where totality lasted about 73 seconds — the site’s first total eclipse since 1539. The photographer composited frames shot with a Sony mirrorless camera and a 35mm lens; the foreground is a 1/30-second exposure at f/2 and ISO 160.

In the Sky

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$Photograph of the open cluster M34, with a loose grouping of bright blue-white stars and prominent diffraction spikes at center. A few orange stars stand out at the top and lower left, and a dense field of fainter white and orange stars fills the dark background.$

Observing