Astronomy Staff, Author at Astronomy.com

Total solar eclipse 2026: As it happened from Iceland

A Hubble Space Telescope image of Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky, appearing as an intensely bright white-blue point of light with four prominent diffraction spikes extending diagonally across the dark blue background. Sirius B, its much fainter white dwarf companion, is visible as a small distinct point of light in the lower left of the frame.

Observing, Science, Stars

Which naked-eye star is richest in metals?

An artist's illustration of the ESA Comet Interceptor mission, showing the large main spacecraft in the foreground with its deployed solar panels, flanked by two smaller sub-probes, all approaching a comet whose bright white nucleus and two-toned tail — blue ion tail and golden dust tail — dominate the upper right of the image against a starry black background.

Science, Solar System

Could we send a spaceship to Comet 3I/ATLAS to collect samples and bring them back for analysis?

Astrophotography

Reader Gallery July 2026

A close-up photograph of two hands cradling a dark, angular meteorite. The rock is roughly fist-sized with a black, slightly textured fusion crust and irregular flat faces, characteristic of a chondrite meteorite.

How can I get a rock tested to see if it’s a meteorite?

An artist's illustration of two stars against a dense, starry background with red and blue nebula clouds. A large, intensely bright white star dominates the left side of the image, while a smaller, vivid blue star glows to its right, suggesting a binary star system.

How can a young blue giant have a white dwarf companion star that’s billions of years older?

A diagram illustrating the outer solar system from an angled top-down perspective. Concentric orbital paths are shown around a central yellow Sun, with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune labeled at increasing distances. Pluto is shown in yellow text outside Neptune's orbit, and the entire outer region is surrounded by a diffuse haze representing the Kuiper Belt, labeled in white text.

How do planets clear out objects on the other side of their orbit?

A size comparison illustration showing Earth and the Moon side by side against a black background. Earth appears on the left, showing the Americas, swirling cloud cover, and blue oceans, while the gray, crater-marked Moon is shown to the right at roughly one-quarter of Earth's diameter, accurately reflecting their relative sizes.

How is the Moon 1% of Earth’s mass, but its gravity is 17% of Earth’s?

Tall graphic showing a dark, jagged mountain range at the bottom under a bright, star-filled night sky. A wide, colorful band of the Milky Way stretches diagonally across the frame in blues, purples, and pinks against deep blue-black space. In front, two people appear in silhouette—one bent to look through a large telescope on a tripod, the other standing and holding up a phone toward the sky.

Telescopes and Equipment

How to buy your first telescope

A black and white photograph of a total solar eclipse. The Moon appears as a dark circular disk at center, surrounded by the Sun's glowing white corona extending outward in streaks and rays — most prominently upward and to the lower left. The background is nearly black, emphasizing the dramatic contrast of the corona's light.

Science, Solar System

Why is the Moon exactly the same apparent size from Earth as the Sun?

Telescopes and Equipment

Kickstart summer with these new astronomy products

Side-by-side grayscale comparison of the Moon's two hemispheres. The left image shows the familiar near side of the Moon, featuring large dark volcanic plains called maria that give it a distinctive mottled appearance. The right image shows the far side of the Moon, which lacks significant maria and instead appears more uniformly cratered and bright, with prominent crater ray systems radiating outward from impact sites.

Science, Solar System

Why does one side of the Moon have a lot of craters, while the other does not?