News from Astronomy

Your source for the latest news on planets, stars, galaxies, cosmology, observing events, space missions, and more.

Latest Astronomy News

Composite photograph of a deep blue night sky above a grove of dark pine and deciduous trees beside a small pond on a grassy, golf-course-like landscape. Nearly a dozen thin green-teal Orionid meteors streak across the sky, most angled diagonally from upper left to lower right. The constellation Orion, including its Belt and the glowing Orion Nebula, appears at left of center. A pale glow of light pollution along the horizon, with a few orange and white lights reflecting on the pond, brightens the sky behind the trees.

The Sky This Week from October 16 to 23: The Orionid meteor shower peaks

$Photograph of a spiral galaxy tilted diagonally across the frame, with a glowing golden-tan core threaded with brown dust lanes and pink star-forming regions. Blue-white spiral arms and clusters of young stars extend outward from the core toward the upper right and lower left. A bright blue-white star with prominent diffraction spikes sits just below the core, and several other foreground stars with spikes are scattered across the dark background, along with a few small orange background galaxies.$

Galaxies, Science

Uncovering M96’s violent past

$Annotated astrophotograph of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), a face-on spiral with a pale blue-white core, dark dust lanes, and sweeping blue spiral arms dotted with red and pink star-forming regions, set against a dark star field. A bright blue star with diffraction spikes appears at left. Small white labels with leader lines point to star clusters labeled C20, C27, C38, C39, H10, H38, M9, R12, R14, U49, U62, U77, and U137.$

Astrophotography, Deep-Sky Objects

Imaging star clusters in other galaxies

Science

How do professional astronomers book time on JWST or Hubble?

Browse by category

This artist’s conception illustrates one of the most primitive supermassive black holes known (central black dot) at the core of a young, star-rich galaxy. Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have uncovered two of these early objects, dating back to about 13 billion years ago. The monstrous black holes are among the most distant known, and appear to be in the very earliest stages of formation, earlier than any observed so far. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Science

Explore the science of space, from the astrophysics of stars to the ultimate fate of the universe.

Explore Topic

Observing

Learn about upcoming observing events such as eclipses, meteor showers, comets, conjunctions, and more.

Explore Topic

This 2016 Curiosity rover selfie shows the vehicle at the “Okoruso” drilling site on Mount Sharp’s Naukluft Plateau. The Martian scene is a mosaic of images taken with the arm-mounted Mars Hands Lens Imager (MAHLI). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Space Exploration

Human and robotic missions are helping humanity explore our solar system and beyond.

Explore Topic

October 2026

Subscribe

Read on Zinio

Sky This Week

View All

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from October 16 to 23: The Orionid meteor shower peaks

Sky This Month

View All

Photograph of Saturn against a dark background, seen nearly edge-on with its ring system stretching horizontally across the globe and casting a thin shadow band on the planet. The pale gold and tan cloud bands are visible, with a bright white storm feature swirling in the planet's southern hemisphere.

Observing

October 2026: What’s in the sky this month?

Picture of the Day

See All Photos

A long, tilted galaxy sits in the center of the frame, a glowing pale-yellow band crossed lengthwise by a dark, rusty-red streak, with a hazy bluish-white glow flaring at both ends. A very faint gray trail stretches from its right end down toward the lower-right corner. Hundreds of small white, gold, and orange stars and tiny distant galaxies fill the black background, with one bright blue star near the top.

A hamburger with a tail

Dave Doctor from Las Cruces, New Mexico

The Hamburger Galaxy (NGC 3628) is an edge-on spiral in Leo, some 30 million light-years away, and a member of the Leo Triplet along with M65 and M66. Tidal interactions with those neighbors has extracted a faint tidal tail about 300,000 light-years long, part of which trails off at lower right. The imager took 40 hours of exposure in LRGB filters with a 14-inch f/3.8 astrograph.