Magazine | Astronomy.com

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

Distant NGC 3137 reveals clues about our own galaxy

Features, Gear Guide, Telescopes and Equipment

Our 16th annual star products

Illustration depicting a dark, rocky planet filling most of the frame, its surface shadowed on the left and faintly lit along the right edge. A small reddish star glows at lower right, set against a starry background streaked with faint blue nebulosity.

Cosmology, Exoplanets, Science

What can we learn from gravitational lensing?

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

How do professional astronomers book time on JWST or Hubble?

Satellite photograph of the contiguous United States at night, showing city lights as golden points and clusters against a dark navy landmass and black ocean. The eastern two-thirds of the country glow densely and almost continuously along the coasts and around the Great Lakes, while the western half shows sparser, more isolated clusters of light concentrated along the Pacific coast and scattered through the interior.

How can I reduce my personal contribution to light pollution?

A photoillustration of a thick crescent Moon against a black sky, filling the right side of the frame. The sunlit crescent curves along the left edge, showing gray maria and many craters, and the rest of the Moon's disk is in shadow. Just off the Moon's lower-left limb sits Jupiter, a small tan disk with visible cloud bands, lined up with its four Galilean moons as tiny points of light: from left to right, Ganymede, Jupiter, Io, Callisto, and Europa. The scene shows the jovian system a few minutes before the Moon occults it. Empty black space fills the left side of the image.

Observing, Planets, The Moon, Upcoming Events

See the Moon occult Jupiter October 6

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.

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

Photograph of Saturn against a black background, tilted so its northern hemisphere faces the viewer with wide ring system encircling it. The planet's disk shows subtle bands of tan, cream, and pale gold, with a darker hexagonal-tinted region visible near the north pole. The rings display distinct concentric divisions, including a prominent dark gap, and cast a soft shadow onto the upper part of the globe.

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

Telescopes and Equipment

New astronomy products to fall for this month

Features, Science

The Michelson-Morley experiment: Finding light’s true nature

Hubble image of variable star RS Puppis

How to become a variable star observer