Astronomy

The night sky isn’t perfectly dark—instead it glows faintly, and the source isn’t exactly local

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) could soon shine very bright in Earth’s skies

A small asteroid, 2024 PT5, will spend the next two months alongside our planet as a mini moon before swooping back to deep space

Supermoons are popular in the media, but are they really so different from how our extraordinary moon ordinarily appears?

Even Earth’s mightiest telescopes aren’t up to the task of imaging Apollo lunar landing sites. A lack of resolution is the biggest reason why

The search for extraterrestrial life has profound physical, mental and spiritual implications, says Nathalie Cabrol in The Secret Life of the Universe—and it belongs to everyone

A new explanation for the Wow! signal suggests it was a chance detection of a furious flare crashing into a hydrogen cloud. But some researchers doubt that this idea has truly cracked the case

Surging solar activity means enormous sunspots are in the space-weather forecast. Here’s how to view them safely

The possibility of liquid water beneath the surface of Saturn’s moon Mimas may offer clues to how such seas form, and another spot to search for life

Identifying asteroids with potential moons could aid researchers in understanding unique aspects of our solar system

A single-celled organism’s pathfinding reveals connections in the universe’s vast “cosmic web”

There’s more than one way for a star to die. Some go with a whimper, and some go with a very, very big bang