The Universe

Someday an unlucky outburst from our sun could strike Earth and fry most of our electronics—and we’ve already had some too-close-for-comfort near misses

Perspective and subtle motion allows us to peek over the moon’s edge and into its far side

The ocean’s twice-daily rise and fall is only the most obvious effect of tides—they slow Earth’s spin and shape stars and galaxies, too

To make the most of any total solar eclipse, put down your gadgets and bask in one of our solar system’s most glorious spectacles

Figuring out whether there are more stars in the universe than sand grains on Earth’s seashores requires math—and imagination

Quirks of orbital mechanics make a cadre of sun-orbiting asteroids appear to be moons of Earth

Snapshots of a plethora of planet-forming disks offer more than just eye candy—they also reveal some fundamental aspects of how worlds are born

The scale of the cosmos exceeds the bounds of human comprehension. But that doesn’t mean the universe is beyond our understanding

Maps of stellar motions can show whether the Milky Way will someday merge with the Andromeda galaxy—and a whole lot more

Without adding an extra day to February every four years, our calendar would get increasingly out of sync with the cosmos

Despite being some six billion kilometers away, the sun from Pluto would be a dazzling sight to behold—carefully, that is

Images of possible planets around white dwarf stars suggest that some gas-giant worlds survive the deaths of their stellar host