Astronomy was the basis of many key beliefs for the ancient Egyptians. They used skywatching to fix the dates of religious festivals, to predict the annual flooding of the Nile, and to count the hours of the night — when the god Ra would pilot his Sun boat on a dangerous journey through the underworld, The post The Milky Way, to ancient Egyptians, was Nuts appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Why don’t numbers end? – Reyhane, age 7, Tehran, Iran Here’s a game: Ask a friend to give you any number and you’ll return one that’s bigger. Just add “1” to whatever number they come up with and you’re sure to win. The reason is that numbers go on forever. There is no highest number. The post The reasons why numbers go on forever appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

This review of the Celestron NexStar Evolution 8HD was first published in the February 2021 issue of Astronomy Magazine. It has been updated and contains affiliate links to the current model of this telescope. When you buy a product through a button on this page, we may earn a commission. When I was a teenager, The post Celestron NexStar Evolution 8HD telescope, reviewed appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Friday, April 26The Moon passes 0.3° north of the red giant star Antares in Scorpius today at 5 P.M. EDT. The pair is not visible in the early evening, rising in the hour before local midnight.  You can catch them overnight tonight by looking southeast around 11:30 P.M. local daylight time — by that time, The post The Sky This Week from April 26 to May 3: The Moon reaches Last Quarter appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Friday, April 26The Moon passes 0.3° north of the red giant star Antares in Scorpius today at 5 P.M. EDT. The pair is not visible in the early evening, rising in the hour before local midnight.  You can catch them overnight tonight by looking southeast around 11:30 P.M. local daylight time — by that time, The post The Sky This Week from April 26 to May 3: The Moon reaches Last Quarter appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

I’m delighted to say that in October 2024 Astronomy magazine will partner with our tour guide friends at Eclipse Traveler, carrying us to Chile and the magical site of Easter Island. Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, will witness an annular solar eclipse over the Pacific Ocean. Missing landfall almost entirely, the eclipse will be visible from The post Join Astronomy for a far-out eclipse adventure on Easter Island appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

The IceCube detector. Credit: Stephan Richter, IceCube/NSF, Creative Commons The post IceCube researchers detect a rare type of particle sent from powerful astronomical objects appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

When NASA released images of Pluto in 2015 taken by the New Horizons spacecraft, many were captivated by the dwarf planet’s heart-shaped feature, now called Tombaugh Regio. And now the mystery of how this “heart,” which is nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across, came to be may be solved. A recent study in Nature Astronomy reveals how the The post A collision with something the size of Arizona could have formed half of Pluto’s ‘heart’ appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

How many stars die in the Milky Way each year? Martin J. HeuerSt. Petersburg, Florida Before diving into the astronomy here, we first need to acknowledge that we are borrowing the word die, which really belongs to biology. While we can try to apply the concepts of life and death to astronomy, so that stars The post How many stars die in the Milky Way each year? appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Editor’s note: This article was first published in 2020 and has been updated. When we stargaze, we bask in photons that have traveled for many millennia before reaching our eyes. To us, the stars appear fixed on a so-called celestial sphere that encapsulates our entire earthly existence. The truth, of course, is that no such The post 7 unconfirmed, unlucky tales of people killed by meteorites appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more