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

We’re now on the cusp of the seventh Starmus Festival, an amazing and unique celebration of science and music. I hope to see many of you there, in Bratislava, Slovakia, May 12–17. Starmus, which combines the words stars and music, is the creation of Director Garik Israelian, an astronomer in the Canary Islands who is The post Starmus: The world’s greatest science party appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

The following review of the Unistellar eQuinox 2 smart telescope contains affiliate links. When you buy a product through a button on this page, we may earn a commission. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the long-lived Hubble Space Telescope have been providing amazing images to earthbound viewers for some time now. Along with The post Unistellar eQuinox 2 smart telescope review appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

When it comes to its connection to the sky, Stonehenge is best known for its solar alignments. Every midsummer’s night tens of thousands of people gather at Stonehenge to celebrate and witness the rising Sun in alignment with the Heel stone standing outside of the circle. Six months later a smaller crowd congregates around the Heel stone to witness the midwinter The post A Stonehenge mystery could be solved soon during a rare lunar event appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more

Katya Echazarreta made history June 4, 2022, when she traveled to space aboard Blue Origin’s NS-21 flight as one of Space for Humanity’s citizen astronauts. Space for Humanity, an organization with a goal of making space accessible for all, has a Citizen Spaceflight Program that allows anyone to experience looking at Earth from above and The post Meet Katya Echazarreta, the first Mexican-born woman to travel to space appeared first on Astronomy Magazine ..read more