Eight Planets and New Solar System Designations
28.08.2006

How many planets are in the Solar System? This popular question now has a new formal answer according the International Astronomical Union (IAU): eight. Last week, the IAU voted on a new definition for planet and Pluto did not make the cut.

Two Rings for Asteroid Chariklo
9.04.2014

Asteroids can have rings. In a surprising discovery announced two weeks ago, the distant asteroid 10199 Chariklo was found to have at least two orbiting rings. Chariklo's diameter of about 250 kilometers makes it the largest of the measured centaur asteroids, but now the smallest known object to have rings.

Full Moons of August
30.08.2023

Near perigee, the closest point in its almost moonthly orbit, a Full Moon rose as the Sun set on August 1. Its brighter than average lunar disk was captured in this dramatic moonrise sequence over dense cloud banks along the eastern horizon from Ragusa, Sicily.

Irregular Moons Discovered Around Uranus
3.11.1997

Where did these two irregular moons of Uranus originate? Last week two previously undiscovered moons of the distant gas planet were confirmed, the first in irregular orbits. All fifteen previously known moons of Uranus are 'regular', circling near the planet's equator. Most of these were discovered by the passing Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986.

Enceladus: Ringside Water World
3.12.2015

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus poses above the gas giant's icy rings in this Cassini spacecraft image. The dramatic scene was captured on July 29, while Cassini cruised just below the ring plane, its cameras looking back in a nearly sunward direction about 1 million kilometers from the moon's bright crescent.

Perseid Rain
15.08.2021

Comet dust rained down on planet Earth last week, streaking through dark skies in the annual Perseid meteor shower. The featured picture is a composite of many images taken from the same location over the peak night of the Perseids.

In Motion: Uranus and Moons
30.11.2021

What's that moving across the sky? A planet just a bit too faint to see with the unaided eye: Uranus. The gas giant out past Saturn was tracked earlier this month near opposition -- when it was closest to Earth and at its brightest.

A Sky Filled with Leonids
5.12.2001

In the early morning hours of November 19, amateur Chen Huang-Ming caught a sky filled with astronomical wonders. With his fisheye camera set up on Ho-Huan Mountain in Taiwan for a half-hour exposure, he started the above image a local time of 2:33 am.

Moon and Planets Sky
26.03.2004

Look up into the sky tonight and without a telescope or binoculars you might have a view like this one of Moon, planets and stars. The lovely photo was taken on March 23rd, and captures the crescent Moon on the horizon with Venus above it. Both brilliant celestial bodies are over-exposed.

Hidden Galaxy IC 342
18.07.2013

Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island universe, IC 342 would otherwise...