All Space Articles

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has managed to watch stars tremble, their light subtly changing as starquakes ripple through their surfaces. Which is pretty cool, because Gaia wasn’t even designed to do it.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter captured photos of an eerie debris field on Mars.

The most distant spacecraft launched by humans, Voyager 1, is currently 155 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is. That’s almost four times more distant than Pluto, and the Voyager 1 craft has been traveling at over 38,000 mph for over four decades.

Listen folks, I love a good sci-fi movie as much as anyone. Cruising around the galaxy, finding weird stuff, and blowing up aliens--it’s all good. But just because a writer can come up with something, it doesn’t make it possible. I’m sorry to say that we’re going to be bound to our solar system for a really, really long time. As in, probably forever.

Just how lucky are we on Earth? What were the chances that life would arise, let alone lead to intelligence?

There’s been a lot of excitement around space exploration recently. Astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter discusses the viability between the Moon and Mars.

Since 1970, folks from around the world have gathered together to celebrate Earth Day, an appreciation for all the good stuff we’ve got here on the Earth – and a reminder to try not to mess it up. But what’s so special about the Earth, anyway?

We all know we’re not supposed to litter, right? It’s gross and harms the environment. But somebody forgot to tell all the space agencies that have been launching rockets into Earth orbit for well over half a century now – and leaving their space junk all over the place.

The Milky Way is a giant, sprawling, beautiful spiral galaxy. It's also your home. Let's take a little tour.

The Crab Nebula sits 6,500 light-years away, and is currently about 11 light-years across. But while it looks pretty from afar, don’t give in to the temptation to visit it up close.

The eyes of much of the world have been looking up this week, gazing at Jupiter and Saturn as they dance tantalizingly close to each other.Many in the media and elsewhere have dubbed this planetary pair “the Christmas Star”, in reference to an oft-cited possible connection between the Bible’s Star of Bethlehem and such planetary “conjunctions” as Jupiter and Saturn are now displaying.

There aren’t a lot of telescopes that are also movie stars. In fact, I can think of only one: the famed Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Want to see what’s behind a black hole? Easy. You just…stare at it. The whole thing is pretty weird to contemplate, but an excellent example of the space-bending (and mind-bending) powers of black holes.

Over the past couple decades, the space-minded folks around the world have debated the relative merits of the two possible destinations for space exploration. Moon or Mars?

On December 21, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer to each other than they have in nearly 400 years. This once in four lifetimes cosmic event will be visible to many--clear skies permitting--but Lowell Observatory has you covered either way.