SUNSET: 
Eta Carinae's Throbbing X-ray Pulse
When the massive, unstable southern star Eta Carinae sent a blast of X-rays into space last July, astronomers around the world were waiting and watching.
Are You Game for a Dawn Conjunction?
Will you brave the cold Friday morning to witness the conjunction of Saturn and the waning Moon?
Black Hole Binary En Route to Merger?
Astronomers poring through two decades of archival and survey observations have discovered what looks like a pair of supermassive black holes closing in for a merger.
New Look at Eagle Nebula
The Hubble Space Telescope is commemorating its 25th anniversary with a second look at the Pillars of Creation — but there’s hard science behind these pretty pictures.
Stars' Spins Show Their Ages
Astronomers have expanded their ability to date stars using the stars’ own spins.
BOSS: A Ruler to Measure Them All
Amidst the release of a treasure trove of astronomical data, scientists announce the most precise “standard ruler” yet for cosmological distances.
Charting the Andromeda Galaxy
The Hubble Space Telescope has turned its ultraviolet, visible-light, and near-infrared eyes to the queen of galaxies, M31, capturing the biggest and sharpest image yet of our neighbor.
Give-and-Take Origin for Earth's Water?
Where, exactly, did our oceans come from? New research suggests that asteroids might have both delivered and removed lots of water — and that Earth itself might have locked it away deep inside.
Seeing the Sun with X-ray Vision
NASA’s NuSTAR mission recently returned a striking image that shows the Sun’s active regions crackling with X-rays.
Tour January's Sky: The Pleiades
Our downloadable monthly podcast offers highlights for stargazing in January, how to find the planets, and a special look at the Pleiades star cluster
Curiosity Studies Mars Dry-out
Samples taken from two drill holes on Mars support the idea that Mars lost a whole lot of water fairly early in its history.
Binocular Comet Lovejoy Heading Our Way
A new Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, is heading our way. It may brighten to 5th magnitude from late December through much of January as it climbs into excellent viewing position for the Northern Hemisphere, high in the dark winter sky.
Watching a Quasar Shut Down
Over the course of ten years, a once-brilliant quasar seems to have stopped gobbling down nearby gas.
Top Tips for Stargazing with Your New Telescope
Thousands of telescopes are given and received as gifts during the holidays. But once you've assembled your new treasure, then what? The editors of Sky & Telescope magazine point the way.
ESA Bids Farewell to Venus Express
A highly successful spacecraft has ended its mission after returning nearly a decade of data on Earth's nearest planetary neighbor.
Help Name Mercury's Craters
The International Astronomical Union is hosting a public contest to name five of Mercury's craters, with a deadline of January 15.
Rosetta Update: Philae Landed in a Hole
The exact location of Philae’s landing site remains unknown, though the site’s topography might allow the lander to operate longer than planned. Meanwhile, Rosetta is detecting organics and heavy elements even when Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko is far from the Sun.
Curiosity Finds Methane, Other Organics
NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected both methane in Mars’s atmosphere and carbon-bearing organic compounds in its rocks. But it’s unclear where these molecules come from — or whether there’s any biological connection.
MAVEN Finds New Particles, Ion Plume
NASA’s MAVEN mission has discovered a new population of particles in Mars’s upper atmosphere. It’s also found a plume of particles escaping from the planet’s poles, confirming atmospheric loss is happening today.
Earth's Water Likely Not From Comets
An early outcome from Rosetta's scrutiny of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is that the isotopes in its water have distinctly different ratios than those on Earth.
