SUNSET: 
Iapetus Comes Over to the Bright Side
Astronomers now know the secret of this moon's strange two-faced appearance, but it's still remarkable to watch the "now you see it, now you don't" performance as it moves around Saturn.
Govert Schilling Wins AAS's Schramm Award
Sky & Telescope contributing editor Govert Schilling has been selected as the winner of the 2014 David N. Schramm Award.
Titan Sheds Light on Alien Atmospheres
Saturn’s largest moon Titan played a cameo as an exoplanet, allowing astronomers to better understand how a thick layer of haze or clouds might affect their observations of more distant alien worlds.
Shadow of a Supervoid
Scientists might have discovered the source of the mysterious Cold Spot in the Cosmic Microwave Background: an enormous supervoid.
Sea Changes on Saturnian Moon
Fleeting radar features in a sea in Titan’s northern hemisphere are a tantalizing possibility of seasonal changes.
NASA Amassing Targets for Asteroid Mission
Despite skepticism from scientists and politicians alike, NASA is proceeding with its asteroid redirect mission and has found six candidates for exploration so far.
Groundbreaking for Europe's Giant Telescope
The top of Cerro Armazones in Chile yielded on June 19th to a blast that paves the way for the European Extremely Large Telescope.
Summer Quest for Noctilucent Clouds
Noctilucent clouds form at the boundary between Earth and space. Their electric blue billows incite the imagination and inspire us to keep watch at dusk for their arrival.
Hybrid Star Spotted in Small Magellanic Cloud
Since Thorne-Żytkow Objects were proposed forty years ago, no one has actually seen one of these exotic stellar hybrids – until now.
Bill Bradfield, Comet Hunter Extraordinaire (1927-2014)
The prolific comet hunter William A. Bradfield tallied 18 comets in his lifetime, each discovered visually and credited to him alone.
Three New Findings About the Moon
Researchers have announced interesting news concerning the Moon, especially about how and when it formed, and why the "Man in the Moon" constantly stares at us whenever the lunar disk is fully lit.
A MAD New Way to Make Black Hole Jets
Newly published observations provide the first real evidence supporting a theory that tells us how black hole jets form.
Comet PanSTARRS Keeps Getting Better
Since C/2012 K1's discovery two years ago, this first-time visitor from the outer solar system has brightened steadily and is now within reach of a small telescope and even binoculars.
Kepler: Revived and Working Again
NASA’s crippled planet-hunting spacecraft has been reworked for at least two years of productive new missions.
Exoplanet Portraits: A Tale of New Instruments
Exoplanet missions are shifting their goals from counting to characterizing, with multiple instruments coming online to directly image these alien worlds.
Two Ancient Exoplanets Discovered
Kapteyn’s star — a nearby star that likely formed outside this galaxy — hosts two planets more than twice as old as Earth.
Cooking Up High-Mass Stars
A new study finds every stage of star formation in a single cloud, firmly backing a popular star-formation recipe.
Three Exoplanet Molds: Metals Matter
Data from NASA's Kepler space telescope point to three distinct molds of exoplanets — rocky worlds, gas dwarfs, and ice/gas giants — distinguishable based on the abundances of heavy elements in their host star’s atmosphere.
Big Bang Inflation Evidence Inconclusive
New analyses suggest that observations heralded as evidence for the universe’s brief growth spurt don’t conclusively show what researchers thought they did.
35-year-old ISEE 3 Craft Phones Home
Although its scientific work for NASA ended in the early 1980s, the International Sun-Earth Explorer never quite died — and this week it was revived by a team of volunteers intent on letting it continue exploring interplanetary space.
