SUNSET: 
Betelgeuse: Star in a Shell
New measurements taken with the Very Large Telescope interferometer in Chile may help to answer what causes Betelgeuse to vary in brightness — and also why red supergiants have bigger atmospheres than astronomers can explain.
Comet Holmes Beckons Skygazers Worldwide
As of January 4th the comet, ever-enlarging and thinning, is still in naked-eye view — but only if you have a fairly dark-sky site. Use binoculars to follow its next moves.
Meade Looks to a Brighter Future
The world's largest telescope manufacturer is making some changes in a bid to turn around the company's disappointing financial performance.
Cold Evidence for a Cosmic "Texture"?
A ripple in the cosmic background radiation hints at an irregularity in spacetime. . . maybe.
Comet Holmes Undergoes Huge Outburst
On Wednesday, October 24, 2007, this faint comet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter suddenly became a naked-eye "star."
Lonely Planets of the Cosmos
If an Earth-Moon system was flung out of its solar system, could life still survive there? Possibly yes.
Meteor Showers on Mars
Scientists now know what meteor showers occur in the rarefied atmosphere above Mars. So how come NASA's intrepid rovers can't see them?
Predicting Planets
Finding new planets around distant stars has become commonplace. But now a team of astronomers has succeeded in predicting the orbit of a planet that hadn't yet been discovered. The last time that happened was more than 150 years ago.
Automated Lunar Impacts
NASA is watching the Moon to see how often it gets hit by meteoroids.
Aurora Stamps Have Appeal
The US Postal Service has just rolled out an attractive pair of stamps that feature photos of the northern and southern lights.
Amateurs Spot Transiting Exoplanet
Using modest gear and a lot of skill, amateur astronomers catch a record-breaking planet crossing the face of its star 250 light-years away.
Just Don't Call It West Coast NEAF
Here's some great news for those of you on the West Coast. The Riverside Telescope Makers Conference, Inc. — the same folks who bring us the world-famous RTMC Astronomy Expo every Memorial Day weekend in Big Bear, California — has announced a new astronomical event.
Pluto's New Family Portrait
Years of painstaking observation with some of the world's most powerful telescopes are finally showing us a glimpse of what awaits New Horizons when it reaches Pluto in 2015.
Titan's Frigid Shores
NASA's Cassini orbiter continues mapping Saturn's largest moon — and finding prime lakefront real estate.
50 Years of Satellite Tracking
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first calculated orbit of an artificial satellite. Sky & Telescope readers helped make it happen.
Two Planets, One Discovery
Talk about serendipity! Two teams of scientists on opposite sides of the Atlantic, studying two planets on opposite sides of Earth, come up with the same quirky result.
Spotlight on New Horizons
Jupiter looks great through a backyard telescope, but can you imagine how much better it'd look from just 1.4 million miles away? NASA's Pluto-bound spacecraft got that chance last February.
Iapetus Yields Dark Secrets
Saturn's black-and-white moon has mystified astronomers for centuries. Finally, however, they're learning what a bizarre place it truly is.
Imaging Mercury
A team of astronomers have found new features on the innermost planet using an approach familiar to many amateur astronomers.
Kaguya: To the Moon!
With a brief rocket firing on October 4th, the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya slipped into lunar orbit — the first step in what promises to be an exciting scientific mission.
