SUNSET: 
Milky Way's Black Hole Once Active
Evidence continues to mount that our galaxy's supermassive black hole was not always the quiet neighbor it is now.
Messenger Hits Eighth Birthday
NASA's emissary to Mercury just celebrated the eighth anniversary of its launch from Cape Canaveral in 2004. Here's a recap of some of the stuff we've learned about Mercury since Messenger arrived at the Iron Planet.
Star-Shredder's Brief Pulse
A supermassive black hole spotted last year as it ripped a star apart and spat out a jet had another surprise up its sleeve: a short-lived X-ray heartbeat seen only once before from a galaxy’s central beast.
Miss a Sky Event? There's an App for That
Sky & Telescope has released its new SkyWeek Plus app, which combines all the good stuff of our regular SkyWeek app with new reminder and breaking-sky-news features.
Andromeda Galaxy’s Odd Double Core
A new study simulating stars as they orbit a black hole might provide the best explanation for how our nearest spiral galaxy neighbor grew its lopsided nucleus.
Sky & Telescope October 2012
Sky & Telescope's October 2012 issue is now available to digital subscribers. Some print subscribers may have already received it, and it's officially on-sale at newsstands starting September 4th.
AMA Addresses Light Pollution
The American Medical Association has released a report detailing several possible health concerns related to nighttime light exposure. But some lighting researchers worry the conclusions are more alarmist than is warranted.
Sunspot 1520 Rolls Into View
The Sun's spottiness continues with a giant magnetic blotch stretched just below its equator.
Baby Star's Hot Birthmarks
Astronomers have pinpointed the origin of high-energy X-rays coming from a baby star.
Waves Might Heat Solar Atmosphere
Astronomers are working to unravel the mystery of the Sun's superhot corona, but new work implicating magnetic waves isn't the final word on the matter.
Sky & Telescope August 2012
Sky & Telescope's August 2012 issue is now available to digital subscribers. Some print subscribers may have already received it, and it's officially on-sale at newsstands starting July 3rd.
The Universe’s Lost Lithium
Astronomers are still struggling with a 30-year-old mystery that puts modern cosmology in a head-to-head clash with stellar observations. A new study may make the problem even worse.
All-Sky Survey Sees Millions of Stars
A collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers is producing a careful map of stellar brightnesses and colors across the entire night sky. The survey should fill a hole that sometimes hampers quick, accurate measurements of events such as supernovae.
2012 Venus Transit: S&T Reports
Clouds, veering cabbies, and old optics didn’t deter committed spectators of this last-chance astronomical event.
The "Exoplanet" Venus
Observing the Transit of Venus won’t be just a memorable experience. Astronomers hope the event will help them understand alien worlds around other stars, too.
Pro-Am Teamwork on the Rise
As demonstrated this week during a gathering of observers in Big Bear, California, amateur and professional astronomers are joining forces as never before.
Explore Binary Stars on Your Computer
Additional information from the August 2012 article Solve Binary Stars Yourself. Provides links to various programs that allow users to explore binary stars up close and personal.
Martian Dunes On the Move
Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught dunes migrating across the Red Planet's surface, contradicting the common wisdom that the planet's current climate can't get sand moving on a large scale.
Black Hole Eats Stripped Star
A closely-watched flare from a gargantuan black hole in a distant galaxy has revealed to astronomers not only the mass of the black hole that ate the snack but the type of star that met its end as the meal.
Cosmic Ray Origin Still Mysterious
Observations out of Antarctica support the idea that the most energetic of the superspeedy space particles raining down on Earth are not from gamma-ray bursts. The new result prolongs a long-standing mystery in astrophysics.