SUNSET: 
Tour August's Sky! | July 26th, 2013
This month is famous for the Perseid meteor shower, which arrives like clockwork on the 12th and 13th. It's also the best time of year to see the beautiful Milky Way arching overhead in early evening.
Spacecraft Look Back at Planet Earth
July 19th was a Big Day for our home planet, as two spacecraft, Cassini and Messenger, took snapshots of Earth and Moon from great distances.
A Fix for the "Faint Young Sun"
For 40 years astrobiologists have wrestled with how to make the early Earth warm enough to support life even though the young Sun was at least 30% fainter than it is now. New climate models, powered by supercomputers, are converging on a solution.
Neptune's Newest Moon
Using Hubble images taken in several patches over a six-year period, astronomers have spotted a tiny object circling Neptune. This find, the first in a decade, brings the planet's moon count to 14.
A Tale of the Sun's Tail
Using observations from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, space physicists now realize that the solar wind forms a tail that likely extends light-years downwind from the Sun across interstellar space.
The Ultimate New-Moon Sighting
A French astrophotographer used luck and some special gear to capture a razor-thin lunar crescent precisely at the moment of New Moon on July 8th.
Now Playing: A Huge Sunspot Group
Cycle 24 hasn't offered much in the way of solar fireworks, but right now a large group of sunspots is front and center on the Sun's disk for your viewing enjoyment.
Introducing Kerberos and Styx
The newest and smallest of Pluto's five moons have names chosen for their connections to the mythic underworld — and for their popularity in a worldwide contest.
Good-bye to GALEX
On Friday, flight controllers turned off the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, one of NASA's long-lived space observatories.
S&T's Audio Sky Tour for August 2013
This month is famous for the Perseid meteor shower, which arrives like clockwork on the 12th and 13th. It's also the best time of year to see the beautiful Milky Way arching overhead in early evening.
Chelyabinsk Mega-meteor: Status Report
The cosmic intruder that exploded in the sky on February 15th dropped thousands of fragments onto the snow-covered plains of south-central Russia. Here's an update on what's been found.
A Stonehenge Solstice Remembered
What's it like to be standing at the iconic megalithic monument during midsummer's dawn? Take a walk down memory lane to find out.
A Billion Pixels of Mars-scape
When you take your camera all the way to the Red Planet, no one's going to blame you for taking a lot of touristy snapshots. Put 896 of them together, and here's the result!
Winds on Venus: Getting Stronger
The hurricane-like winds at Venus's cloudtops have steadily become faster since 2006 — and planetary scientists have no idea why it's happening.
My Hour in the Stratosphere
The stars were not aligned when one of Sky & Telescope's editors signed up to ride NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.
Curiosity Readies for a Long Drive
NASA's roving geology lab has been on Mars for 10 months, and scientists are finally preparing to send the rover toward its main objective: a towering mound of layered sediments inside Gale crater.
Radiation Risks for Future Marsonauts
Thanks to a detector carried across interplanetary space aboard NASA's Curiosity rover, researchers now have a much clearer idea of radiation exposure that future astronauts will endure when traveling to and from Mars.
S&T's Audio Sky Tour for June 2013
Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury crowd together low in the west, while Saturn is sandwiched high in the south between the constellations Libra and Virgo.
Tour June's Sky! | May 31st, 2013
Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury crowd together low in the west right after sunset, while Saturn is sandwiched high in the south between the constellations Libra and Virgo.
Biggish Asteroid 1998 QE2 Pays Earth a Visit
This week's visit by asteroid 1998 QE2 is just a courtesy call, as it passes by on May 31st at 15 times the Moon's distance. A NASA radar team has already discovered that this big space rock has a sizable companion.
