The Little Dipper is famous for the star at the tip of its handle: Polaris, the North Star. Earths axis points in that direction, so all the other stars in the night sky appear to circle around it.T

The Lyrid meteor shower is building toward its peak, on Sunday night. The Moon will be almost full then, so its glare will wash out all but the brightest of the shooting stars.The shower is the off

The Small Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Its about 200,000 light-years away, it contains hundreds of millions of stars, and its easily visible to the eye alone from the s

The heart of the lion stays close to the Moon the next couple of nights. The bright star that marks the lions heart is Regulus. Its to the lower left of the Moon at nightfall this evening, and to th

Two giants of the solar system huddle close together in the evening twilight the next few days. The viewing window is short, so you need to time it just right to see them.Jupiter and Uranus are low i

The star Arcturus is a little bit heavier than our own star, the Sun. Yet that small difference has a big effect on the stars evolution: Arcturus entered a late stage billions of years earlier than t

The Moon creeps up on the twin stars of Gemini this evening. As night falls, Pollux and Castor are above the Moon. Pollux is on the left, and is a bit brighter than its twin.Theres a lot more to G

This time of year is pretty inviting for some evening skywatching. The evening hours are warm but not usually too hot, and spring storm activity generally hasnt reached its peak pleasant conditions

Planetary systems can be violent. In our own solar system, for example, the Moon probably was born from the debris left over when a planet as big as Mars rammed into Earth billions of years ago. And t

Planets like Earth live in the Goldilocks zone the region around a star where conditions are most comfortable for life. But most planets arent so cushy. Theyre either far away and cold, or close