Youve probably never seen two donkeys perched on the back of a crab. Unless, that is, youve spent much time looking at the stars. Two faint stars in Cancer have names that mean the northern and sout

Most stars begin their lives in colorful style inside giant, glowing clouds of gas and dust. One example is the Rosette Nebula, which looks like a delicate rose. Its in Monoceros, the unicorn. The

The celestial unicorn isnt much to look at. Monoceros fills a void between the bright constellations Orion, Gemini, and Canis Major and Canis Minor. Yet you need dark skies to see even a smattering o

In the mid 1860s, astronomers were just beginning to use a new tool to study the heavens. Called spectroscopy, it allowed them to split the light from an astronomical object into a rainbow of colors.

Astronomers have discovered dozens of planets that orbit both stars in a binary system. Like Tatooine of Star Wars fame, that gives the planets double sunrises and sunsets. But only a handful of tho

Many spacecraft bounce among the planets and moons of the solar system like theyre inside an old pinball machine. They use the gravity of one object to bat them toward another. Thats like having an

One of the most amazing achievements in astronomy in recent decades is the discovery of planets in other star systems 5,000 of them and counting. And many of those systems are a long way off hundr

The Moon has a giant companion at dawn the next couple of days. Make that two giants. The star Antares is close to the lower left of the Moon tomorrow, and about the same distance to the upper right o

The Juno spacecraft is scheduled to visit one of the most dangerous regions of the solar system tomorrow. Itll fly less than a thousand miles from Io, one of the big moons of Jupiter. Thats where Jupi

Almost a century ago, astronomers split the celestial sphere into 88 constellations. Most of them the famous ones date from ancient times. But 14 of them none of which is famous were created b