Earth’s magnetic field sometimes does a flip. The north magnetic pole becomes the south pole, and vice versa. On average, it happens once every few hundred thousand years. But sometimes, it’s more of

Earths magnetic field is a protective blanket. It keeps charged particles from the Sun and beyond from hitting the surface and much of the atmosphere, where they could cause a lot of problems. But it

Be careful what you say a single phrase can define a legacy.Consider Frances Baily. He served four terms as president of the Royal Astronomical Society and compiled some of the most important star

Russian astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm von Struve discovered and catalogued thousands of binary stars pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound to each other. But a system that he first saw in 182

The brightest star in the night sky is getting ready to leave it for a while. Sirius, the Dog Star, is low in the southwest as night falls. Over the next few weeks, itll sink deeper into the twilight

Stars are huge anywhere from about 10 times the diameter of Earth to a hundred thousand times or more. Such a scale is just hard to fathom. One way to envision it is to consider how long it would ta

Over the millennia, stars acquire a lot of names. Some make sense, some dont. And some of them might have gotten mixed up along the way.An example is the fourth-brightest star of Leo, the lion, whic

Immanuel Kant is best known for his ideas about philosophy, from ethics to the nature of knowledge. But he also played a role in the development of an idea about how planets are born. And while many o

Few constellations have as many backstories as Virgo, the virgin. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was linked with several goddesses, each with her own story.In one story, she was Dike, the goddess of

If you look straight up as the sky gets dark this evening, you wont see much of anything. The region thats high overhead is populated by some especially faint stars and constellations. But theres a