Space

News headlines talk about a rare green comet appearing in the sky. The comet itself is rare, but green comets, not so much. What makes some comets appear green?

By Valerie Stimac

February is a cold time of year, and the snow moon nickname pays homage to that. What are some other names for February's full moon and what do they mean? Plus, when can you see the snow moon?

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

The coldest place in the universe exists some 5,000 light-years from Earth. Do you know where it is and what it's called?

By Valerie Stimac

The Big Dipper is one of those star groupings everyone seems familiar with, but how much do you really know about it?

By Valerie Stimac

April's pink moon isn't called pink because our beloved bright white moon suddenly takes on a rosy hue. So, why is it called the "pink moon"?

By Valerie Stimac

Native American tribes have called the May moon the flower moon for centuries. The name even inspired a best-selling novel and film.

By Valerie Stimac

The full moon in June is known as the strawberry moon. It's a sweet name, but how did the strawberry moon get its moniker, and what else is it called?

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

There are eight phases in the lunar cycle and the moon is in one of them every night. What are these phases of the moon?

By Valerie Stimac

The solar system's largest planet will pass closest to Earth at the same time it's at opposition. That means it will be the biggest and brightest it's been in the sky in decades.

By Patty Rasmussen

Debris on Mars comes from three main sources: inactive spacecraft, discarded hardware and crashed spacecraft. What risk does this trash pose to current and future missions?

By Cagri Kilic

In 2022, the full moon, called the hunter's moon, will occur Oct. 9. Why is it called that and when can you see it?

By Valerie Stimac

UFOs and UAPs both refer to unidentified objects in the sky, but scientists prefer the term UAP. And that's because when we hear UFO, we automatically assume aliens.

By Allison Troutner & Austin Henderson

The two passengers might not be human, but they have a job to do. They're manning Artemis I to be zero gravity indicators.

By Kristen Hall-Geisler

Astronomers at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii noted a bright X-ray emission in 2018, which persisted for three weeks and glowed ten times more brightly than previously studied supernovas, but are just now beginning to understand it.

By Valerie Stimac

Not sure what you're seeing in the night sky? Astronomy software such as Stellarium makes stargazing easier by helping to explain what you're seeing when you look at the stars.

By Valerie Stimac

Many people dream of climbing Mount Everest, but what if you could scale the highest mountain in the solar system? That one is more than twice as tall as Everest! So, where is it?

By Valerie Stimac

If you imagine the eight major planets in a single line stretching out from the sun, this alignment occurs roughly every 13.4 trillion years. And our solar system is 4.5 billion years old.

By Valerie Stimac

Aldebaran is not just the brightest star in the constellation Taurus, it's also the 14th brightest star in the sky.

By Valerie Stimac

Sonification is the process of taking data and turning it into sound. When it come to the universe we live in, scientists are finding that the sounds are definitely otherwordly and very beautiful.

By Valerie Stimac

University of Florida scientists used lunar soil collected during Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions to successfully grow plants from seed. It's a first in human history and could help future space colonists grow food on the moon.

By Kimberly M. S. Cartier

The Tau Herculids meteor shower was made of debris from the broken comet SW3 and produced a lot of shooting stars, but not quite the meteor shower that was hoped for.

By Valerie Stimac

We've been cruising to and from the International Space Station since 2000. Isn't it about time we started moving on to other space destinations and establishing human outposts?

By Patrick J. Kiger

It's tough to wrap your mind around a time when the Earth wasn't here. So how do Earth and the rest of the planets out there get their start in the universe?

By Robert Lamb

We can't defy the odds of an asteroid taking a turn for Earth forever, so the world's astronomers watch the sky. What happens once they spot something?

By Robert Lamb

When a huge star collapses, it releases massive amounts of radiation in concentrated streams. If one of those streams hit Earth, it wouldn't be pretty. But where should we put "gamma-ray bursts" on our list of anxieties?

By Kate Kershner