The Solar System

Head's up, stargazers! Mark your calendars for the 22 must-see events this year.

By Martha Sandoval

January's moon is called the wolf moon, but it's also known as the center moon and the freeze up moon (among other names). Here's why.

By Valerie Stimac

This doughnut-shaped ring around the sun is home to millions of comets, moons, dwarf plants and other celestial objects.

By Valerie Stimac

When December's moongazing rolls around, you'll want to take a look at the cold moon, an appropriate moniker if there ever was one.

By Valerie Stimac

Blood moons always bring out the stargazers though they aren't that rare. So what makes blood moons red? And do they differ from lunar eclipses?

By Valerie Stimac

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

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

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 August 2022 full moon is known as the sturgeon moon and it's extra-special this year as it's also a supermoon.

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

And this month's buck moon is extra-special because it is a supermoon!

By Valerie Stimac

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

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

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

By Valerie Stimac

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

The gegenschein, "faint light" in German, occurs under very specific astronomical conditions when the sun reaches the exact opposite of Earth from wherever you're stargazing.

By Valerie Stimac

Early dark energy, a form of dark energy that may have existed a few hundred thousand years after the big bang, could help clarify the universe's rate of expansion. But its existence hasn't been proven.

By Patrick J. Kiger

The Mars solar conjunction occurs every two years and forces NASA to stop communicating with assets on the Red Planet. So what's the deal?

By Sharise Cunningham

Scientists have observed flashes of X-rays coming from behind a supermassive black hole, consistent with Albert Einstein's prediction that extremely large objects can bend light.

By Patrick J. Kiger

In recent years, Saturn has overtaken Jupiter as the planet with the most moons in our solar system. How many does it have and could it have even more?

By Valerie Stimac

You know Saturn and Venus and Mars and ... some others. Can you put the eight planets of the solar system in the correct order? There are several ways to do this.

By Valerie Stimac

Scientists at Yale are using "quantum squeezing" to reduce "noise" in their search for dark matter.

By Benjamin Brubaker

Surely you've watched tons of sunsets in your lifetime. But have you ever seen the sunset and the moonrise simultaneously? Is that even possible?

By Sharise Cunningham

Everyone's heard of the blue moon and the harvest moon, but every other full moon of the year has a name, too. What are their names, and when do these moons occur?

By Nathan Chandler

Whether it's a solar eclipse, a meteor shower or the launch of the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope, 2021 has a lot to offer.

By Valerie Stimac

All of the planets in the solar system are named for Greek gods, except Earth. So where did the name come from?

By Mark Mancini