The Solar System
In the Solar System Channel, you can explore the planets and celestial objects around our own sun. Learn about topics such as Mars, Jupiter and the Moon.
What Are the 'Dog Days of Summer'?
How to Find Orion's Belt in the Night Sky
Astronomers Tell You How and Where to Best View Meteor Showers
Shooting the Stars as an Astrophotographer
Stellarium Is the Free 'Planetarium' for Your Computer
The Hitomi Satellite Briefly Glimpsed the Universe, Then Died — What Happened?
Aldebaran: The Brightest Star in the Constellation Taurus
6 Red-Hot Facts About the Red Giant Star Arcturus
Twinkle, Twinkle: The Ultimate Stars Quiz
Learn More
Head's up, stargazers! Mark your calendars for the 22 must-see events this year.
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.
This doughnut-shaped ring around the sun is home to millions of comets, moons, dwarf plants and other celestial objects.
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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.
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?
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?
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.
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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?
The August 2022 full moon is known as the sturgeon moon and it's extra-special this year as it's also a supermoon.
And this month's buck moon is extra-special because it is a supermoon!
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.
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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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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?
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.
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?
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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.
Scientists at Yale are using "quantum squeezing" to reduce "noise" in their search for dark matter.
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?
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?
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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.
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