The number of confirmed planets in other star systems has reached about 6,000. But few of those planets are likely homes for life. Most are too hot, too cold, too “gassy,” or they’re zapped by too much radiation by their star. A few planets are in the “well, maybe” category. They might be suitable for life, but the conditions aren’t perfect. An exa…

Astronomers have been searching for planets around one of our closest neighbor stars for decades. And they’ve reported the discovery of several. But the reports have come to naught – until now. Earlier this year, a team confirmed the presence of four planets – all of them smaller than Earth. Barnard’s Star is six light-years away. Only the three st…

If you stare at one of the giant planets of the outer solar system long enough, with a big enough telescope, you’re likely to find some moons. That was certainly the case a couple of years ago for Saturn. A research team scanned the space near Saturn with a large telescope in Hawaii. And earlier this year, the team reported its results: a haul of 1…

If you sit on a big beachball, it gets mashed down. That makes it a little wider through the middle, and a little narrower from top to bottom. And that makes it look a lot like Alderamin, the brightest star of the constellation Cepheus the king. The star is about a third wider through the equator than through the poles. That’s not because some cosm…

Capricornus may be the most inventive constellation of the zodiac. For one thing, all of its stars are faint, so it takes some work to see any kind of pattern there. And for another, it represents the oddest creature in the heavens: a sea-goat – the front half of a goat plus the tail of a fish. It’s easy to find the sea-goat’s location early tomorr…

A perfect spiral galaxy would include a bright, round “bulge” of stars in the middle; glittering spiral arms wrapping around it; dark lanes of dust lacing through the arms; and bright star clusters sprinkled about like lights on a Christmas wreath. In other words, it would look just like Messier 81, one of the best examples of a “grand design” spir…

The stars look like they’re stuck in position – like fairy lights thumbtacked to a giant black canvas overhead. And over the course of a human lifetime – or many lifetimes – that’s true – there’s no way to see any motion without the help of sensitive instruments. But that’s only because the stars are so far away. Every one of those little lights is…

Two fairly bright lights are headed for an especially close meet-up: the planet Mars and the star Regulus, the heart of the lion. They’re a few degrees apart tonight, but they’ll draw even closer over the coming evenings. Right now, Mars and Regulus are almost the same brightness. One way to tell them apart is their color – Mars looks pale orange, …

Anchorage, Alaska, isn’t quite the “land of the midnight Sun.” Tonight, there are about five hours between sunset and sunrise. But it is a land of midnight sunlight, because twilight never completely fades. Twilight is the transition between day and night. Earth’s atmosphere scatters sunlight from the dayside to the fringes of the nightside. But wh…

Cold hands, warm heart. Still waters run deep. Feed a cold, starve a fever. The list of pithy old sayings goes on and on. But here’s a new one for you: long Sun, short Moon. It means that the full Moon does the opposite of what the Sun does. So when the Sun is in the sky for a long time, the full Moon makes itself scarce. And that’s the case tonigh…