The Soviet Luna program, designed for lunar research and mission planning, ran from 1959 to 1976. On Aug. 9, 1976, Luna 24, the final mission of the program, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in present-day Kazakhstan. The probe landed on the Moon’s surface nine days later, in the Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises), a previouslyContinue reading "Aug. 9, 1976: Luna 24 blasts off"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 8: Sagittarius’ Little Gem The Moon passes 4° north of Mars at 2 A.M. EDT; the pair is visible together in the early-morning sky, some 30° high in the east an hour before sunrise. They straddle the border of Gemini andContinue reading "The Sky Today on Sunday, August 9: The Moon and Mars"

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A pioneer mission in astrometry – the measurement of the position, distance, motion, brightness, and color of stars – the European Space Agency’s (ESA) High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite, or Hipparcos, launched on Aug. 8, 1989. There were immediately problems when a rocket-engine failure kept Hipparcos from reaching its planned orbit. However, the satellite wasContinue reading "Aug. 8, 1989: The Hipparcos satellite launches"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 7: A lunar occultation of the Pleiades Let’s spend tonight with the Little Gem, a planetary nebula also cataloged as NGC 6818. It is highest in the sky around 11 P.M., when it is some 35° above the southern horizon. It’sContinue reading "The Sky Today on Saturday, August 8: Sagittarius’ Little Gem"

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On August 12, the New Moon’s shadow will fall over a portion of Earth’s surface. When that happens, the Sun will temporarily disappear from the sky in a total solar eclipse. These breathtaking events are spectacular and ethereal, as the sky falls dark during the day, leaving only the soft glow of our star’s outerContinue reading "How to see the August 12 total solar eclipse"

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Meterorite ALH 84001 fell to Earth from Mars about 13,000 years ago, landing in the Allan Hills region of Antarctica. It was discovered in 1984 and taken to the Johnson Space Center, where in 1994 researchers saw possible signs of life: carbonate minerals and microscopic structures that resembled nanobacteria. Further research commenced, and on Aug.Continue reading "Aug. 7, 1996: NASA announces martian life"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 6: Mercury moves south of Pollux The Moon passes 5° north of Uranus in Taurus at 1 P.M. EDT. The pair is visible earlier in the morning, with the Moon rising shortly before midnight on the 6th along with the PleiadesContinue reading "The Sky Today on Friday, August 7: A lunar occultation of the Pleiades"

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Friday, August 7The Moon passes 5° north of Uranus at 1 P.M. EDT. The pair is visible in the early-morning sky, along with a lunar occultation of the Pleiades just after moonrise. Check out the August 7 entry in last week’s Sky This Week column for more details.  Late tonight, there’s a good hour ofContinue reading "The Sky This Week from August 7 to 14: A solar eclipse and shooting stars"

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NASA launched its Mars rover Curiosity inside the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) on Nov. 26, 2011. Complete with 10 science instruments and 17 cameras, the robot can analyze mineral types, search for signs of microbial life, and take color panoramas of the Red Planet’s surface. Curiosity’s landing on Mars was a new process, nicknamed theContinue reading "Aug. 6, 2012: Curiosity lands on Mars"

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Visible in Scotland, the total solar eclipse of Aug. 2, 1133, featured nearly 4½ minutes of totality. This eclipse provides just one of many historical examples of people wrongly associating a celestial spectacle with an earthly event: In his Historia Novella, written between 1140 and 1143, English historian William of Malmesbury linked the eclipse withContinue reading "Aug. 2, 1133: A total eclipse is misremembered"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  August 1: Open cluster NGC 6709 Mercury reaches its greatest western elongation at 4 A.M. EDT, standing 19° from the Sun. The tiny planet reaches an altitude of almost 5° above the eastern horizon an hour before sunrise, glowing at magnitude 0.2.Continue reading "The Sky Today on Sunday, August 2: Mercury at greatest western elongation"

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Born Aug. 1, 1818, Maria Mitchell was raised in the Quaker tradition, which allowed equal education for boys and girls. This, plus lessons from her father, afforded her the opportunity to become skilled in astronomy, mathematics, and navigation. After a brief stint as a teacher, she became the first librarian of the Nantucket Antheneum. SheContinue reading "Aug 1, 1818: The birth of Maria Mitchell"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 31: Mercury brightening With the Moon rising later each night as it wanes, there’s a slightly longer dark window tonight for deep-sky observing. Let’s use it to track down NGC 6709, a lovely open cluster in the constellation Aquila the Eagle. Continue reading "The Sky Today on Saturday, August 1: Open cluster NGC 6709"

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A partial lunar eclipse is visible across the U.S. this month, while a total solar eclipse occurs in Europe. Venus dominates after sunset, reaching 50% illumination. Most planetary activity is after midnight, as Saturn and Neptune rise in Pisces. The predawn hours reveal a fine conjunction between Jupiter and Mercury. And Mars crosses into Gemini,Continue reading "August 2026: What’s in the sky this month? Solar and lunar eclipses, plus the Perseid meteors"

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Although the early evening sky boasts only one naked-eye planet, quality more than makes up for the lack of quantity. Venus attains a splendid peak when it reaches greatest elongation Aug. 15. It then lies 46° east of the Sun and stands 30° high in the west an hour after sundown. The planet shines brilliantlyContinue reading "August 2026: What’s in the Southern Hemisphere sky this month?"

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Star formation in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy (M31) has been slowing down over the last 500 million years, according to a new study using Hubble Space Telescope data.  The study was published July 27, 2026, in The Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Tobin Wainer, an astronomer at the University of Washington, and his team used dataContinue reading "Andromeda’s star formation is slowing down"

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Astrophotography tends to blur the boundary between science and art. The incredible images from Hubble and JWST, for example, captivate us as much for their aesthetic beauty as for their data. Recently, a photography student blurred those lines even further, taking the concept of capturing the cosmos quite literally by creating images from film’s interactionContinue reading "How one student captured the universe without light"

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With the Space Race heating up, the Ranger program was developed as an answer to Sputnik: The U.S. would land spacecraft on the Moon. When President John F. Kennedy vowed in 1961 to put a man on the lunar surface, the project evolved. Instead of being purely scientific or exploratory, Ranger spacecraft would also beContinue reading "July 31, 1964: Ranger 7 returns the first close pictures of the Moon"

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Born on July 25, 1920, Chushiro Hayashi graduated from the University of Tokyo with a degree in physics in 1942. After World War II service in the navy, he returned to school, finishing his doctorate in 1954 and becoming a professor at Kyoto University in 1957. An innovator, he applied fundamental physics to astronomy andContinue reading "July 25, 1920: The birth of Chushiro Hayashi"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  July 24: The Moon passes Antares Rising in the east around 10:30 P.M. local daylight time is the Great Square of Pegasus, made up of four stars: Algenib, Markab, Scheat, and Alpheratz. But of these four, only the first three on theContinue reading "The Sky Today on Saturday, July 25: Great Square rising"

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