What's important to know about planet Mercury?

Close by the Sun is Mercury, a practically atmosphere-like world that has a lot of craters. Until NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft arrived there in 2008, we knew very little about the planet—only part of it had been imaged! ...

Why is the harvest moon so big and orange?

Ever wonder why the moon sometimes looks so big and orange? Professor Emeritus John Percy of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics explains the mystery behind the harvest moon:

Comet ATLAS may put on quite a show

A comet called Atlas is currently heading toward the sun, and it just might put on a really good show in a couple of months. Discovered last December by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert system in Hawaii (thus the ...

The star that survived a supernova

A supernova is the catastrophic explosion of a star. Thermonuclear supernovae, in particular, signal the complete destruction of a white dwarf star, leaving nothing behind. At least that's what models and observations suggested.

Telescopes show the Milky Way's black hole is ready for a kick

The supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way is spinning so quickly it is warping the spacetime surrounding it into a shape that can look like a football, according to a new study using data from NASA's Chandra ...

Earth's magnetic poles could start to flip. What happens then?

As Earth's magnetic shield fails, so do its satellites. First, our communications satellites in the highest orbits go down. Next, astronauts in low-Earth orbit can no longer phone home. And finally, cosmic rays start to bombard ...

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