Moons are planets too

What makes a planet a planet? The answer turns out to be rather contentious. The official definition of a planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is that a planet must satisfy three conditions:

String of satellites baffles residents, bugs astronomers

A string of lights that lobbed across the night sky in parts of the U.S. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday had some people wondering if a fleet of UFOs was coming, but it had others— mostly amateur stargazers and professional ...

NASA's first planetary defense mission target gets a new name

Nearly two decades ago, a near-Earth asteroid was discovered to have a moon and the binary system was given the name "Didymos"—Greek for "twin," a loose description of the larger main body and the smaller orbiting moon, ...

The building blocks for astronomically literate citizens

What does it mean for a citizen to be literate in astronomy? Astronomers who participate in outreach to the general public experience various degrees of astronomical knowledge among people. But so far, there had not been ...

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