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Astrophotography

Astronomy magazine launches 2026 astrophotography contest presented by Celestron

Telescopes of the Allen Telescope Array sit beneath a starry night sky. The array is designed to listen for signals sent or generated by extraterrestrial life.

Alien Life, Features

Should we keep looking for ET?

The warm, overexposed Moon glows in the lower left of a blue-gray twilight sky, while a smaller, intensely bright Venus shines in the upper right. Between them, a loose grouping of faint stars — the Beehive Cluster — is just barely visible near the center of the frame against the hazy background.

This Week in Astronomy

The Moon, the Beehive, and friends

Albireo

Why are there no green stars?

Picture of the Day

A long, edge-on galaxy stretches diagonally across a dark, star-filled sky, with a bright yellow-white center crossed by thin dark dust lanes. Bright red plumes of gas shoot out above and below the middle of the galaxy. The background is scattered with sharp stars of different colors and faint distant galaxies, with a few wispy grey clouds of dust on the right side.

Bursting with stars

Arnaud Malleval

M82, also known as the Cigar Galaxy, lies about 12 million light-years away in Ursa Major. It is a classic example of a starburst galaxy — one producing newborn stars at a prodigious rate. Their explosive deaths drive filaments of hydrogen gas above and below its disk, forming the reddish filaments in Hα seen above. The imager collected 56.8 hours of data in HαLRGB filters with a 12-inch f/3.3 scope.

In the Sky

A sky chart showing the western sky on May 20, 2026, at 9:30 PM. Jupiter is prominent near the center, with the crescent Moon and the star Pollux above it, Procyon to the lower left, and Venus glowing brightly to the lower right. The Beehive Cluster (M44) is marked with a dashed box in the upper left.

The Sky Today on Wednesday, May 20: The Moon checks in on the Beehive

What’s Launching This Week

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What’s Launching This Week

SMILE to give Earth’s magnetosphere its first X-ray

Today in the History of Astronomy

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Robotic Spaceflight, Today in the History of Astronomy

May 20, 1990: Hubble’s first light

More News

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Astrophotography

Astronomy magazine launches 2026 astrophotography contest presented by Celestron

Stellar nursery N159 appears in many colors in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope

N159: A star-forming nebula in the spider’s shadow

A dense cluster of silver and gray spacecraft components, rocket parts, and satellite fragments floats against a black starfield, packed tightly on the left side of the frame and thinning into scattered individual pieces toward the right. The objects range from large cylindrical rocket stages and solar panel arrays to small bolts and twisted metal fragments.

Solar activity determines how fast space junk falls to Earth

A crescent moon glowing brightly against a deep dark blue night sky, flanked by two planets, Jupiter and Venus, visible as small bright points — one to the upper left and one to the lower right.

Sky This Week, The Sky This Week

The Sky This Week from May 15 to 22: The Moon greets Jupiter and Venus

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