Every night is a good night to look through a telescope (provided it’s not cloudy), but if you’re looking for an excuse, Jupiter is lining itself up for some candid closeups. At its farthest point, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. During the first step of humankind’s first-ever lunar-Earth ...

Jupiter will make its closest path to the Earth and will shine its brightest on Dec. 7. This aerial display occurs when Earth positions itself between the Sun and Jupiter. There are a few options for ...

Not all of the solar system’s building blocks formed simultaneously. Some of the first solid bodies, or planetesimals, formed in the first million years after the Sun was born. Others, including the ...

A bolt of lightning on Earth can superheat the air around it to 30,000 Kelvin and unleash a burst of radio energy detectable ...

Jupiter will make its closest approach to Earth in 59 years on Monday, according to NASA. The largest planet in our solar system, the gas giant will be at opposition, meaning Earth is directly between ...

About 700 light-years from Earth, a gas giant nearly the size of Jupiter orbits so close to its star that one face is permanently scorched in daylight while the other never sees the sun at all. The ...

It’s reasonable to think that Jupiter–a gaseous planet more than 11 times the diameter of Earth–would have little in common with our home. But it turns out that the motion of fluids on both planets is ...

Stargazers of ancient times, watching as the starry heavens turned about the world in which they lived, were convinced that the Earth was stationary and central to all. They also marveled as five ...

On Monday, June 8, there will be a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. A conjunction is a celestial event in which two planets or a planet and the moon or ...