Each spring, amateur astronomers attempt the ultimate stargazing challenge—an overnight quest to spot every galaxy, nebula, ...

Thanks to technological developments, we mere mortals can now see unimaginably distant places in unprecedented detail without leaving the comfort of our home. However, before there were ...

The Crab Nebula, known as Messier object M1, was generated in a supernova blast recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054. Starting in the mid-1700s, Charles Messier cataloged more than 100 galaxies, ...

Charles Messier was a French comet-hunter who occasionally spied objects masquerading as comets due to their fuzzy appearance through his small scope. But they didn’t move against the starry ...

Amateur astronomers had 12 spectacular new images to look to during this year's Messier marathon, a skywatching challenge that happened on the weekend of March 17 and 18. Messier Marathons happen in ...

Anyone spotting a globular star cluster like M13 for the first time through an amateur telescope will recognize a fascinating white spot, which at first glance could also be a comet without a ...

"Deep Sky Companion" at the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Credit: Lia Halloran For her latest exhibition, called “Deep Sky Companion,” artist Lia Halloran was inspired not by the ...

In 1781, French astronomer Charles Messier published a catalog of 103 objects in the heavens. He was primarily interested in comets, but kept finding fuzzy smudges that did not move against the ...