FreeSky Cosmos

James Van Allen, who was born in Iowa on Sept. 7, 1914, showed talent and interest in science and math from an early age. A major in physics from Wesleyan College in 1935 was followed by a Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1939. Before and after World War II – durin...

Dark matter is the invisible stuff that accounts for roughly 85% of the mass in the universe, and for decades, physicists have been trying to figure out what it's made of. Now an experimental facility located nearly a mile below ground in South Dakota has reco...

Keeping track of time in the universe is a difficult task. It’s constantly evolving and changing, and studying events that happened billions of years ago, while possible, isn’t exactly easy. A recent paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Socie...

In 1992, Centaur 450P/LONEOS had a close encounter with Saturn, shifting its orbit closer to the Sun. Now astronomers can observe how a small icy body transforms into a comet over time....

Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  September 5: Titan near Saturn The waning crescent Moon lies in Gemini today, not far from the 3rd-magnitude star Epsilon (ε) Geminorum, roughly around where western twin Castor’s kne...