Stories by Phil Plait

Superluminal velocities are common but illusory

The 60-meter asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 4 percent chance of hitting the moon. Could such a lunar collision create a dangerous new meteor shower?

Neptune’s discovery was a race that ended not long after this magazine came to be

Bizarre phenomena called light echoes create strange, shifting shapes seen in some telescopic images and help astronomers chart the heavens above

Scientists are uncovering how spinning black holes launch jets, warp spacetime and shape the cosmos

Astronomers think small space rocks from beyond our solar system routinely strike Earth—but proving it isn’t easy

It’s certainly possible to consume water sourced from the icy rings of Saturn, but doing so safely may require extra steps

A new global overview of Mars suggests dust, rather than water, is the source of mysterious streaks there

The future is bright—too bright—for life as we know it once the sun transforms into a red giant star

Close stellar encounters could change the structure of our planetary system, potentially dooming Earth or other worlds to oblivion

Spacecraft can get a significant boost by stealing energy from planets

A near-complete census of our interstellar neighborhood hopes to answer how stars, brown dwarfs and rogue planets form throughout the universe

A curious celestial phenomenon known as the analemma is a reflection of Earth’s orbit and tilted axis

Telescopes in space give us a view we literally cannot get from the ground

Some stars streaking through the Milky Way at millions of kilometers per hour probably trace back to a supermassive black hole in a neighboring galaxy

The quirks of light moving through gas are the cause of stellar twinkling, which can be a bane—and sometimes a boon—for astronomers

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes, and trying to define them is difficult

Stars like the sun might erupt with extreme explosions about once per century

It seems contrary to common knowledge, but sound can travel through some parts of space quite well

ORCs—odd radio circles—are one of the weirdest recent discoveries in the heavens above

At the lower end, and to the bitter end, defining a star is tougher than you might expect

According to new simulations, many, even most, planets get ejected from their star early in their history

Evidence of alien worlds goes back farther than you think

Defining the word “moon” is harder than you might think