To find alien life in our universe, scientists have considered searches for optical lasers or even giant energy-harvesting structures known as Dyson spheres. Now they're suggesting a more mundane sort of search, a hunt for air pollution in exoplanet atmospheres.

Will you see Saturn and Mercury in the east before sunup these next few mornings? It won't be easy. They're near the sunrise. Their quasi-conjunction comes on February 23.

For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of a throng of black holes crowding near the center of an ancient globular cluster.

Jet contrail shadows may appear to be cast by a low-altitude bright light shining upwards. In fact, this shadow is normally cast on clouds below the jet and its contrail.

A magnetic reversal 42,000 years ago helped bring about earthly extinctions, scientists said, accompanied by changes in the sky including electrical storms and widespread auroras. "It would have been scary," they commented.

The waxing moon this weekend shines inside a large pattern of stars called the Winter Circle, or Winter Hexagon.

Italy’s Mount Etna has been erupting this week, spewing fountains of lava and ash into the sky.

NASA's Perseverance mission conducted a picture-perfect landing on Mars today and has already sent back several images.

Researchers at the SETI Institute say that mysterious dark streaks on sun-facing slopes on Mars, debated about for years, may be small landslides caused by a combination of salts and melting ice just below the surface.

As more and more plastic trash permeates the oceans, microplastics are making their way into fish and shellfish, and potentially into humans.