Hear Katrina Exter on solving the puzzle of Shuster West 2, a glowing ring of ionized gases 4,000 light-years away. Read about the bizarre star trio.

Astronomers estimate that the luminosity of the Milky Way’s “core” is equal to about 10 million suns. Read more about interstellar dust here.

Light from Earth becomes too faint to see with the eye alone at around 14 billion kilometers (about 9 billion miles) from our home planet.

NASA has announced plans to return to the moon and establish a human presence there. Read more about the inflatable lunar habitat being developed.

12 o'clock a.m. and 12 o'clock p.m. mean different things to different people across the world. It's better to say noon or midnight.

Astronomer Michael Liu talks about the most lightweight stellar objects found outside our solar system. It's a pair of brown dwarfs, sometimes called 'failed stars' because they lack enough mass to sustain the nuclear reactions that let stars like our sun light up.

August 1, 2008. Today is an eclipse day - a total solar eclipse - where the moon's dark shadow sweeps across Earth. EarthSky asked NASA senior astronomer Sten Odenwald of the Goddard Space Flight Center for more.

The Hinode mission is going to tell us much about how the atmosphere of the sun is produced and how it evolves, says solar physicist George Doschek. Hear more about Hinode, a space observatory pointed at our sun.

In the 1970s, Voyager 1 provided the first close-up views of Saturn's rings, and determined that the rings formed about 100 million years ago. But evidence from the more recent Cassini mission suggests the rings are much older. Read more about how Saturn recycles its rings.

Trying to determine the location of the Milky Way would be like trying to find your way across a terrain where the landmarks aren't where they appear to be!