NASA's Kepler mission is finding solar-type stars that emit jaw-dropping explosions of high-energy particles and radiation. Now astronomers are looking into why some solar-type stars emit superflares — and why the Sun never will.

From Comet Lovejoy in the southern skies to the aurora borealis over Iceland, the winners of the 2012 International Earth & Sky Photo Contest find beauty in darkness and show the threat of increasing light pollution.

The just-completed Gregor telescope, situated on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, ranks as Europe's largest solar sentinel and the third largest in the world.

Never mind what the doomsayers tell you: Remarkable paintings in a room amid Guatemalan ruins prove that the ancient Maya knew more about celestial cycles than we thought — and that they didn't predict the world's end in December 2012.

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer has discovered that the Sun has no bow shock, overturning the basis for decades of scientific research.

Spectral mapping by NASA's Dawn spacecraft has confirmed what planetary scientists have suspected for decades: hundreds of meteorites on Earth are rocks blasted from the surface of the second-largest asteroid.

Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught dunes migrating across the Red Planet's surface, contradicting the common wisdom that the planet's current climate can't get sand moving on a large scale.

The full Moon of May 5, 2012, will be the year's closest — but not by enough to draw attention.

Self-destructing clumps of ice particles are changing the face of Saturn's bizarre F ring. No longer unseen ghosts, these theoretically predicted objects are putting on quite a show for NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The annular eclipse later this month whets the appetite for totality. Join us for the next total solar eclipse in Australia!

Astronomers have spotted an unusual "ultraluminous" burst of X-rays coming from the otherwise barren region between the grand spiral arms of Messier 83.

A closely-watched flare from a gargantuan black hole in a distant galaxy has revealed to astronomers not only the mass of the black hole that ate the snack but the type of star that met its end as the meal.

Sky & Telescope editors just returned from our annual pilgrimage to the Northeast Astronomy Forum, where we scoped out new products and talked with our readers.

April 28th is Astronomy Day, when hundreds of astronomy clubs, observatories, museums, colleges, and planetariums worldwide host special family-oriented events and festivities that showcase the wonder and excitement of the night sky.