Venus and Jupiter in the dusk are now 30° apart and closing. On the other side of the sky, the Moon marches much faster toward Mars.

The sky's brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, serve as anchors in a wintertime sky full of bright stars and familiar constellations.

The asteroid 433 Eros is paying us a rare, close visit right now, and with a simple photographic setup you can join observers worldwide in calculating its distance from Earth — repeating a historic astronomical milestone.

Tim Puckett has been studying comets and finding supernovae with his home-built telescopes since the 1990s. Now the American Astronomical Society has recognized his dedication with the 2012 Chambliss Amateur Achievement Award.

This week marks the kickoff for a worldwide campaign to measure the darkness of night skies everywhere. It's a fun, easy, and worthwhile activity for you and your family.

The grandaddy of near-Earth asteroids brightens to magnitude 8.6 as it flies by Earth in late January and early February.

Along with the usual galaxies, dark matter, and exoplanets, the American Astronomical Society's January meeting is abuzz with the discovery of a supernova by a team of amateurs. Astronomers are rushing to observe the explosion before it fades.

This year features two "central" eclipses of the Sun: an annular in May (visible from western U.S. states) and a total in November that you'll have to travel to Australia or the South Pacific to see.

Sky & Telescope predicts that 2012's best meteor shower should be the Quadrantids in January, but this will also be a good year for the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December.

Venus and Jupiter mark the evening, Mars and Saturn are high before dawn, and the full Moon crosses Gemini.

Next June 5th (in the Western Hemisphere) or June 6th (in the Eastern Hemisphere), Venus will pass across the face of the Sun for the second and last time this century.

Thousands of telescopes are given and received as gifts during the holidays. But once you've assembled your new treasure, then what? The editors of Sky & Telescope show you where to look first.

The "King of Planets," which will dominate the evening sky from late 2011 through early 2012, is a captivating sight no matter how you look at it.

One of the best — but briefest — annual meteor showers should be active in the hours before dawn on the morning of Wednesday, January 4th.

Its place in astronomical folklore already secure, having skirted very near the Sun and survived last week. But resilient Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) is still strutting its stuff — with twin tails nearly 20° long — in predawn skies for observers in the Southern Hemisphere. It's even drawing a crowd aboard the International Space Station!

With an average of 100 meteors per hour radiating from near the bright star Castor, this end-of-the-calendar shower is usually one of the year’s best. However, this week's performance will be spoiled by a just-past-full Moon that rises not long after the radiant clears the northeastern horizon.

The last total lunar eclipse for the next 2½ years was widely observed by skywatchers around the Pacific Rim.

Discovered in late November by a veteran Australian comet-hunter, C/2011 W3 is a kamikaze comet that will pass just 116,000 miles from the Sun on December 16th. Will it dazzle us as it falls inward? Will it survive its close brush with the Sun? Amateur astronomers worldwide are holding their collective breath!

The Moon will become totally eclipsed for much of North America before sunrise on December 10th.

A decently bright visitor from the solar system’s fringe has lingered in the evening sky for months. As it nears perihelion, Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) will soon be seen better in northern morning skies before dawn.

On what's become the busiest shopping day of the year, a deep partial solar eclipse swept across the bottom of the world.

Uranus and Neptune are easy to find with the aid of the charts in this article.

You've probably heard by now about 2005 YU₅₅. This quarter-mile-wide asteroid will coast past Earth on the night of November 8–9, shining at 11th magnitude and providing a rare opportunity for professional and amateur observers alike.

Chalk up another win for the meteor-shower modelers. Europeans saw a display of up to a couple hundred Draconid meteors per hour on Saturday evening.