The bestselling author discusses his inspiration, creative process, and favorite scientific tidbits behind the feature film.

The Sun, along with more than 1,500 other stars, journeyed from the middle of the Milky Way to its current position a few billion years ago.

The distant ice giant Uranus is located in Taurus right now, not far from the famous (and easy-to-find) Pleiades star cluster, cataloged as M45. Tonight, the planet also sits a short distance due ...

French astronomer Charles Messier did not intend to be remembered for his discoveries of galaxies, nebulae, and stars clusters when he looked to the sky in the 1750s. Dubbed the “Ferret of Comets” by ...

High in the south this evening is Canis Minor the Little Dog, shining above the bright star Sirius, which lies closer to the horizon. True to its name, the Little Dog is a little constellation, ...

Io transits Jupiter’s broad disk late tonight, beginning at midnight EST. On the East Coast, Jupiter is still 40° high in the west at local midnight, readily visible as the brightest point of light in ...

With no Moon in the early-evening sky, let’s chase down a classic deep-sky object tonight: M1, the first entry in Charles Messier’s list of “not comets” and also known as the Crab Nebula. This smudge ...

The Galilean moon Callisto disappears behind Jupiter in an occultation early this morning. The catch is that the event is only visible from the western half of the U.S., but observers farther east can ...

Look north this evening for Ursa Major the Great Bear, whose back half is best known as the Big Dipper. The two stars on the far end of the cup from the handle are called the Pointer Stars: These are ...

French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier was a tutor and an assistant at the Paris Observatory when the director, François Arago, asked him to investigate irregularities in Uranus’ orbit. Using extensive, ...

From Mars, Earth transits the Sun four times in a 284-year cycle. The transits occur in either May or November at intervals of 100.5, 79, 25.5, and 79 years. During these events, Earth and the Moon ...

In March of 1989, a highly active sunspot region released multiple extreme solar flares, including an X4.5 flare on March 10 and a M7.3 flare on March 12. Solar flares are ranked as B, C, M, and X ...