Spectacular shots of 2022's Blood Moon eclipse

See a lunar eclipse share the night sky with the Milky Way

Photos taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in March 2025 captured a blood moon and the Milky Way galaxy within the same field of view. The moon appears red from the bluer parts of its reflected sunlight being scattered by Earth's atmosphere.

Photographer catches a 'once in a blue moon' shot

A rare "super blue moon" occurred in August 2023, a phenomenon which will not occur again until 2037. Photographer Andrew McCarthy caught a stunning image of the larger-than-normal orb with an ironic twist: a JetBlue flight silhouetted against the...

Track all future solar eclipses and their projected paths of totality around the world

Solar eclipses are among the most awe-inspiring natural phenomena a person can witness, occurring when the Earth, Moon, and Sun align. This tool provides an interactive, data-rich visualization of the dramatic world events across time.

A gallery of shots taken during the lunar flyby of Artemis 2

On April 6, 2026, the four-person Artemis 2 crew took photos of "earthset" and "earthrise" from the Orion spacecraft window during their lunar flyby. It was the first time humans had flown around the moon in over 50 years.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Moon's visibility is determined by its declination, equivalent to Earth latitude

The Moon's declination varies between approximately +28.7 degrees and -28.7 degrees, ensuring it rises and sets between latitudes of approximately 61.3 degrees north and south. This means there are places on Earth where the Moon is never visible above the horizon and places where it temporarily does not set.

Stellar photos from around the world of the 2020 Perseids

The annual Perseids meteor shower occurs in the Northern Hemisphere's summer, peaking usually around mid-August. The phenomenon is caused by the Earth's passing through a comet's debris trail of ice and dust, providing a weekslong spectacle for...

A history of water on the moon

Is there water on the moon? In 2020, NASA's SOFIA mission confirmed the existence of water on the sunlit area of the lunar surface. Early astronomers mistook the dark spots on the Moon for oceans, but they are actually plains of dark, lava-produced...

Explore the lunar surface, orbit, and rocks with NASA's moon interactives

This webpage offers tools to explore the moon digitally, including MoonTrek, a 3D lunar surface explorer, and the Daily Moon Guide, an interactive map for tracking the moon each day of the year.

Rare chance for US states to see Northern Lights

A solar storm in July 2023 offered people in 17 American states, as well as Canada, an unusual chance to witness the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis. The 11-year solar cycle, reaching its peak in 2024, made the lights visible in places further south than usual. Read up on the announcement from the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks here.

The accidental birth of radio astronomy and the benefits of a moon-based telescope

Detecting radio waves from distant celestial objects is complicated by noise from solar wind, which the nighttime side of the moon is shielded from. If lunar temperature extremes can be overcome, the environment may serve as an optimal future home for radio astronomy, a field that began in 1928 when a 30-meter-long directional antenna, mostly out of brass and wood, picked up signals from the Sagittarius constellation.

Learn about the sun's corona, which is nonlethal despite a temperature of millions of degrees

The outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere is best seen during a solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the much brighter (and significantly cooler) solar surface. Despite the high-energy particles in the corona moving fast enough to escape the sun's gravity and gradually become solar wind, their density is too low to contribute meaningfully to the region's overall radiation.

UK's Royal Astronomers join the hunt for Ramadan's crescent moon

In Britain, Muslim communities and professional astronomers now collaborate to officially spot the moon that begins Ramadan, blending ancient practice with modern science. The partnership culminates in a live, unscripted annual broadcast even.

Red and blue election maps are a modern media invention

The red–blue color scheme used on election night maps emerged in the 20th century as television networks adopted color graphics to make results easier to follow. The association of red with Republicans and blue with Democrats later became standardized.

See South Korea's nighttime light usage, far surpassing North Korea's

You can tell a lot about a place by looking at satellite imagery of the earth at night. Economists use such images to study poverty and inequality, especially about secretive countries where it can be difficult to get information any other way. An image from NASA’s Earth Observatory shows the difference in electrification between North and South Korea (and the lights illuminating the DMZ are visible from space).

The difference between solstice and equinox, explained

A solstice marks the extremes in the amount of day or night, while the equinoxes come on days with a balance between the two. Learn why with this brief video.

Lunar New Year has a rich tradition of visual symbolism

Explore centuries of art related to the holiday—from the dragon robes worn by royalty to the calligraphy symbols thought to bring prosperity and fortune. Ancient artistic practices like woodblock printing, painting, and dance weave together to create the visual language of the Lunar New Year.

Exciting US primary debate moments from history

Presidential debates in the US are highly-touted events viewed as the capstone of a campaign, but their impact on the overall polling is often undetectable. Nonetheless, the televised events can be really entertaining as candidates sweat under the pressure of a live mass audience, and most morning after news round-ups contain some of the event's notable—or cringey—moments. Here's a quick, three-minute video of highlights of some of the more fascinating moments from US primaries.

The 2020 and 2024 elections ranked among the highest-turnout contests in over a century

Voter turnout reached 66% in 2020—the highest since 1908—and 64% in 2024, tied for second-highest with 1960. In 2024, Trump benefited from higher turnout among his prior voters and new voters.

Watch President John F. Kennedy's speech on going to the moon

On Sept. 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy set forth this argument for the effort to land humans on the moon’s surface, casting the Apollo mission in terms of historic human ambitions.

The best drone photos of 2022

A look at the winning entries into the Drone photo awards 2022, including the overall winner showing a secondary fissure caused by the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

See Mount Vesuvius from space

Mount Vesuvius is one of the few active volcanos on Europe's mainland. See it from space in this photo from NASA's Earth Observatory. This natural-color image was taken on January 2, 2022, during a break in cloud coverage.

The first-ever image of a black hole

The Black Hole at the center of galaxy M87 is ready for its close-up, becoming the first black hole to have its image directly captured. The Event Horizon Telescope caught the distant yet massive object—it's more than 55 million light years away—recording its gravity's effect on nearby hot gases.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

The presidential election process continues for weeks after Election Day

Even after a winner is projected, the election is not complete. Between Election Day and Inauguration Day, electors formally cast votes and Congress meets in a joint session to certify the results, following a constitutionally defined timeline.

See a collection of LIFE's most iconic photos in history

Famous images, like a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square to celebrate the end of World War II, are each shared with context in this article. See some of history's most famous moments from a unique point of view, including photos of Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and Muhammad Ali.

Watch the trailer for 'Goodnight Oppy'

The 2022 documentary, narrated by Angela Bassett, tells the story of NASA's Opportunity rover, which launched in 2003 to explore Mars. The film was named Best Documentary Feature at the 7th Critics' Choice Documentary Awards.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Massive blooms of microscopic plankton called dinoflagellates produce the neon blue light seen in glowing tides.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak is hampered by a lack of vaccine against the species of the virus, heightening the need for rapid tests to aid in disease control.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

The USPS spent $3.97B in 2024, accounting for .058% of the federal budget.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'