Astronomy Magazine

Twenty-one months after the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew in a fire during a test on the launchpad, the three men who had originally served as their backup crew — Walter Schirra Jr., Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham — flew on Apollo 7. The first manned American spaceflight since the accident, their mission was

Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column. October 10: Catch the zodiacal light Early risers can catch a stunning sight this morning as magnitude 1.1 Mars makes its way through the Beehive Cluster (M44) in central Cancer. Rising around 1 A.M. local daylight time, Mars is already 30° high

Giovanni Passalacqua from Ragusa, Sicily, Italy A waning crescent Moon hangs less than 3° from Jupiter in western Leo before dawn on Oct. 6, 2026, hours before it occulted the planet for viewers in North America. All four Galilean moons flank Jupiter at lower left. The photographer shot a single 0.5-second exposure at f/6.3 and

In the pursuit of space exploration, NASA has developed a number of innovations that today we depend on in our daily lives. Memory foam — the cushy, shock-absorbing material used in everything from furniture to medical equipment — was first invented in 1966 by NASA for use in test pilots’ cushions. In the 1990s, NASA’s

On Oct. 10, 1846, William Lassell peered through his 20-foot reflector in Liverpool, England. Lassell was a self-funded amateur astronomer who had made a fortune as a brewer, and he’d built his own scope – apparently doing quite a good job of it, since through it, Lassell spotted Triton orbiting Neptune. Neptune itself had been