Arcturus (at a magnitude of -0.05), one of the few stars mentioned by name in the Bible, is a giant, about 25 times the diameter of our sun and 36.7 light years away. Boötes is chasing the Bears with ...

Even though humans have been looking at the night sky for millenia, not everyone sees the same sky. Not even the ...

Mizar, a star in the Big Dipper's handle, has a tiny companion. This star, Alcor, was known to the ancients. The pair was ...

But constellations aren’t just a sketch of every individual’s fanciful ideas. The way that the stars are splashed across the sky invites humans to see certain patterns. In fact, despite ...

The term “constellation” evokes several denotations. The most familiar is “a grouping of naked-eye stars sometimes connected by imaginary lines or superimposed by illustrations to suggest ...

If you go to a very dark site on a moonless night—and I cannot recommend it highly enough that you do so—you’ll be faced with an awesome sight: a night sky seemingly brimming with millions ...

Anyone who enjoys gazing at the night sky probably has a few favorite star patterns they like to ... shapes that many of us casually call “constellations” aren’t really constellations ...

In the night sky, the brightest star pattern is called the Winter Hexagon. Bob King suggests starting with the easily identifiable constellation Orion. “You can find those belt stars in the ...

At dusk on a late October night in 1408, something mysterious lit up the skies above China. Ming Dynasty astronomers who ...