Witnessing the Milky Way is a profound experience. This article highlights ten premier global locations for stargazing. From ...

All the life we know of in the entire universe is squeezed onto a tiny rock, floating in a minor arm of the Milky Way. There are billions of other planets with the potential to support life. But what ...

The Milky Way could be coming to a sky near you. The billions of stars comprising our home galaxy should appear especially vibrant in late May as the band arcs across the night sky. The reason has ...

The Milky Way is our home galaxy with a disc of stars that spans more than 100,000 light-years. What you're looking at when the Milky Way is visible is the bright center of our galaxy with billions of ...

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy containing 100-400 billion stars. Planet Earth sits along one of the galaxy’s spiral arms. Though the Milky Way is generally always visible from Earth, certain times ...

On Jan. 15, 2025, the Gaia spacecraft took its last image. Then the craft ran a final round of engineering tests, fired its ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Late in the evening of October 5, 1923, Edwin Hubble sat at the eyepiece of the Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory atop ...

Florida is home to three listed "dark sky" locations that may offer the best views of the Milky Way's galactic center. The Milky Way is our home galaxy with a disc of stars that spans more than ...

A new study shows how Milky Way chemical tracks emerge from shifting star formation and gas supply, reshaping ideas about the ...