Category: Astronomy & Space

NASA is recruiting citizen science volunteers to help astronomers discover exoplanets hidden in observations from one of its space telescopes. A pair of citizen science projects, Planet Hunters TESS and Planet Patrol, are asking users to help sort through images from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and separate out potential exoplanet signals from those of planet […]

Across the country, many kids have recently gone back to school for the first time since the pandemic started, even as a host of others are still learning at home. As we look for ways to get back into hands-on learning, citizen science offers ready-made projects for kids and adults alike.  These science experiments and […]

For most of human history, we slept under the stars. Instead of staring at electronic screens, our ancestors watched the light from the heavens. Things have changed dramatically in recent decades. Seven out of 10 people living in the U.S. today have never seen the Milky Way. Light pollution from street lights, homes, businesses and […]

More than 100 years ago, Harvard astronomer Edward Charles Pickering decided he was going to take a picture of the entire night sky. Or, rather, many thousands of pictures, each capturing a tiny rectangle of the universe as seen through a telescope. Today, these photos survive on hundreds of thousands of glass plates at the […]

Sometimes the old methods truly are the best methods. When astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930, it was the result of countless hours spent straining his eyes at a machine called a blink comparator. Using it, Tombaugh could flip rapidly back and forth between two images of the night sky taken at slightly different […]

With the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering schools, as a parent, you may be looking for fun and easy ways to help teach science to your kids at home. Or maybe your family just spent the summer outdoors observing Comet NEOWISE and now you want some supplementary educational resources to teach your kids about the night sky. […]

Learn more about Chasing Steve on SciStarter. When Leah Mallen and I headed to Alberta, Canada to film a documentary about aurora chasers who had discovered a new phenomenon in the night sky, we didn’t know what to expect. As Canadians, we knew that auroras were light displays caused by solar wind. We’d heard of […]

Virtually every galaxy bigger than our Milky Way has a supermassive black hole at its center. These supermassive black holes can weigh tens of millions of times more than our sun. How do black holes grow so gigantic? And why are supermassive black holes at the heart of so many galaxies? A citizen science project […]

Nothing beats a beautifully clear, starry night. But in many places around the world, light pollution is hiding the twinkling stars from our view. Light pollution comes from artificial outdoor lights like street lamps, stadium lights, and porch lights. Nearly three-quarters of city dwellers have never seen a pristine dark sky and many don’t know […]

In this recording, three astronomers and the editor in chief of Astronomy Magazine provide step-by-step instructions to help you join their research projects from home. Good for all ages. Explore the video and featured projects at SciStarter.org/AstronomyMag.