Astronomers can identify systems with pairs of orbiting stars by observing recurring dips in the system's brightness as the stars eclipse one another.

The majority of exoplanets—planets outside the solar system—have been discovered through mini-eclipses created when they pass in front of their host star and block some of its light from reaching Earth.

Through 2025, two-thirds of known exoplanets—planets that orbit stars other than the sun—have been detected via transits, where the objects cause periodic, consistent dips in their host star's brightness by passing in front of it.

On planets in systems with two stars, such as the fictional Tatooine from 'Star Wars,' observers would see overlapping rainbows and double rainbows.

An exoplanet detection method involves measuring a host star's auroras

Astronomers have reported indirectly identifying a planet by observing its debris interacting with the magnetic field of the star it orbits. The interaction is a larger-scale version of the auroras observed on Jupiter, which are produced when material released by its moon, Io, interacts with the gas giant's magnetic field.

The masses of celestial objects can be determined by analyzing their orbits, observing how they bend light, or measuring their brightness.

Every eclipse is preceded or followed by another eclipse, separated by about two weeks and alternating between solar and lunar types.

Hubble revealed that planet-forming disks are common around young stars

One of Hubble’s early images captured 30 young star systems in the Orion region, each surrounded by material that looked like it was forming planets. These systems increased the number of data points scientists had to test planetary formation models.

Webb Telescope zooms in on Orion Nebula and finds planet pairs

The Webb telescope has trained its infrared cameras on the nearest star-forming nebula in our universe, the Orion Nebula. Its images revealed a never-before-seen phenomenon: dozens of pairs of planet-sized objects in binary orbit, seemingly floating...

Collections of stars like the Big Dipper are not constellations because they are not among the 88 groups of stars designated as such by the International Astronomical Union.

How a pulsar's properties led to the discovery of the first exoplanets

In 1992, astronomers examining the radio waves emitted by PSR B1257+12 as it swept past detectors every 0.006219 seconds noticed occasional deviations at regular intervals. Further analysis revealed the existence of two planets beyond our solar system orbiting the neutron star, causing it to wobble and affecting pulsar timing.

Watch a simulation of a collapsing star becoming a black hole

When a massive star can no longer release enough energy through fusion in its core to fight off gravitational collapse, the dense core collapses first, producing an event horizon that traps light within it, including some light produced within the star at the time of collapse. As more material falls into the growing event horizon, the star will appear to eclipse itself from the inside.

By identifying patterns in the periodic movements of the sun, moon, and Earth, ancient civilizations realized that identical eclipses repeat about once every 6,585 days, known as the saros cycle.

Over thousands of years, the frequency of solar eclipses is greatest around the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and lowest near the equator.

Research suggests that the small red dots in images of deep space captured by the James Webb Space Telescope since 2022 are black hole stars—black holes surrounded by enormous clouds of gas.

Solar eclipses are a cosmic coincidence because the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but about 400 times closer to Earth, allowing it to block sunlight for those on Earth within its shadow.

In 1974, a pair of neutron stars provided the first evidence of gravitational waves

Observations of a pulsar—a rapidly rotating neutron star that emits light—revealed it to be part of a system of two stars that orbited one another in a shrinking orbit, indicating gradual energy loss. Calculations showed that the changing orbit was consistent with gravitational waves predicted to carry energy away from such a system.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Although the moon passes between the sun and Earth each month, its orbit is tilted by five degrees, preventing Earth from experiencing a solar eclipse each month.

Differences in the tilts of planetary orbits make perfect alignment impossible

Mercury deviates within 7 degrees of the ecliptic that marks the path of the sun, with the other planets varying from 3 degrees to approximately flat. Even an alignment within 1 degree between all eight planets is estimated to occur only once every 13.4 trillion years.

By separating light with tools such as prisms, scientists can reveal the presence and composition of celestial matter by identifying color fingerprints unique to specific elements and molecules.

How do scientists study far away stars?

Astronomy is the only science that is purely observational: meaning, scientists can't study stars in a lab. Here's a breakdown of how modern researchers use new tools to understand objects billions of light years away. As it turns out, the rules of science allow us to identify, categorize, and experiment with phenomena light years away.

Asteroids are often unobserved until they are days away from Earth

Even those large enough to cause local or regional damage are too small, dim, and far away to be observed readily from cosmological distances. New tools, like NASA's NEO Surveyor telescope, aim to address gaps in detection systems.

Asteroids were discovered by 18th-century planet hunters

While looking for a planet between Mars and Jupiter to coincide with an apparent mathematical pattern in the distances of known planets from the sun, a group calling themselves the "Celestial Police" discovered multiple objects that fell into a new classification.

Gaia mapped two billion stars in the Milky Way

Using geometric parallax, the European Space Agency mission made position measurements accurate to 2.78 × 10⁻¹⁰ degrees, revealing large-scale galactic structure and dynamics. Remnants of ancient galactic mergers were also identified within the Milky Way.

View photographs of solar eclipses on Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn caused by the moons of these planets blocking sunlight.

Planets' high orbital speeds prevent them from falling into their host star

Although the gravitational force attracts a planet and the star it orbits around, the large speed the planet orbits with, which is acquired during its formation process, causes it to continuously miss the star as it orbits around it. This is analogous to theoretically throwing a baseball horizontally faster and faster until it's fast enough to orbit the Earth while attempting to fall to its surface.

Because the half of Earth that faces the sun is larger than the area of the shadow cast by the moon during a solar eclipse, observers may experience a total, annular, or partial eclipse.

In 2025, the European Space Agency created the first artificial solar eclipse in space when one spacecraft cast a shadow onto another spacecraft to enable observations of the sun's outermost atmosphere.

Brown dwarfs are nicknamed 'failed stars' because, while much more massive than planets, they lack sufficient mass to initiate nuclear fusion in their cores and become stars.

Hot Jupiters are giant planets that orbit very close to their host star

Discovered in 1995, hot Jupiters are a class of exoplanets—planets orbiting stars other than the sun—with size and mass similar to Jupiter. They are most commonly found orbiting metal-rich stars and have become essential for testing theories of planetary system formation.

The most mysterious (known) star in the universe

Something massive, with roughly 1,000 times the area of Earth, is blocking the light coming from a distant star known as KIC 8462852. One of astronomers' more intriguing theories: Alien technology. Discovered via NASA's Kepler space telescope and a...

Type Ia supernovae—explosions caused by the remnants of low-mass stars being reignited—brighten and dim so consistently that they are used as cosmic rulers to measure distances across the universe.

Listen to the sounds of pulsars, which emit radio pulses up to hundreds of times a second

Just as figure skaters spin faster by tucking in their arms, these celestial objects acquire high rates of spin from the collapse of the cores of massive stars. The star's rotation spins its magnetic field, generating beams of radio waves from its magnetic poles. If either of these poles faces a detector, the signals can be picked up and converted to audio signals.

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.

Simulate how the distribution of dark matter affects stellar orbits within galaxies, which allows astronomers to infer the presence of the invisible substance from the motion of stars.

Light echoes are expanding shells of reflected starlight

Just as sound waves reveal the location of obstacles by reflecting off them, pulses of light emitted by stars illuminate rings of interstellar dust, giving the appearance of ejected material as the light travels outward.

Earth’s tilt and orbit cause the sun to create a figure-eight pattern

The shape—called an analemma—can be obtained by photographing the sun from the same location and time daily for a year. The Earth's eccentricity created the analemma's width, and its tilt shifts the sun's height in the sky over the seasons.

The sun is not as exceptional as once believed, but it remains rarer than most stars

Once believed to be the center of the universe, the sun is a G-class star, the same category to which about 6% of the Milky Way's stars belong. However, the sun is younger than 85%, more massive than 95%, and more metal-rich than about 93% of all stars. Unlike the sun, half of all stars also exist in multi-star systems.

Blood moons only occur during total lunar eclipses, when the Earth blocks the sun, but its atmosphere lets redder parts of sunlight through to reflect off the lunar surface.

Tidally locked exoplanets experience extreme atmospheric temperatures

On worlds like WASP 76b, which orbits its host star approximately 3% the Earth-sun distance, temperatures on its day side can vaporize iron. Winds more than 14 times the speed of sound blow this material to its night side, where it condenses and falls as liquid metal.

While the sun, moon, and stars rise and set from east to west due to Earth's rotation, the moon's eastward revolution around the Earth causes its shadow to move from west to east during a solar eclipse.

By analyzing the color of starlight, astronomers can determine how fast stars within a galaxy are moving toward or away from Earth, revealing the expansion rate of the universe.

The edge of the Milky Way may be identified by its star-forming disk

Like Earth's atmosphere and its core, galaxies become more diffuse with increasing distance from their centers, making it hard to define where they end. However, one approach focuses on where gas concentrations are no longer dense enough to support measurable star formation.

Variations in the energy of light force the use of multiple telescopes

Just as Earth's atmosphere allows the sun's visible light to pass through while blocking other harmful radiation, telescope mirrors and other optics can only reflect, absorb, or transmit certain types of light. Detectors also utilize semiconducting materials that react to specific energies of light, thereby preventing a one-telescope-fits-all solution.

Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons led to multiple scientific advancements

Beyond challenging Earth-centric views upon their discovery in 1610, the Galilean moons were also later analyzed to contribute to early astrometry and astronomical interferometry. Measurements of eclipses were also used to estimate the speed of light.

Research suggests that about 1% of all matter in the universe is locked inside black holes, millions of which are likely to lurk undetected near us in space.

Simulations show unidentified asteroids around Venus may pose a threat to Earth

A new study suggests that Venus' co-orbital asteroids—space rocks that lag ahead or behind the planet—could potentially destroy cities if they strike Earth. While no observed co-orbitals currently pose a threat, observational bias prevents observation of those of greater risk.

The Earth orbits the sun within the Orion Spur arm of the Milky Way galaxy

The solar system is roughly halfway between the galaxy's outer rim and its center, which is located about 25,000 light years away. The Milky Way is itself one of hundreds of thousands of galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster.

Astronomers use a set of scaffolding methods to measure distances across the universe

Different methods are used depending on how far away an object is—from radar for nearby planets, to parallax for stars, to redshift and supernovae for distant galaxies. These tools allow scientists to chart the universe across unimaginable scales using astronomical units (AU), light-years, and parsecs.

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