Everyone’s an astronomer as the search for mysterious matter goes wide
Space
Lost in Space: A Starless Planet Floats Alone
A strange, free-range world is found
Found: The Earthiest New Planet Yet
A world like ours, in a solar system like ours, in just the right spot for life
Window on Infinity: Pictures from Space
From the final journey of Space Shuttle Endeavour to the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, view our monthly roundup of cosmic highlights from October 2012.
Found: The Very First Stars
Astronomers have peeled back the layers of the Universe’s Dark Ages to find its oldest stars
Hors d’Oeuvre for the Milky Way
A delicate formation in the southern sky provides new clues to the galaxy’s formation
Don’t Sneeze in Space: When Astronauts Get Sick
A small problem on Earth can be a very big one in space. How science is trying to cut the risk
Shiny Fleck on Martian Surface! Why it Matters
The Mars rover digs in to work as a millimeter-size grain catches eyes
Cosmic Crack-Up: How We Got the Moon
New theories about the long-ago collision that forever transformed our nighttime sky
An Earthlike World in the Cosmic Neighborhood
Just down the block from our planet — circling one of the stars in Alpha Centauri — is a world very similar to the one we know best