Submissions are due by Jan. 4 or whenever entries hit 20,000, whichever comes first.

Cloud cover and moonlight are likely to spoil meteor watching Friday night, when the annual Geminids shower reaches its peak.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it was proposing to list the monarch butterfly as an endangered species. A final decision is expected by the end of the year.

For only the third time in its nearly 100-year history, Shedd Aquarium is unveiling a new exhibit in its grand rotunda. “Wonder of Water” is now open to the public.

The U.S. Senate has approved the reauthorization through 2031 of a federal program that provides crucial funding for restoration and protection of Great Lakes ecosystems. Now it’s up to the U.S. House to do the same.

In a first for the Field Museum, the exhibits staff has outfitted four of its dinosaur replicas (OK, three dinosaurs and one pterosaur) in Santa hats to celebrate the festive season.

On Saturday, Jupiter will shine its brightest of the year and will be visible all night as it travels the sky from sunset to sunrise.

The plan is to transform the former U.S. Steel South Works site into the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. Officials are calling the campus “history-altering,” but some neighbors want the process to slow down and are raising environmental and displacement concerns.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the first construction contract for the barrier designed to keep invasive carp out of the Great Lakes.

Community volunteers helped Shedd Aquarium researcher Karen Murchie discover an important trigger of sucker fish migration and along the way they've become vital advocates for freshwater animals.

Despite the frigid end to the month, November 2024 was still nearly 5 degrees warmer than normal. In fact, the entire year is on track to become the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1872.

Illinois regulators are considering adopting a set of standards to improve air quality. The Illinois Pollution Control Board took hours of testimony Monday from environmental and other advocates.

The winter parking ban will begin at 3 a.m. Sunday and will cover 107 miles of arterial streets across Chicago from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. each day from Dec. 1st to April 1st.

Researchers aren’t sure whether dinosaurs’ rise over the course of 30 million years happened because of luck, skill, climate or some combination. But they came away knowing this: “It was not a sudden thing,” said study co-author Martin Qvarnström from Uppsala University.

It’s an annual tradition even non-birders have come to enjoy as huge flocks of sandhill cranes head from their northern breeding grounds to their winter home in Florida.

Conditions for a potential winter storm never materialized, which should make for largely pleasant travel conditions this Thanksgiving.