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Astronomy

Sep 22, 2020 | Patty Wetli
Chicago's east-west streets are the best place to view the fall equinox sunset. (Patty Wetli / WTTW)

During the fall equinox, the sun rises due east and sets due west, creating an effect dubbed “Chicagohenge” (in reference to Stonehenge), when the sunset is strikingly framed on east-west streets by the city’s skyscrapers.

Aug 19, 2020 | Patty Wetli
(NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory / Facebook)

An asteroid the size of an SUV buzzed past Earth over the weekend, coming closer to the planet than any other on record, according to NASA. 

Aug 11, 2020 | Patty Wetli
The Perseid meteor shower will peak Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. (Mike Lewinski / Flickr)

Be on the lookout for Perseids on Tuesday night and early Wednesday as the meteor shower hits its peak. Here’s how to maximize your chances of seeing these fireballs streak across the sky.

Aug 2, 2020 | Associated Press
In this May, 30, 2020 file photo, NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley, left, and Robert Behnken walk out of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building on their way to Pad 39-A, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo / John Raoux, File)

Two NASA astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday in a dramatic, retro-style splashdown, their capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico to close out an unprecedented test flight by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

Jul 21, 2020 | Paul Caine
(Credit: NASA / European Space Agency)

We journey to the sun’s surface and explore more from the world of science with University of Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin.

Jul 14, 2020 | Patty Wetli
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe shows greater detail in the twin tails of comet NEOWISE, as seen on July 5, 2020. The lower, broader tail is the comet’s dust tail, while the thinner, upper tail is the comet’s ion tail. (NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Naval Research Lab / Parker Solar Probe /Guillermo Stenborg)

The comet has been delighting sky gazers across the globe. Catch it now, because it won’t swing back our way for another 6,800 years.

Jul 7, 2020 | Patty Wetli
Jupiter is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Look for it in July. (Hypervel / Flickr)

July is a great month for planet watching. Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars and Mercury will all make an appearance.

May 6, 2020 | Patty Wetli
“Chicago Tonight” viewer J. Scott Sykora shared this photo of a harvest supermoon eclipse on Sept. 27, 2015.

There hasn’t been a lot to get excited about in 2020, but one bright spot has been the moon, specifically the string of supermoons we’ve enjoyed this spring. 

Apr 22, 2020 | Patty Wetli
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders’ photograph of the first earthrise witnessed by humans. (NASA)

Apollo 8 astronauts were the first to ever witness an earthrise, a view of the planet that put its fragility into perspective and helped propel the environmental movement.

Apr 14, 2020 | Patty Wetli
On Tuesday morning, the moon appeared at the far "right" of a Mars-Saturn-Jupiter string. (Photo by Joe Guzman)

The moon will align with Mars, Saturn and Jupiter in the pre-dawn hours this week.

Apr 13, 2020 | Associated Press
In this April 15, 1970 photo made available by NASA, a group of flight controllers gather around the console of Glenn S. Lunney, foreground seated, Shift 4 flight director, in the Mission Operations Control Room of Mission Control Center in Houston. (NASA via AP)

Apollo 13’s astronauts never gave a thought to their mission number as they blasted off for the moon 50 years ago. Even when their oxygen tank ruptured two days later — on April 13.

Apr 7, 2020 | Patty Wetli
(Fiona Paton / Flickr)

There hasn’t been a whole lot of good news in 2020, but here’s something to get excited about: Tuesday’s supermoon will be the closest the full moon gets to Earth in 2020, meaning it will look bigger and brighter than any other full moon this year.

Mar 13, 2020 | Patty Wetli
An illustration of exoplanet WASP-76b, where it rains iron. (ESO / M. Kornmesser)

Think things are bleak on planet Earth? At lease it’s not raining metal. That’s the kind of bizarre climate scientists recently observed on an ultra-hot exoplanet they’ve dubbed WASP-76b, located 640 million light-years away.

Mar 9, 2020 | Patty Wetli
Super Worm Moon, photographed in March 2019. (Twelvizm / Flickr)

March’s full moon is called the Worm Moon, and it will be an extra bright supermoon.

Feb 28, 2020 | Patty Wetli
The moon and Venus are in conjunction, as seen in this image from 2015. (Tuchodi / Flickr)

The young crescent moon and the blazingly bright planet are in conjunction. Look to the western sky shortly after sunset Friday to see for yourself.

Feb 26, 2020 | Paul Caine
The Very Large Array (VLA) is a collection of 27 radio antennas located at the NRAO site in Socorro, New Mexico. Each antenna in the array measures 82 feet in diameter and weighs about 230 tons. (Photo: Luke Jones / Flickr)

Are we really alone in the universe? A new effort to search for extraterrestrial life is underway.

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