(WikiImages / Pixabay)

Thursday’s full moon is the harvest moon, coming closest to the autumnal equinox. It will have some celestial company on Friday in the form of Mars, when the two will rise together and stay paired throughout the evening, according to experts.

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.

(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. 

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

“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. 

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.