I pick out North America’s celestial highlights for the week ahead (which also apply to mid-northern latitudes in the northern hemisphere).

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image peers into the dusty recesses of the nearest massive star-forming region to Earth, the Orion Nebula (Messier 42, M42). Just 1,500 light-years away ...

In 1920, astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis held a Great Debate. Shapley argued that the spiral nebulae were small and in the Milky Way, while Curtis took a more radical position that they ...

Venus appears low in the evening sky, guiding us to Saturn. Jupiter makes an attractive sight below the Hyades and Mars remains a fine sight.

Hubble’s work pushed the field of astronomy forward, starting with his paper demonstrating that some objects exist outside ...

which lies at the center of the Orion Nebula (M42). Mathematicians define a trapezium as a four-sided figure with one pair of parallel sides. The four stars in M42 come close to this definition ...

Here’s everything you need to know about astrophotography in February 2025: If you've been outside just after sunset in the ...

Some were gaseous, star-forming regions, such as the Orion nebula, or M42 – the 42nd object in Messier’s catalog – while others were star clusters such as the Pleiades, or M45. A third ...