Cosmic Perspectives from Amid the Stars:
Astronomy Blog

In the late nineteenth century, astronomers believed they had discovered canals on Mars. These obviously artificial structures had to be the work of a civilization on the Red Planet. The idea was so popular that it even influenced H.G. Wells to write The War of the Worlds. The idea that there was life on Mars entered the mainstream mind. However, later observations with better telescopes proved there were no such artificial structures on Mars. It was simply an optical illusio

One of the most iconic scenes in Star Wars is the famous twin sunset over Tatooine, a desert planet that orbits not one, but two stars. Science fiction often takes creative liberties with its fantastic planets, but what about this one? Can a planet really have two suns?

How likely is it that there are intelligent civilizations out there beyond our Solar System? This is the question that Frank Drake asked in 1961 when he came up with the eponymous Drake Equation. In the search for extraterrestrial life, finding an intelligent civilization that we might even be able to communicate with is the gold standard. We might not have found any yet, but given our knowledge of how the universe works, we should be able to predict how common or rare they a

Today, March 24, 2026, NASA announced Space Reactor-1 Freedom, a nuclear-powered spacecraft that’s planned to travel to Mars as early as 2028. Freedom would be the first nuclear-propelled craft to venture beyond Earth orbit and it could be the future of exploration in our Solar System. Traveling to planets beyond our own is a tricky prospect. There’s a reason that humans have never traveled further from Earth than the Moon. But Mars is on the top of our list for places to se

For as long as humans have been telling stories, we’ve dreamed of worlds beyond our own. Today those worlds are no longer mere stories. We live in a golden age of exoplanet discovery. An exoplanet is any planet that exists beyond our Solar System, and since the 1990s, we’ve confirmed over 6,000 of them. It’s safe to assume that planets would exist around other stars. After all, there’s nothing special about the Sun. It’s a very average star.

Are we alone? It’s a question that humanity has long asked itself. Is the universe beyond this rock we call Earth teeming with life, or is biology a fluke never to be repeated? The only way to know the answers is to hunt for them ourselves.