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Omega Centauri in infrared light via Spitzer Space Telescope/ Wikimedia Commons. Omega Centauri, the largest globular star cluster of the Milky Way, contains about 10 million stars. This behemoth, with a diameter of 230 light-years, is 10 times more massive than a typical globular cluster. Despite all these stars, scientists released a study in 2018 that said Omega Centauri probably is not home to life. Stars pack so tightly inside Omega Centauri that the average distance between stars in the cluster’s core is 0.16 light-years, much closer than the sun’s nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri...

May 19, 2021 View larger. | EarthSky community member Beverley Sinclair captured this beautiful view of a total solar eclipse outside Charleston, South Carolina, on August 21, 2017, and wrote: “The skies were very cloudy leading up to totality but, miraculously, slowly cleared as totality approached. This photo shows the diamond ring and Baily’s beads.” Thank you, Beverley! The middle of the current eclipse season falls on June 1, 2021. This eclipse season features two eclipses: a total eclipse of the moon on May 26, and then one fortnight (approximately two weeks) later, an annular ecl...

Deborah Byrd Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Today, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of this website. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says.

Total lunar eclipse composite image by Fred Espenak. A solar eclipse happens at new moon, when the moon passes between the sun and Earth. A lunar eclipse happens at the opposite moon phase – at full moon – when the Earth, sun and moon align in space, with Earth between the sun and moon. At such times, Earth’s shadow falls on the full moon, darkening the moon’s face and – at mid-eclipse – sometimes turning it a coppery red. We typically have between four and seven eclipses – some partial, some total, some lunar and some solar every year. Why aren’t there eclipses at

If the moon orbited Earth on the same plane that Earth circles the sun, then we'd have a total lunar eclipse at each full moon, and a total solar eclipse at each new moon. But that doesn't happen because the lunar orbit is inclined to Earth's orbit by about 5 degrees.