The biggest merger to ever hit these parts is coming—a union that promises to be more tumultuous than that of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, offer more star power than Brangelina,…

Astronomy and biology have been circling each other with timid infatuation since the first time a human thought about the possibility of other worlds and other suns. But the melding…

You and I have homes, but do stars and planets? After a fashion, yes—solar systems are shaped from clouds of interstellar gas known as protosolar nebulae. Because nebulae have identifying…

I am a staunch believer in leading with the bad news, so let me get straight to the point. Earth, our anchor and our solitary haven in a hostile universe, is in a precarious situation.…

The history of human exploration has always been tied to the search for a destination. Space travel is no different: The Apollo program, which ferried humans to the moon, was not only…

It might sound strange to you, but a telescope is no less a vessel of exploration than the ones used by ancient explorers to discover new continents. Telescopes give us glimpses of…

Lisa Kaltenegger can take you there. That’s the feeling you get after a couple of hours of conversation with the exoplanet researcher: Whether it’s to distant water-worlds or to…

Rogue planet. The term suggests a loner—a rebel refusing to play by the rules, breaking with tradition, going anywhere in the galaxy it pleases. Labels such as “rogue,” “nomadic,”…

Our group of astronomers took in the naked mountains by the sea. We had flown into the La Serena airport at noon, and found a parched landscape. What sparse vegetation there was survived…

Click on each date for more information. Sources:3rd century BCE: Eratosthenes measures diameter of Earth http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/191064/Eratosthenes-of-Cyrenehttp://www.phy6.org/stargaze/Scolumb.htm#q1http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/46/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=646&pf=1…