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The world won't end on December 21, 2012, but already your friends and relatives are probably wondering if it might. Here's what to tell them. The year 2012 is acting [...]

ALTHOUGH THE SURFACE OF VENUS is always veiled in thick clouds, on June 8th the planet takes a flirtatious cue from Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils and discloses a [...]

As gods go, fleet-footed Mercury was better than FedEx. Affiliated with commerce and travel, the Roman god Mercury was known as Hermes to the Greeks, who designated him as the [...]

The biblical influence and possible celestial significance of Babylonian ziggurats. WITHOUT THE ORGANIZAtional regimen imposed by Marduk, the supreme commander of ancient Babylon's gods, an unruly, noisy crowd of stars [...]

THE COSMOS IS just one wonder after another - the backlit rings of Saturn, sparkling star clouds of the Milky Way, monumental smoky pillars pregnant with stars, galaxies shining back [...]

ALMOST 400 YEARS AGO, when Galileo first turned a telescope to the sky and then published what he saw, he inaugurated a dramatic transformation of cosmic perspective. He saw detail [...]

WHEN THE ANCIENT GREEKS went looking for the Weather Channel, they turned to the stars. In Greek sky lore, the Pleiades--a celestial herald of seasonal change--channeled the weather at key [...]

The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades Munya Andrews (Spinifex Press, 2004). 368 pages. ISBN 1-876756-45-4. AU$34.95, paperbound. MUNYA ANDREWS FIRST LEARNED about the Pleiades when she was a child. Her [...]

Forty years ago, smashing a spaceshift into the Moon wasn't necessarily a failure. THINGS HAVE BEEN crashing onto the Moon for billions of years. Although the initial period of intense [...]

Starting in the 16th century, astronomers created their own constellations to fill the void. WE SOMETIMES GILD periods of achievement and innovation with an extra gloss and equate our gold-star [...]

Charlemagne was a serious amateur astronomer. WHEN THE ENGLISH POET Percy Bysshe Shelley likened kings to stars and wrote in Hellas (1821), 'They rise and set,' he wasn't talking about [...]

Go with the flow and take a dip in the celestial river. IT'S STILL A LITTLE EARLY FOR THE spring flood, but there's high water on February's all-sky map. From [...]

A Babylonian king wouldn't be looking forward to this month's total lunar eclipse. KINGS, ACCORDING TO ENGLISH poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'are like stars, they rise and set, they have [...]

Delphinus is a constellation of porpoise. BY THE TIME THESE FALL NIGHTS fall in the Northern Hemisphere, Delphinus, the Dolphin, has already vaulted over the meridian, the north-to-south line that [...]

Equality in the universe is symbolized by celestial scales TWILIGHT HANGS IN THE BALANCE for our monthly foldout sky chart until night tips the scales in favor of the stars [...]

The existence of massive artwork and monuments on the surface of the red planet continues to war on. WE LOOK MARS SQUARE IN the eye this month as it puts [...]

Wizards have always been in tune with cosmic forces. That's why they dress the way they do. EXCEPT FOR ACCESSORIES LIKE THE Moon and planets, our monthly centerfold chart of [...]

Equal opportunity in space began 40 years ago this month ALTHOUGH CLICHES AND GAGS often mock the focus and skill of woman drivers, Auriga, the Charioteer--the only one licensed to [...]

The Egyptian god who created hieroglyphics is sometimes associated with a bird or a monkey. EVERY MONTH OUR CENTERFOLD star chart turns the night sky into an open book. It [...]

Two hundred years ago this month, a fall of rocks in France helped change our view of the solar system. CHICAGO'S WORLD-FAMOUS MUSEUM of Science and Industry pioneered the hands-on [...]

The mythical beast--found only in the heavens--really does have a single horn. ALTHOUGH UNICORNS STILL MAY be encountered in pictorial wall calendars, collections of modern fantasy tales, children's posters, and [...]

Discerning familiarities in data has led to increasing our understanding of objects in the far reaches of the universe. MOST OF THOSE CONSTELLATIONS on our all-sky map don't resemble the [...]

Everything in the solar system is just blowing in the wind. ANYONE WHO HAS PITCHED A tent appreciates the aggravation the wind adds to the quest for shelter. Cool breezes [...]

The calendar kept slipping until careful Catholic datekeepers reset their clocks. PLAYING BY THE OLD RULES OF seasonal transition, the zodiac is behind the Sun's curve through the ecliptic on [...]

The ancients often looked to the heavens when arranging their earthly domains. FROM SOME PERSPECTIVES THE sky qualifies as a planned community. Although stars--like the lights of a celestial city--are [...]

The ancients suspected that there was something going on between Venus and Mars--they do make a lovely pair. BY MOST STANDARDS, LOVE AND war make unlikely bedfellows, but in ancient [...]

An early 19th-century literary character floated to the Moon. TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC across our monthly all-sky map, the Moon waltzes nightly through its phases like a chorus-line hoofer changing [...]

The comings and goings of breezes and gales gave direction to the lives of ancient cultures. CARDINAL DIRECTIONS--NORTH, south, east, and west--put on nightly airs for our gatefold star chart [...]

Getting to the bottom of the sky's scwewy wabbit. LEPUS, THE HARE, IS OBVIOUSLY off to a jackrabbit start long before the February night begins. By the time it's dark [...]

Chew a comet. Munch the Milky Way. Yum! JUPITER IS NAMED FOR THE RULER of the Roman gods, and his blood sugar drops from dusk to dawn this month as [...]

Americans and Russians keep throwing spacecraft at the red planet, but most of the time they don't stick. PREMATURELY LAUNCHED IN A wayward rocket targeted at Mars in 1953's Abbott [...]

Ancient interior decorating sometimes included a celestial depiction over one's head. WHEN HAMLET LIKENED THE night sky to a 'majestical roof fretted with golden fire,' he was making use of [...]

Celestial steer wrangling and the origins of European civilization. ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENT Greeks, Hercules not only invented the Olympic games; he won every event. Now he's wrestled Draco, the [...]

Los Angeles's most famous planetarium is a landmark--and workhorse --of Tinseltown. HOLLYWOOD'S HUNGER FOR CINEMATIC stories and compelling characters confers star status on celestial celebrities. Hercules, now on our gatefold [...]

A solstice's odyssey of Sun and shadow. THE DARK CONTINENT IS A LITTLE darker this month. While those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are acknowledging the Sun's longest daily [...]

Unfortunate skydivers abound in legend and fiction. HEROES AND DAREDEVILS ARE ever dropping out of the sky. Perseus, for example, was flying high on last winter's monthly gatefold star maps, [...]

A human first saw our planet from space 40 years ago this month. In 1957, all of us passengers in coach shared a bird's-eye view of Southern California shrinking away [...]

The familiar stone lion with a human head that peers out over the Nile was built in adoration of the Sun. WITH A ROCK-STEADY GAZE, Egypt's Great Sphinx has faced [...]

As the ultimate in bio-recycling, the mythical phoenix was continually reborn. CONTRADICTING THE TESTIMONY of medieval authors, who reported that only one phoenix exists at a time, two celestial stand-ins [...]

Sunday = Sun day. Monday = Moon day. Tuesday = ? THE STARS ON THIS MONTH'S gatefold chart of the night sky recapitulate the configuration we published last January, when [...]

In antiquity, November's return of the Hyades to the evening sky signaled the onset of winter rains. Pliny the Elder, the Roman encyclopedist, classified the Hyades as instigators of storms [...]

FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES, OUR Northern Hemisphere summer is down the drain, and there's not much left of the year to dribble after it. October is flooded with color, however, [...]

With only one constellation each to now call home, the stars Alpheratz and Elnath once carried dual citizenship. Every month, our gatefold celestial chart cinches the sky in a star-sequined [...]

The fishy tale of how Pisces and other gill-breathing constellations made it into the heavens. A glance at the stars mapped this month on our all-sky chart tells us something [...]

The heavens are often thought to hold divine power, so it is no wonder that many cultural traditions see royalty in the sky. Cepheus, The King, reigns on high, but [...]

Two pioneering endeavors in heavenly exploration deserve special recognition this month. Pioneer spirit earned a celestial salute in 1801, when the German sky cartographer Johann Bode added a new constellation [...]

Exploring the ancient byways of Middle Eastern Moon worship. In the neighborhood of the vernal equinox, a major astronomical crossroads, the full Moon yields for twilight as a Harvest Moon [...]

Numerous far-flung traditions predict tragedy for pregnant women during comet apparitions and eclipses. Our gatefold map of this month's night sky might as well be the cover of one of [...]

The Roman goddess Vesta was once revered as a divine nurturer but now may be better remembered for her minor-planet namesake. Each June when the ancient Romans celebrated the rites [...]