Astronomy Magazine

Warren Keller/Mike Selby, taken from Observatorio El Sauce, Chile NGC 7098 is a barred spiral galaxy around 100 million light-years away in the southern constellation Octans. Its unusual double-ring structure — a bright bar wrapped by an inner ring of tightly wound arms and a fainter outer ring — stands out against a deep field strewn with far more distant background galaxies.

A Falcon 9 rocket climbs from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, carrying the Transporter-16 rideshare mission on March 30, 2026. SpaceX's dedicated smallsat rideshare program returns this week with Transporter-17, lifting off from the same pad.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory floats against a star field in this rendering, its solar panels extended. Launched in 2004, Swift has spent two decades detecting gamma-ray bursts — work now threatened by a decaying orbit that NASA's Swift Boost mission aims to reverse.

The Coma Star Cluster is a lovely grouping of bright stars near to (but not containing) the yellowish Gamma Comae Berenices. Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello (Flickr, CC0) Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column. July 5: Capture a view of Saturn’s moons About two hours after sunset, the constellation Coma Berenices is still some 40° above the western horizon. It’s a great time to take in the Coma Star Cluster, also called Melotte 111.

Titan stands close to Saturn the morning of July 5; you may also spot several of the planet’s other moons, depending on the time. Credit: Stellarium/Oleg Pluton Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column. July 4: A conjunction of Mars and Uranus Saturn’s largest and brightest moon, Titan, lies close to its parent planet today. You can spot it — along with several of Saturn’s other moons — with a telescope in the early-morning sky.

Use Mars to find Uranus (the latter is only visible with optical aid) during their conjunction the morning of July 4. Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column. July 3: Glimpse the Milky Way’s center Mars passes 0.1° south of Uranus in Taurus the Bull at 1 A.M. EDT.

Look south late at night to find the location of the Milky Way’s center, marked with the crosshairs, rising above the spout of Sagittarius’ Teapot asterism. Credit: Stellarium Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column. July 2: The King’s wizard Have you ever wondered where the center of the Milky Way is located in the sky? You can spot it late tonight, when it stands above the southern horizon.

Mars (the brightest object below center) and Uranus (the blue object to Mars’ left, partially obscured by a branch) meet in the sky in late February 2016. Another conjunction between the two planets occurs this week. Credit: Juan Manuel Pérez Rayego (Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Friday, July 3 Although the Moon is still bright, there’s a short window after darkness falls and before moonrise to sneak in some deep-sky viewing.

The Wizard Nebula is a gas cloud surrounding a young cluster of stars; the former may only be visible in astrophotos, but the latter is easy to find in any scope. Credit: [-ChristiaN-] (Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column. July 1: Venus in Leo High in the north late tonight, standing to the right of the North Star Polaris, is the realm of Cepheus the King.

Skip to content Ron Brecher from Guelph, Ontario, Canada Sharpless 2–112 is a glowing cloud of ionized hydrogen roughly 30 light-years across, threaded by dark rifts of dust. It lies about 6,500 light-years away in Cygnus and is energized by the hot, massive O-type star BD+45 3216. The imager took nearly 24½ hours of exposure in the Hubble palette with a 14-inch scope at f/11.