Betelgeuse is the star that represents the right shoulder of Orion the hunter. It's also one apex of the Winter Triangle, and it marks the center of the Winter Hexagon. Being bright red-orange and part of the hunter's commanding presence, it's not hard to find in the winter sky.

European AstroFest in 2021 is Worldwide AstroFest. The venue isn't Kensington, London, but rather the World Wide Web. In “An Evening with the Stars” we learned about the hunt for the Universe's first stars, what the stars have meant to humanity, and what was up with Betelgeuse.

The Big Dipper is part of the constellation Ursa Major. It's probably the best known star group in the sky. And it has seven stars. Or does it? Let's take a closer look at at the star Mizar in the middle of the handle.

Mercury is close enough to the Sun for lead to melt during the day. Yet there is ice at the poles. Before we had space probes, Mercury was a mystery hidden in the Sun's glare, but all that's changed.

The Cassini Mission to Saturn is one of NASA's best known undertakings. For over fourteen years it sent images and data back from the ringed planet and its moons. But who was the Cassini that gave his name to the spacecraft?

Arachnophobes needn't worry about this tarantula. It's not a big spider, it's a big nebula that looks a bit like a spider in some photos. It's also so far away that its light takes 170,000 years to get here. Stars are born there, stars die there, and it's a spectacular object.

On October 4, 1957 a small object had people around the globe looking excitedly - or anxiously - up at the sky. It's so common now that people today could scarcely imagine the effect that the first artificial satellite had. Sputnik began the Cold War's space race.

Neptune is the planet discovered mathematically and whose detection led to a heated rivalry between British and French astronomers. But who was the first person actually to see Neptune?

A mile above the California desert stands Palomar Observatory. Its 200-inch mirror was officially impossible to make, but George Ellery Hale's vision inspired a nation in the grip of the Great Depression and it became the jewel in the crown of astronomy for the second half of the twentieth century.

Millions of people followed the treks of the Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity as they explored the red planet. In 2009 Spirit became trapped and was last heard from in March 2010. After a year being unable to contact her, on May 24, 2011, with sadness, NASA formally ended her mission.