A NASA mission launching in October will send cameras and other scientific equipment to see, among other things, whether Jupiter's moon Europa could sustain life.
The two brightest planets in Earth's night sky are millions of miles apart. But due to an astronomical quirk, they appear to be engaging in a cosmic dance tonight. Now that's a moment of awe.
The first astronomer to discover moons around Jupiter was Galileo, back in the year 1610, but astronomers are still finding more and more moons around this gas giant.
NASA's Juno spacecraft sweeps over Jupiter's Great Red Spot and makes a 3D map of the giant storm. The findings could shed light on gas giant exoplanets in distant solar systems.
Wipe the dust off your binoculars and extract the family telescope from the back of the closet: Saturn is about to put on its best and brightest show of the year — an act Jupiter will soon follow.
On Monday evening, Jupiter and Saturn appeared closer to each other in the sky than they have for hundreds of years in what has become known as the Great Conjunction.
At least, that's how it will look to someone craning their head aloft. On the winter solstice, the pair of gas giants will appear closer to each other in the night sky than they have in centuries.