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Vera Rubin and looking through a telescope.

Who Was Vera Rubin?

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope was renamed The Vera C. Rubin Observatory. This telescope is breaking new ground, just as Vera Rubin did in her lifetime.
by Jacqueline Mitton, Simon Mitton via Harvard University Press Blog on June 28, 2025
A diagram of the solar system from 1781, focused on Uranus.

American Uranus

The early republic and the seventh planet.
by M. A. Davis via Age of Revolutions on April 3, 2023
U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, DC, (ca. 1880-90).

Astronomy On The Flats

How the moons of Mars and the death of a president altered the late nineteenth-century Washington, DC, landscape.
by Vincent L. Femia via The Metropole on March 8, 2023
Window in the Sun Temple at Mesa Verde.

Is Colorado Home to an Ancient Astronomical Observatory? The Question Is Testing Archaeological Limits.

Did Ancestral Puebloans watch the skies from Mesa Verde's Sun Temple? Solving its mysteries requires overcoming archaeology’s troubled past.
by David Gilbert via The Colorado Sun on December 19, 2021
Abstract painting titled 'Constellation' by Helen Gerardia

A New Planet in the System

Early Americans conscripted the universe into their nation-building project.
by Gordon Fraser via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 8, 2021
Illustration from Percival Lowell's Mars as the Abode of Life, 1908.

Alien Aqueducts: The Maps of Martian Canals

Observing the visible features of Martian landscapes, Giovanni Schiaparelli began seeing things almost immediately.
by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on June 8, 2021
Pluto, July 2015, photographed by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.

In Search of Planet X

The books examine the history of space exploration, from the race to discover Pluto to the idea of space colonization.
by Priyamvada Natarajan via New York Review of Books on October 3, 2019
original

The Other End of the Telescope

Considering astronomy's history from the shadow of the Arecibo Observatory reveals the discipline's intimate ties to imperialism.
by David Singerman on November 24, 2017

Think This Solar Eclipse Is Getting a Lot of Hype? You Should Have Seen 1878

The darkness of the eclipse lit up American minds more than a century ago.
by Olivia B. Waxman via TIME on August 18, 2017

The True Story of History's Only Known Meteorite Victim

Ann Hodges was hit by a meteorite in her Alabama home in 1954.
by Justin Nobel via National Geographic on February 20, 2013
Art work of a hand holding Mars by string in the midst of the universe.

The Long History of Life on Mars

A new book explores how Americans came to believe in an advanced Martian civilization at the turn of the twentieth century.
by Jon Allsop via The New Yorker on August 29, 2025
<p>Earth rising over the Moon, captured by Lunar Orbiter 1, 1966. Courtesy NASA/<a href="https://www.planetary.org/articles/1238" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Planetary Society</a></p>

How the Scientists of the 1960s Turned the Moon into a Place

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination.
by Danny Robb via Aeon on February 13, 2025
An illustration of space, with two silhouettes of heads overlapping.

The Fraught U.S.-Soviet Search for Alien Life

During the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists embarked on an unprecedented quest to contact extraterrestrials.
by Sophie Pinkham via The New Yorker on February 6, 2025
The Confederate States Almanac
partner

On Harvests and Histories

Almanacs from the Civil War era reveal how two sides of an embattled nation used data from the natural world to legitimize their claims to statehood.
by Teresa A. Goddu, Jill Spivey Caddell, Khalid Salim Isma'El, A. R. George, T. J. Tomlin via JSTOR Daily on January 3, 2024
A drawing of the 1833 Leonid meteor shower above a village.

The Massive Meteor Shower That Convinced People the World Was Ending

Wednesday night will bring a brilliant meteor shower, but the far bigger Leonid shower 190 years ago had people believing Judgment Day was at hand.
by Dave Kindy via Retropolis on December 13, 2023
Peter Waddell's "A Vision Unfolds" imaginatively depicts Benjamin Banneker advising President Washington and fellow surveyor Andrew Ellicott on the layout of the proposed federal capital.

Banneker’s Answer to Jefferson: “I Am an American”

The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”
by Edward J. Larson via American Heritage on November 21, 2023
J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist was Oppenheimer?

A-bomb architect “was no Einstein,” historian says, but he did Nobel-level work on black holes.
by Adrian Cho, David C. Cassidy via Science on July 17, 2023
Mural of Harriet Tubman in Cambridge, Maryland, by Michael Rosato

Harriet Tubman Is Famous As An Abolitionist and Political Activist, but She Was Also A Naturalist

The Underground Railroad conductor's understanding of botany, wildlife biology, geography and astronomy allowed her to guide herself and others to safety.
by Liza Weisstuch via Smithsonian on March 10, 2022
Drawing of earth encircled with celestial rings
partner

The Protestant Astrology of Early American Almanacs

The wildly popular books helped people understand farming and health through the movement of the planets, in a way compatible with Protestantism.
by T. J. Tomlin, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on March 15, 2020
People dancing at Woodstock

When Science Was Groovy

Counterculture-inspired research flourished in the Age of Aquarius.
by W. Patrick McCray, David I. Kaiser via Science on August 5, 2019
Neil Armstrong and the American flag on the moon.

Apollo 11 Capsule Foil and Memories of Plucking NASA’s Moonmen From the Sea

A recollection of a NASA employee's experiences with Apollo 11 and 12.
by David Porter II, Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on July 12, 2019

The Physics Of Why Timekeeping First Failed In The Americas

The world's greatest clockmaker sent a clock to the new world – and everything went haywire.
by Ethan Siegel via Forbes on September 21, 2018

Solved: A Decades-Old Ansel Adams Mystery

The answer was hidden in the shadows.
by Cara Giaimo via Atlas Obscura on April 20, 2018
original

When Science Was Big

This year's Nobel Prize in physics is a blast from the past of Cold War-era research investment. Is that era gone for good?
by David Singerman on October 19, 2017
Petroglyphs at Chaco Canyon.

This New Mexico Petroglyph Might Reveal an Ancient Solar Eclipse

In 1097, a Pueblo artist may have etched a rare celestial event into the rock for all of posterity
by Ben Panko via Smithsonian on August 17, 2017

The Eclipse of 1878 Almost Killed the Father of the National Weather Service

Eclipse madness is real.
by Eric Grundhauser via Atlas Obscura on August 4, 2017

Pop Culture Pulsar: Origin Story of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures Album Cover

The cover's design, a black-and-white data display, traces its origins to the stars.
by Jen Christiansen via Scientific American on February 18, 2015
The Man of Signs page of Young's 1848 almanac.

Reading the Man of Signs, or, Farming in the Moon

What did the signs and the phases of the moon mean to moon farmers in the 1840s?
by Emily Pawley via Commonplace on July 1, 2014
Timeline

Putting Time In Perspective

Putting massive amounts of time in perspective is incredibly hard for humans, so we made this graphic.
by Tim Urban via Wait But Why on August 22, 2013
NASA's administrator shows a model of the space shuttle to President Jimmy Carter.

What Spaceflight Owes to Jimmy Carter: The President's Little-Known NASA Legacy

Jimmy Carter, skeptical of NASA's shuttle, saved it with funding despite delays and opposition. His Voyager message carries hope deep into space.
by Denise Chow via NBC News on December 30, 2024
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