HowStuffWorks Newsletter
Valerie Stimac Bailey is a California-based freelance writer and travel blogger. She runs several websites on travel, space tourism, and even Harry Potter — she's basically been lucky to turn all of her favorite things into her professional career. When not busy writing, you can find her out exploring as near (or far) as she can, stargazing, or going to the movies.
The Tau Herculids meteor shower was made of debris from the broken comet SW3 and produced a lot of shooting stars, but not quite the meteor shower that was hoped for.
Sonification is the process of taking data and turning it into sound. When it come to the universe we live in, scientists are finding that the sounds are definitely otherwordly and very beautiful.
Aldebaran is not just the brightest star in the constellation Taurus, it's also the 14th brightest star in the sky.
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If you imagine the eight major planets in a single line stretching out from the sun, this alignment occurs roughly every 13.4 trillion years. And our solar system is 4.5 billion years old.
The oldest megamaser ever measured, estimated to have been emitted some 5 to 6 billion years ago, was observed in 2022 from a radio telescope in South Africa.
Many people dream of climbing Mount Everest, but what if it were possible to scale the highest mountain in the solar system? That mountain is more than twice as tall as Everest! So, where is it?
Researchers have been asking this question for almost a century and now we're a little closer to the answer. Something else to ponder: Every 27.5 million years there is usually a mass extinction.
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Starship is a reusable spacecraft and second-stage rocket built by SpaceX. The end goal of the massive spaceship is to send humans to the moon and eventually to Mars.
Not sure what you're seeing in the night sky? Astronomy software such as Stellarium makes stargazing easier by helping to explain what you're seeing when you look at the stars.
Astronomers at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii noted a bright X-ray emission in 2018, which persisted for three weeks and glowed ten times more brightly than previously studied supernovas, but are just now beginning to understand it.
The gegenschein, "faint light" in German, occurs under very specific astronomical conditions when the sun reaches the exact opposite of Earth from wherever you're stargazing.
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Winter is the perfect time to look for Orion's Belt in the Northern Hemisphere. If you're new to stargazing, we'll show you how to find it.
The Quadrantids are a short but powerful meteor shower that shows up in early January. How can you glimpse it?
Whether to deepen faith or just to have some time for personal reflection, thousands of people walk, ride or bike el Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrim's route, every year. Want to join them?
Using the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of scientists discovered what could very well be the first exoplanet outside the Milky Way. It's massive and might even orbit a black hole.
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Before humans can go to Mars, NASA needs to know how to prepare for the challenges. So, they're looking for a few brave men and women to live in isolation for a year at the Johnson Space Center. Want to join them?
Today, Blue Origin flew its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos and three others into space, a week after Virgin Galactic flew its billionaire founder Richard Branson on the same mission. Will space tourism be more than a millionaire's hobby?
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his brother plan to blast into space next month. But even if you're not related to a billionaire, you can still experience the fun of space at a 'down-to-Earth' price.
In recent years, Saturn has overtaken Jupiter as the planet with the most moons in our solar system. How many does it have and could it have even more?
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You know Saturn and Venus and Mars and ... some others. Can you put the eight planets of the solar system in the correct order? There are several ways to do this.
Missions to Mars are increasing and the dream of landing a human on the red planet is no longer far-fetched — it might even happen in the next decade. So, how long does it take to get there?
In 2014, scientists observed a space hurricane for the first time; they reported their findings this year. But what's a space hurricane — and do we on Earth have to worry about with them?
Humans have made it to the moon a number of times so we know how long the journey should take. But sometimes it may be much faster than that.
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O Canada ... the country where you can order a cocktail with a human toe in it (and other quirky things about those Canucks up North).
Is the same substance that makes your shampoo so pleasantly sudsy really going to give you cancer? Here's the real dirt on whether sodium lauryl sulfate is bad for you.
