Meteor showers, Moon tricks, stars that pulse or nearly explode, and spacecraft on their way somewhere new. Reported from the dark skies of West Texas for readers in every country, with every date converted to your own clock.
Each date converts to your own time zone when the page loads. Meteor peaks are broad, so those show a day rather than a minute.
Moonless pre-dawn skies over Texas from about Nov 7 to Nov 21. Look east, 90 minutes before sunrise.
Northern Hemisphere morningsThe follow-up to NASA's 2022 DART impact is scheduled to arrive during November.
Date to be confirmed during November 2026From San Antonio it clears the horizon at 5:34 p.m., two minutes before sunset. Prime Moon-illusion night.
Time shown is for San Antonio, Texas · 23:34 UTC
Almost every meteor shower rewards people who wake up before dawn. The October Draconids do the opposite, and their history includes two of the most violent meteor storms ever recorded.
The start of Ramadan and the date of Eid can depend on spotting a sliver of Moon only a day old. We worked out how high and how thin it will be at sunset from Mecca to Jakarta to San Antonio.
In 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into a small asteroid moon and changed its orbit. This November, ESA's Hera is scheduled to arrive and measure exactly what that impact did. It's the second half of humanity's first planetary-defense test.
Found in 1819, lost for nearly two centuries, then recognized again as a faint "asteroid" in 2003. Its dust gave sailors near Antarctica a spectacle in 1956. On December 2, the evening sky is dark for it.
Next to the brightest star in the night sky sits a white dwarf the size of Earth with the mass of the Sun. It was predicted before it was seen, and for the next few winters it sits close to its widest from its dazzling companion.
Two years after leaving Florida, the largest planetary spacecraft NASA has built swings past Earth on December 3. The flyby steals a little of our planet's momentum and aims it at an icy moon that probably hides an ocean.
Supermoons get the headlines. Their opposite, the full Moon at its farthest, gets none. Here's a six-month photo project that shows the difference with your own camera.
Showers, fireballs, and rocks that make it to the ground.
4 reports →Crescents, occultations, and the Moon playing tricks on your eyes.
4 reports →Stars that pulse, stars that nearly exploded, light you can see before dawn.
4 reports →Spacecraft arriving, swinging past Earth, or heading somewhere new.
3 reports →
The Big Bend country has dark skies most of the world has lost. We use them to check what we write about, then we write it for someone in Lagos, Lima or Lahore as much as for someone in Lubbock. That's why every time on this site shows up in Universal Time and in your own.
Photo: the Magellanic Clouds from the International Space Station, Aug 6, 2024. NASA (public domain).
The Daytime Arietids rival the big night-time showers, but the Sun is in the way. Since 1947 people have detected them with radio instead. You can do it with a car radio, a quiet frequency and a little patience.
Every 27 days or so through 2027, the Moon passes over or right beside Antares, the red heart of Scorpius. We list the closest passes, and explain the trick that sometimes makes the star disappear twice.
In February 2023 a space rock about the size of a carry-on bag blew apart over the Rio Grande Valley. Weather radar helped hunters find pieces on a ranch within days. Here's how that worked, and how to tell a real meteorite from a parking-lot rock.
For a few years in the 1840s an obscure southern star became the second brightest in the night sky. It survived, wrapped itself in a glowing hourglass of gas, and is still one of the most extreme stars known. We worked out how high it gets across Texas.
People have argued about the Moon illusion for more than two thousand years. Here are the main explanations, three tests you can do at the curb, and the dates this winter when the full Moon comes up right at sunset.
A modest star near the north pole of the sky gave its name to a whole class of variables, and a Harvard astronomer named Henrietta Swan Leavitt turned their beat into a ruler for the cosmos. You can watch it pulse this autumn.