Visit moments in time when looking up made history. Pick one and stand where it happened, under the sky as astronomy reconstructs it.
1054July 4, 1054 · 4:00 AM (a representative viewing time)
A guest star in the daytime
Kaifeng, China
Court astronomers of the Song dynasty logged a "guest star" near the horns of the Bull, bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days. It was a star blowing itself apart. What's left of it is the Crab Nebula, still expanding 6,500 light years away.
In the sky Before dawn in the east, near the tip of Taurus's southern horn.
Halley's Comet blazed over England in the spring of 1066, and everyone took it as an omen. By October, England had a new king. The Bayeux Tapestry stitched the comet in, with a crowd pointing up: "These men marvel at the star."
In the sky In the evening sky for about a week, its tail sweeping away from the Sun.
Stranded on Jamaica and running out of goodwill, Columbus checked his almanac and warned the Taíno that God would take away the Moon. That evening it rose already dimmed and turning red. The food came back, and so did the Moon.
In the sky The Moon rising in the east at dusk, already inside Earth's shadow.
1572November 11, 1572 · 6:00 PM (a representative viewing time)
The star that changed Tycho's universe
Herrevad Abbey, Skåne (then Denmark, now Sweden)
Walking back to supper one November evening (by the Julian calendar he used; 21 November by ours), Tycho Brahe looked up and saw a brilliant new star in Cassiopeia, brighter than Venus. Everyone then believed the heavens beyond the Moon never changed. His careful measurements showed it was far beyond the Moon, and that belief began to crack.
In the sky High in the northeast in Cassiopeia, the W of stars, outshining everything around it.
1604October 17, 1604 · 6:14 PM (a representative viewing time)
Kepler watches a star explode
Prague, Bohemia
Others had spotted it a week earlier, but Prague's clouds kept Johannes Kepler waiting until 17 October. Then he saw it: a new star in Ophiuchus, near Jupiter and Saturn, and followed it for a year as it faded. It is the most recent supernova in our own galaxy known to have been seen with the naked eye.
In the sky Low in the southwest after dusk, close to Jupiter and Saturn.
1610January 7, 1610 · 6:47 PM (a representative viewing time)
Galileo finds Jupiter's moons
Padua, Italy
Pointing his homemade telescope at Jupiter, Galileo saw three little "stars" in a line beside it. Night after night they moved, and one more turned up. They were moons going round another world, and the idea that everything circles the Earth never recovered.
In the sky Jupiter, the brightest point high in the evening sky.
1639December 4, 1639 · 3:04 PM (about 3:15 PM by the Sun, as Horrocks timed it; sunset came at about 3:50 PM)
The first recorded transit of Venus
Much Hoole, Lancashire, England
Jeremiah Horrocks, about 20 years old, worked out that Venus would cross the Sun on what England's calendar called 24 November 1639 (4 December by ours). He projected the Sun through a small telescope onto paper and, late in the afternoon, saw Venus appear as a black dot. His friend William Crabtree watched it from Salford: the only two people known to have seen it.
In the sky The low winter Sun in the southwest, and on its face a small black disc.
1758December 25, 1758 · 6:55 PM (a representative viewing time)
Halley was right
Prohlis, near Dresden
Edmond Halley predicted his comet would come back in 1758. He died 16 years too early to see it. On Christmas night, a German farmer and amateur astronomer, Johann Georg Palitzsch, spotted it right on schedule. Its return confirmed Halley's prediction, and the first comet recognized as periodic was later named in his honor.
In the sky A faint fuzzy patch, found with a small telescope after dark.
1769June 3, 1769 · 12:00 PM (a representative viewing time)
Cook watches Venus from Tahiti
Point Venus, Tahiti
James Cook sailed halfway around the world so the astronomer Charles Green could time Venus crossing the Sun from Tahiti, one of many observers worldwide trying to measure the size of the solar system. The headland they watched from is still called Point Venus.
In the sky Venus as a small black dot crossing the Sun, about six hours from start to finish. Never look at the Sun without a proper filter.
1781March 13, 1781 · 10:20 PM (a representative viewing time)
A new planet from a back garden
Bath, England
William Herschel, a musician with a homemade telescope, noticed a "star" that looked like a little disc and wandered. He thought it was a comet. It was the first planet found since ancient times. He proposed Georgium Sidus, George's Star, after the king; Uranus took decades to win out.
In the sky Between Taurus and Gemini in the late evening, just at the edge of naked-eye visibility.
1786August 1, 1786 · 10:00 PM (a representative viewing time)
Caroline Herschel finds her first comet
Slough, England
While her brother William was away, Caroline Herschel swept the sky with her own small telescope and found a faint fuzzy object that moved: a comet. It was the first of eight she discovered, and she became the first woman paid as a scientist in Britain.
In the sky A faint smudge, found with a small telescope on a summer night.
1801January 1, 1801 · 8:45 PM (a representative viewing time)
A new world on New Year's Day
Palermo Observatory, Sicily
On the first night of the 19th century, Giuseppe Piazzi was checking star positions when one faint 'star' in Taurus turned out to have moved the next night. It was Ceres, the first asteroid ever found, and today a dwarf planet.
In the sky In Taurus, high in the evening sky: far too faint for the eye, a point of light in a telescope.
1833November 13, 1833 · 3:13 AM (a representative viewing time)
The night the stars fell
Huntsville, Alabama
Before dawn, the sky over North America filled with tens of thousands of meteors an hour. People woke their neighbors, sure the world was ending. It gave the song "Stars Fell on Alabama" its name, and it was the night astronomers worked out that meteor showers come from one point in the sky.
In the sky Meteors pouring out of Leo, high in the east before dawn.
1846September 23, 1846 · 11:30 PM (a representative viewing time)
The planet found with mathematics
Berlin Observatory (the historical site)
Urbain Le Verrier worked out, from the way Uranus wandered, where an unseen planet had to be, and wrote to Berlin. The night his letter arrived, Johann Galle and Heinrich d'Arrest pointed their telescope there and found Neptune within a degree of the prediction.
In the sky Neptune in Aquarius, a faint point that needs a telescope.
During the total eclipse of 1851, a daguerreotypist named Berkowski exposed a silvered plate for 84 seconds through the observatory's telescope and caught the black Moon with the Sun's glowing corona around it: the first successful photograph of a total solar eclipse.
In the sky The Sun blacked out in the southwest in the afternoon, the corona around it.
1859September 2, 1859 · 1:00 AM (a representative viewing time)
Aurora so bright the miners made breakfast
Rocky Mountains, Colorado
The biggest solar storm on record. Auroras reached Cuba and Hawaii. Gold miners in the Rockies woke around 1 AM and started cooking breakfast, thinking it was dawn. Telegraph lines sparked, and some kept working with the batteries unplugged.
In the sky Red and green curtains over the whole sky, even overhead.
Pierre Janssen pointed a spectroscope at the Sun's glowing prominences during totality and saw a bright yellow line no known element made. With Norman Lockyer's work it led to helium, named after the Greek for the Sun: found on the Sun decades before anyone found it on Earth.
In the sky The Sun totally eclipsed high in the morning sky, pink prominences at its edge.
A space rock exploded a few miles above the Siberian forest and flattened 80 million trees. The sparsely populated region limited casualties, but the blast injured eyewitnesses and knocked some unconscious. For nights afterward the sky glowed so brightly that people in London could read a newspaper at midnight.
In the sky A fireball crossing the morning sky, then a flash brighter than the Sun.
1910May 19, 1910 · 3:00 AM (a representative viewing time)
Through a comet's tail
New York City
Earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet, and a rumor spread that its gas would poison everyone. Salesmen sold "comet pills" and gas masks. Rooftop parties went on all night. The air was fine.
In the sky Not much, that night: the comet was passing between Earth and the Sun. A week later it was back in the evening sky with a long tail.
Arthur Eddington sailed to a tiny island off West Africa to photograph stars beside the eclipsed Sun. Clouds broke just in time. The stars had shifted, bent by the Sun's gravity by an amount consistent with Einstein's prediction. When the results were announced that November, Einstein became world famous.
In the sky The Sun blacked out for five minutes, with the Hyades star cluster around it.
1930February 18, 1930 · 7:00 PM (a viewing time that evening; the discovery on the photographs was at about 4 PM)
Pluto turns up
Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff
Clyde Tombaugh, 24 and fresh off a Kansas farm, flipped back and forth between two photographs of the same patch of sky and saw one dot jump, at about 4 PM. It was Pluto. An 11-year-old girl in England, Venetia Burney, suggested the name, and her grandfather gave her five pounds as a reward.
In the sky Gemini in the evening sky, where Pluto was far too faint to see without a big telescope.
1944June 6, 1944 · 1:30 AM (a representative viewing time)
D-Day, planned by the Moon
Sainte-Mère-Église, Normandy
The invasion of Normandy needed moonlight for the paratroopers' drops and a low but rising tide at dawn, which bared the beach obstacles while letting landing craft float off again. Only a few days a month would do. The weather nearly ruled out June 6, but a gap in the storm let it go ahead.
In the sky A nearly full Moon, up since before sunset, near its highest in the southern sky as the paratroopers dropped.
The first artificial satellite was a polished ball the size of a beach ball that beeped on the radio. Ham operators everywhere tuned in. The rocket's big core stage, tumbling in orbit beside it, was what people actually saw crossing the sky at dusk.
In the sky The R-7 rocket climbing away into the night, northeast.
Yuri Gagarin shouted "Poyekhali!" ("Let's go!") and became the first person in space. He went once around the world in 108 minutes and parachuted into a field, where a farmer and her granddaughter were the first to meet him.
In the sky Vostok 1 on its R-7, climbing into the morning sky toward the northeast.
1962February 20, 1962 · 11:45 PM (a representative viewing time)
Perth turns its lights on for John Glenn
Perth, Australia
As John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, the people of Perth switched on every light they had, porch lights and car headlights included. Glenn saw them from orbit and radioed a thank-you. Perth has been "the City of Light" ever since.
In the sky Friendship 7 passing over late at night, a moving point of light.
Valentina Tereshkova, a textile worker and amateur skydiver, launched on Vostok 6 and became the first woman in space. Her call sign was Chaika, "seagull". She circled the Earth 48 times in almost three days, more than all the American astronauts before her put together.
In the sky Vostok 6 on its rocket, climbing away from the cosmodrome.
1966November 17, 1966 · 3:55 AM (around the peak of the storm)
The fifteen-minute meteor blizzard
Table Mountain Observatory, California
Before dawn over the American West, the Leonids turned from a shower into a storm: for a short while, observers counted meteors by the thousands per minute, as if the Earth were driving through a snowfall. Astronomers photographed it from Table Mountain.
In the sky Meteors streaming from Leo, high in the east before dawn.
1968December 24, 1968 · 8:30 PM (a representative viewing time)
Christmas Eve from the Moon
Houston, Texas
Apollo 8 was the first crew to fly around the Moon. That day they took the Earthrise photo, and that night they read from Genesis to the biggest TV audience ever. Look at the young crescent Moon setting in the west: three people were circling it.
In the sky A thin crescent Moon low in the southwest after sunset.
About a million people lined the roads and beaches around Cape Canaveral to watch the Saturn V go. The ground shook miles away. Four days later, two of the three men aboard would be walking on the Moon.
In the sky The Saturn V climbing from Pad 39A, east across the water, mid-morning.
At 9:56 PM in Houston, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon while 600 million people watched on TV. Plenty of them went outside afterward and just looked at it. It was up in the southwest, a little under half lit.
In the sky A waxing Moon, nearly half lit, in the southwest, with two people on it.
1972August 10, 1972 · 2:29 PM (the fireball crossed in under two minutes)
The fireball that skipped off Earth
Jackson Lake, Grand Teton National Park
In broad daylight, a house-sized rock skimmed through the top of the atmosphere over the Rockies, blazing across the sky from Utah into Canada, then flew back out into space. A tourist at Jackson Lake filmed and photographed it above the Tetons.
In the sky A brilliant fireball with a long trail crossing the afternoon sky.
On the ground, this was one of the longest eclipses of the century: seven minutes. Astronomers did better. They took a Concorde up and raced the Moon's shadow across Africa at twice the speed of sound, staying in totality for 74 minutes.
In the sky The Sun blacked out high in the sky over the Sahara.
1977August 15, 1977 · 11:16 PM (EDT; the telescope logged 10:16 PM, as it kept Eastern Standard Time all year)
The Wow! signal
Big Ear, Delaware, Ohio
A radio telescope in Ohio caught a strong, narrow signal, recorded for 72 seconds as the sky drifted through its beam, which says nothing about how long its source was sending. Astronomer Jerry Ehman circled it on the printout and wrote "Wow!" Nobody has heard it again, and its origin remains unknown.
In the sky Toward Sagittarius, low in the south in the late evening.
A total eclipse crossed the Pacific Northwest on a winter morning. The TV news signed off reminding everyone the next one in the contiguous United States would be in 2017. (Hawaii had one in 1991.) A lot of kids who watched in 1979 waited 38 years and finally saw the next one as grown-ups.
In the sky The Sun eclipsed low in the southeast, early in the morning.
Twenty years to the day after Gagarin, Columbia lifted off with John Young and Bob Crippen aboard. It was the first time a new spacecraft carried people on its very first flight. Two days later they landed it like a plane in the California desert.
In the sky Columbia climbing from Pad 39A, heading east-northeast over the ocean.
1987February 24, 1987 · 2:30 AM (a representative viewing time)
A supernova you could see
Las Campanas, Chile
Ian Shelton developed a photograph of a nearby galaxy and saw a new star that shouldn't be there. He walked outside, looked up, and there it was, with his own eyes. It was the first supernova visible without a telescope since 1604.
In the sky In the Large Magellanic Cloud, a hazy patch high in the southern sky.
1994July 16, 1994 · 8:30 PM (a representative viewing time)
A comet hits Jupiter
Palomar Observatory, California
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had been torn into a string of pieces, and over six days they slammed into Jupiter one by one. The dark scars, some bigger than Earth, showed up in backyard telescopes. It was found from right here.
In the sky Jupiter, bright in the southwest after sunset.
1997March 22, 1997 · 7:30 PM (a representative viewing time)
The great comet Hale-Bopp
Cloudcroft, New Mexico
Found by Alan Hale from his driveway here, Hale-Bopp stayed visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months. It showed up even from city streets, with two tails: a white one of dust and a blue one of gas. This was its closest night to Earth.
In the sky Low in the northwest after dark, with its tails pointing up and away.
2001November 18, 2001 · 2:00 AM (a representative viewing time)
The Leonids storm again
Joshua Tree, California
Astronomers predicted it this time, and they were right. Before dawn, thousands of meteors an hour streaked over North America. In the desert, people saw one every couple of seconds at the peak, with bright fireballs leaving glowing trails.
In the sky Meteors streaming from Leo, high in the east before dawn.
2004June 8, 2004 · 9:20 AM (a representative viewing time)
Venus crosses the Sun
London, England
For six hours, Venus slid across the face of the Sun as a small black dot. Nobody alive had seen it before: the last one was in 1882. Explorers in the 1700s sailed around the world to time these to work out the size of the solar system.
In the sky The Sun, through a proper solar filter, with a black dot moving across it.
2007January 18, 2007 · 9:30 PM (a representative viewing time)
McNaught spreads its tail over the Pacific
Paranal Observatory, Chile
The Great Comet of 2007 was the brightest in decades. From the southern hemisphere its curved, striped dust tail fanned up over the Pacific after sunset, and astronomers at ESO's Paranal Observatory photographed it above the ocean.
In the sky Low in the west-southwest after sunset, a bright head and a huge curved tail.
2011December 22, 2011 · 5:00 AM (the 5 AM of ESO’s photograph from Santiago)
The Christmas comet over Santiago
Santiago, Chile
Comet Lovejoy skimmed through the Sun's outer atmosphere, a dive nobody expected it to survive, and came out the other side with a long, thin tail. Days before Christmas it stood up from the dawn horizon over Santiago.
In the sky A long, faint tail rising from the east-southeast before dawn.
2012August 5, 2012 · 10:17 PM (touchdown on Mars; the confirmation reached JPL at about 10:32 PM)
Seven minutes of terror
Pasadena, California
Curiosity was lowered onto Mars by a rocket-powered sky crane, touching down at 10:17 PM Pasadena time. Mission control at JPL could only wait while word crossed the 14 light-minutes to Earth. Confirmation arrived at about 10:32 PM, and the room erupted. Mars itself was right there, low in the west-southwest after sunset.
In the sky Mars, a reddish point low in the west-southwest at dusk.
Just after sunrise, a rock about 20 meters across blazed across the sky, brighter than the Sun, and burst about 30 km up. Dashboard cameras caught it from everywhere. The shock wave arrived over a minute later, blowing out windows across the city and injuring more than a thousand people, mostly from flying glass.
In the sky A fireball brighter than the Sun crossing the low morning sky to the south.
The first total eclipse to cross the whole country in 99 years. Highways jammed and eclipse glasses sold out. The longest totality on the path fell near Carbondale, which would get another eclipse just seven years later.
In the sky The Sun blacked out high in the south, with Venus and Jupiter popping out.
The most powerful rocket in years flew for the first time, carrying a red Tesla Roadster with a dummy called Starman at the wheel. Then the two side boosters came back and landed side by side, at the same moment, with a double sonic boom.
In the sky Falcon Heavy climbing from Pad 39A in the afternoon, east over the ocean.
2020July 18, 2020 · 10:00 PM (a representative viewing time)
A comet and a space station share the sky
Keys Gap, West Virginia
In the summer of 2020, Comet NEOWISE gave the Northern Hemisphere its best comet in years. NASA's photographer caught the International Space Station streaking past above it: a visitor from the edge of the solar system and a home 400 km up, in one frame.
In the sky Comet NEOWISE low in the northwest after dark, its tail pointing up.
2020December 21, 2020 · 5:30 PM (a representative viewing time)
Jupiter and Saturn touch
New York City
On the winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn came closer together in our sky than at any time since 1623. They looked almost like one double star. People called it the Christmas Star, and through a small telescope you could see both planets, and their moons, in one view.
In the sky Low in the southwest after sunset: two bright points almost touching.
NASA's giant SLS rocket launched in the middle of the night to send an uncrewed Orion around the Moon. It turned night into day across the Space Coast, and the roar reached people miles away a minute after the light did.
In the sky SLS climbing from Pad 39B before 2 AM, east over the water.
Mexico to Maine, tens of millions of people under the path. In Dallas, the clouds parted just in time and the crowds cheered as day went dark for nearly four minutes, with pink flames showing at the edge of the Sun.
In the sky The Sun blacked out high in the south, Venus and Jupiter shining beside it.
2024May 10, 2024 · 11:00 PM (a representative viewing time)
Florida Borealis
Orlando, Florida
The strongest solar storm in 20 years pushed the northern lights as far south as Florida. Phones on a long exposure caught pink and purple skies over Orlando, even where the naked eye saw only a glow. Floridians had a name for it: Florida Borealis.
In the sky A pink glow low in the north, brighter in the camera than to the eye.
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