The planet Mercury is about to make its best apparition of the year for backyard sky watchers. Look west at sunset for a piercing pink planet surrounded by twilight blue.

A comet falling in from the distant reaches of the solar system could become a naked-eye object in early March.

On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth closer than many man-made satellites. Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, astronomers have never seen an object so big come so close to our planet.

Astronomers are keeping a close eye on a newly-discovered Comet ISON, which could become visible in broad daylight later this year when it skims through the atmosphere of the sun.

Researchers studying thunderstorms have made a surprising discovery: The lightning we see with our eyes has a dark competitor that discharges storm clouds and flings antimatter into space. Scientists are scrambling to understand "dark lightning."

The Moon and Jupiter are converging for a heavenly sky show on Christmas 2012. Got a telescope? Something extra-special is happening on Jupiter that makes it an appealing target for backyard optics.

NASA is so sure the world won't come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, that they already released a video for the day after.

The Geminid meteor shower peaks on Dec. 13th and 14th when Earth runs through a stream of debris from a strange object that some astronomers are calling a "rock comet."

The Milky Way's supermassive black hole is generally a picky eater, but NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft recently caught it in the act of having a snack!

NASA has an unusual candidate for the astronaut corps--a rubber chicken. Seriously. Camilla the rubber chicken has been training in fighter jets, flying to the edge of space, and visiting classrooms around the country.