A display of celestial fireworks is set to peak late tonight as the Earth flies through a cloud of cometary dust.

On Tuesday night almost two thirds of the Moon will be hidden in the Earth's shadow.

An island off Cork has launched a bid to become one of the world’s few officially-recognised dark sky sites - areas dedicated to stargazing.

Known as the aurora borealis, the phenomenon is usually best viewed in the north of Norway.

An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries, including researchers from University College Dublin (UCD), has published the first phase of a major new sky survey.

The founder of Astronomy Ireland has urged people to take "a day off work or school" to see the best lunar eclipse that will be seen from Ireland for the next 14 years.

This Thursday sees the biggest meteor shower of the year over Ireland, called "The Geminids" with up to 50 times more shooting stars than a normal night are expected.

Ireland is to become a member state of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Ireland will pay €14.6m over the next decade to allow members of the Irish science community access to the world’s best space observatory — and hopes to secure multiples of that amount in return through Irish firms tendering to work on the project.

Nasa's Tess spacecraft has embarked on a quest to find new worlds around neighbouring stars that could support life.

Skygazers in certain parts of the world can look forward to an "unusual" celestial event tomorrow night (Wednesday) when a Super Blue Blood Moon rises in the sky.

THERE was a lot of talk about “supermoons” in 2016, a phenomenon which happens when the full moon happens to coincide with the moon being closer to the earth in its non-circular orbit.

Stargazers are being asked to count shooting stars in the skies tonight.

Jupiter, the largest planet our the solar system, will look like an extremely bright star next to the Moon in the coming days, in what astronomers have described as “one of the most spectacular events visible” this year.

Five planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – will be visible together in the morning sky from today until around February 20, a phenomenon that has not happened since 2005.

The best shooting star show in years is set for Irish skies tonight, astronomers have said.

Are you an astronomy buff? If so, you should do well on this quick quiz.

The Philae spacecraft which landed on a comet last year may have shifted position, making it harder to communicate with the probe, scientists said.

A spectacular double act starring Jupiter and Venus will light up the sky tomorrow night.

Update 15/4: Astronomy Ireland now estimates the two bright 'stars' will be visible on both Wednesday and Thursday night, as the docking procedure is not due until Friday midday.

“Some people used to think that a dragon ate the sun but it actually wasn’t, it was actually a solar eclipse.”

The partial solar eclipse be visible in Ireland starting at around 8.20am and lasting for about two hours.

Events across the country have been planned for Friday to mark the first significant solar eclipse to be seen in this part of the world in more than 15 years.

Sky-watchers are in store for a once-in-a-lifetime meteor storm when the Earth passes through the tail of a comet.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, a giant star exploded in a flash of light so blinding the scene of destruction can still be seen here on Planet Earth.

Astronomers announced that they had discovered what many consider the holy grail of their field: ripples in the fabric of space-time that are echoes of the massive expansion of the universe that took place just after the Big Bang.