“Mayan calendar specialists anticipated solar eclipses by correlating their occurrences with dates in their 260-day ...

We live in a light-polluted world, where streetlamps, electronic ads, and even backyard lighting block out all but the brightest celestial objects in the night sky. But travel to an officially ...

More than a thousand years ago, astronomers from the Maya civilization developed one of the most sophisticated time-keeping systems in the ancient world—a system that could predict solar eclipses for ...

Detail of eye on page 6 of the Grolier Codex (photo by Michael Coe, all courtesy Brown University) In the 1960s, looters searching a cave in Chiapas, Mexico, came across a rare, ancient codex rich ...

This article is part of a special report on the total solar eclipse that will be visible from parts of the U.S., Mexico and Canada on April 8, 2024. The following essay is reprinted with permission ...