Chances for stargazers to witness a blazing fireball streak across the night sky improve as the Taurid meteor shower peaks over the next few weeks. The meteors' slow velocity and brightness make them of particular interest to astro-photographers.

On Saturday night the full moon will slip into Earth's shadow and darken to an orange-reddish glow, giving sky-watchers their second chance this year to catch an astronomer's delight: a total lunar eclipse. The celestial show will be visible throughout most of the Americas, Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia.

Dudley Foster holds the record for the most time spent on the deep-ocean floor. A pilot of the Woods Hole submersible Alvin, he has completed 552 dives from the Galápagos' hydrothermal vents to the Titanic. A related story airs tonight on our U.S. cable television program National Geographic On Assignment.

When it comes to the primal urge to pass genes on to the next generation, cockerels are a sophisticated lot. Scientists have learned that the wild male chickens dole out more or less sperm while mating depending on how much competition they face. Female promiscuity and ornamentation also play a role.

It's been a record-shattering ride for the Voyager 1 spacecraft since it was launched in 1977. Five years ago, it became the most distant human-made object in space. Now, after traveling 13.5 billion kilometers (8.4 billion miles), the probe may have exited the solar system.

A new study shows that political corruption and bad governance, rather than human population pressures and poverty, may present the greatest threat to wildlife in developing countries. Researchers found elephants and black rhinos declined most rapidly in African countries laden with graft.

Still in her 30s, Louise Leakey has already hammered out her space in the field of paleoanthropology. Following her co-discovery of a 3.5-million-year-old hominid skull, Leakey has ambitious plans for a five-year study of Kenya's Lake Turkana region that may yield yet more clues about human origins.

Biologists studying the cassowary in the rain forests of Papua New Guinea say the world's largest forest bird may also produce the world's deepest birdcall. The finding could provide important clues to the way dinosaurs communicated, experts say.

Armed with little more than spoons, flashlights, and cornstarch, spider specialists are scouring the world's urban basements and pristine rain forests to collect 500 species of spider. Researchers will analyze the spiders' genetic makeup with an aim to understanding evolutionary connections on the spider family tree.

DNA blood samples gathered from clothing and weapons of the 5,200-year-old "Iceman" discovered 12 years ago in the Italian Alps suggest the Copper Age male may have been killed in battle, according to a team of scientists.

The world's oldest mummy—a 46-year-old man entombed by a glacier about 5,200 years ago high in the mountains that border Austria and Italy—probably spent his entire life within a 37-mile (60-kilometer) range south of where he came to his final rest, according to a new study.

One of the largest solar eruptions in history is sending a giant electromagnetic pulse our way at speeds of millions of miles per hour. Due to hit Earth any time from now, scientists say it could trigger worldwide outages in power grids and communication networks—and spectacular auroras in the night skies.

Chances were good that prey snared in the sight of a soaring pterodactyl was as good as dead as soon as it was spotted, according to scientists who used sophisticated scanners and computer graphics to digitally reconstruct the brains of the extinct flying reptiles.

Scientists studying a color-blind bat native to Central and South America have found that the animal uses ultraviolet light reflected from native flowers to locate the nectar-rich blooms. The trait lends credence to the idea of co-evolution between the bat and rain forest plants, experts say.

Scientists plan to dive in the world's highest lake, on top of Chile's Licancabur Volcano, testing new space equipment and studying organisms that live in extreme conditions similar to those that might have existed in the ancient water courses of Mars. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society.