Known for his animated lectures and hosting the remake of Carl Sagan’s infamous “Cosmos” television series, anything Tyson produces guarantees an entertaining and enlightening learning opportunity. Below, you’ll find some of his best works.

He has done extensive research at the super cool Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. He has hosted the fascinating Wonders of… series for the BBC and has produced several accompanying books.

One’s perspective shifts when one lives for an entire year–as Commander Scott Kelly has–in the isolating, grueling, and utterly unforgiving vacuum of space. Kelly’s photos prove that this perspective–from 250 miles above earth–while hard-won, is also almost unspeakably beautiful.

It’s impossible to look up at the stars and NOT think about it: Are we alone in the universe? Space.com senior writer Dr. Michael Wall treats that question as merely the beginning, touching off a wild ride of exploration into the final frontier. He considers the myriad of questions that would arise once we do discover life beyond Earth. What would the first aliens we meet look like? Would they be little green men or mere microbes? Would they be found on a planet in our own solar system or orbiting a star far, far away? Would they intend to harm us, and if so, how might they do it? And might they already have visited?

Located near the geographic South Pole, IceCube is unlike most telescopes in that it is not designed to detect light. It employs a cubic kilometer of diamond-clear ice, more than a mile beneath the surface, to detect an elementary particle known as the neutrino. In 2010, it detected the first extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos from outer space and thus gave birth to a new field of astronomy. And since the neutrino is one of the strangest and least understood of the known elementary particles, this is fertile ground. Bowen delivers a tale that’s part educational, part inspirational, and all adventure.