Sky at Night Magazine

Clues to life are surfacing surprisingly close to home

Missions venturing across the Solar System have uncovered tantalising hints that life has found a foothold, clue after clue that planet Earth may not be the only one where it has taken root. On worlds as diverse as Mars and Enceladus, and as extreme as...

After a stellar year for space science, bring on 2026!

As we wrapped up this issue at the year’s end, we looked back over the past 12 months and were stunned. What a year 2025 was for space science! It began with asteroid YR4, which briefly had an alarmingly high risk of striking Earth. That threat was...

LIFE FROM SPACE

The growing evidence that asteroids delivered life to planet Earth

The complete guide to astrophotography cameras

Many of us are inspired into astrophotography through admiring deepsky images. Thanks to advances in camera tech, amazing astrophotos are within reach of even relatively modest setups. Great images can be achieved even with a smartphone or with a DSLR...

Welcome

We’ve been spoiled for comets lately. Not only is interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS on its way through the Solar System from an entirely different part of the Galaxy, but comet A6/LEMMON also caused a stir after it showed signs of brightening through...

RIPPLING SPACETIME: 10 YEARS OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVES

THE STAR CATALOGUES EVERY ASTRONOMER SHOULD KNOW

Is there life on Mars? We’ve been asking for centuries

The prospect of life on our neighbouring planet, Mars, has long held us in its sway. Across the eras, the idea has gripped us in different ways: from the utopian visions of an enlightened Martian society in the 19th century, to the warmongering aliens...

PLUTO OUT OF THE DARK

The ancient astronomers of Stonehenge keep us guessing

If you’ve been keeping track of where the Moon rises and sets on the horizon this year, you may have noticed something strange: its northern- and southernmost positions are as far apart as they can get. That’s because we’re currently in a two-year...

Are we the only example of life among all those suns?

Looking up at the stars on a clear night, there’s one question that often springs to mind: are we alone? So we asked four expert astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial life what they thought. Each approaches the question from a...

To the telescopes! Get ready for springtime galaxies galore

We love galaxy season here at Sky at Night Magazine, that time of year when the tilt of Earth’s axis on its orbit around the Sun places a particularly galaxy-rich region of space in a prime viewing location. Messier 99, ‘St Catherine’s Wheel’, the...

Perseverance is ready for its next big adventure

Far from Earth, 140 million miles away in deep space, NASA’s Perseverance rover recently reached a milestone. It completed a steep 500-metre climb to reach the rim of the Mars crater that it’s spent the past five years investigating. Now, as new...

WHAT TO DO IF YOU’VE FOUND A METEORITE

THE SPACECRAFT DESIGNED TO FIND ALIEN LIFE

Have you ever contemplated Earth’s cosmic connections?

As I look up at the stars, I often think about our connection to those distant points of light. Aside from the photons that have reached my eyes across lightyears of space, it turns out our planet is interacting with the cosmos on many other levels. In...

THE CATACLYSMIC UNIVERSE

Why astronomers are so fascinated by things that explode in space

Welcome

The winners of 2024’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, the 16th edition of the internationally acclaimed quest for the world’s best astro images, are something to behold. They capture our cosmos with a clarity, innovation and knowledge...

Why we’ll see a blue Moon this month

Dragonfly gears up to earn its place in spaceflight history

There’s something very exciting about Dragonfly, the next mission to Titan. Perhaps it’s the destination: Saturn’s largest moon is the only Solar System body apart from Earth known to have liquid on its surface, only it’s not water but methane. Or...