BBC Sky at Night

Sky at Night magazine is your practical guide to astronomy. Each issue features the world’s biggest and best night sky guide complete with star charts, observing tutorials and in-depth equipment reviews to ensure that amateur astronomers never miss those must-see events.

Welcome • Life without gravity? It would have its ups and downs

Sky at Night – lots of ways to enjoy the night sky…

This month's contributors

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NO PLACE TO CALL HOME • It's a struggle to build planets when your neighbours are massive stars

Perseverance reaches crater's rim • NASA's intrepid Mars rover is now exploring the high plains around Jezero

Dark matter clue could go to waste • Astronomers may miss a huge hint in the hunt for dark matter

Venus has always been dry • Research into volcanic eruptions suggests Venus was never a water-rich world

Mystery over life's 'handedness' grows • No one knows why the building blocks of life all point the same way

Cosmic crashes create enormous ellipticals • Flows of cold gas from merging galaxies trigger a burst of star formation

Trump selects new NASA administrator • The appointment of a space entrepreneur awaits approval by the Senate

First close-up of a star outside our Galaxy • Zoomed-in shot shows dying red supergiant before it goes supernova

A young Milky Way sparkles • The far-distant galaxy reveals what our own might have looked like as it was forming

Putting cosmic rays to work • These penetrating interstellar particles have applications from astronomy to archaeology

The first 'zig-zag' gravitational lens • A distant quasar's light is spotted being bent by not one, but two lenses

INSIDE THE SKY AT NIGHT • Back in September 2021, The Sky at Night show spoke to Carly Howett about NASA's then upcoming Lucy mission. As the spacecraft now approaches its main targets – the Trojan asteroids – we check in with her to see how the mission is going

Looking back: The Sky at Night • 5 February 1979

Dive into the Universe with BBC Ideas

Solace of the starry skies

SOCIETY IN FOCUS • Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association

BBC Sky at Night

Seeing in a new light • It's National Astronomy Week this month, so take a tip from Mark Westmoquette and let mindful stargazing change your perspective on your life and problems

The science of SCI-FI • We love a good sci-fi film, but do they get the science right? Amy Arthur picks six of the big mistakes made in space films

Fire in microgravity • Flames in space shouldn't behave like they do at home

Zero-G fight club • How would a head-to-head scuffle really play out in a weightless environment?

Mono-biome planets • Snow planets and forest worlds abound in sci-fi, but could life really get a foothold?

Explosions in space • A classic, climactic sci-fi trope, these big blasts would look rather different in real life

Dangerously dense asteroid fields • Is the asteroid belt really dangerous? Just ask the NASA probes that have been there

Faster-than-light travel • Warp speed gives our sci-fi heroes free reign of the cosmos. This is what physics says

The Universe without gravity • Life with no gravity might sound a fun idea, but as Govert Schilling explains, shutting off this pivotal force would spell disaster for Earth and beyond

The gravity of time • Gravity is intrinsically connected with another fundamental aspect of our Universe

Lensed by gravity • Another upside of gravity is it bends light, giving us a new way to look at the Universe

Astronomy Photographer of the Year • The world-leading astrophotography...