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Messier 95 & 96

8 March 2022 Mark Armstrong

Early spring heralds the rise of the galaxies, when over the next three months or so the prime-time night sky is overflowing with a veritable treasure trove of bright and beautiful targets.

NGC 4565, a showpiece galaxy

7 March 2022 Mark Armstrong

NGC 4565 also has the advantage of being easy to find and it sits high in the sky from UK shores, tracing a wide arc that enables it to be observed right through the night during March.

Unistellar’s eQuinox delivers five times the internal data storage and longer battery life than its predecessor, but ditches the eVscope’s electronic eyepiece. Ade Ashford checks out the new features.

NGC 2841 a perfectly-put-together spiral galaxy

21 February 2022 Mark Armstrong

NGC 2841 in Ursa Major (UMa), the Great Bear, is one of the best galaxies without a coveted Messier designation (or an entry in the Caldwell Catalogue for that matter) in the entire sky.

Catch up with comet 19P/Borrelly

31 January 2022 Mark Armstrong

Comet 19P/Borrelly is presently the brightest and best looking comet on show at mid-northern latitudes. It passes through perihelion passage on Tuesday, 1 February, when it lies around 195.4 million kilometres (1.306 AU) from the Sun.

Rippling sand dunes across the floor of a crater at zero longitude on Mars

24 January 2022 Astronomy Now

Rippling sand dunes across the floor of a martian crater provide an intriguing backdrop for map makers using the depression to identify zero longitude on the red planet.

A 150-million-year-old look at a spectacular spiral

17 January 2022 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope is adept at spotting supernova blasts in remote galaxies, helping astronomers pin down the cosmic distance scale. Galaxy NGC 976 it a typically spectacular example of a Hubble target.

The Flame Nebula shines in mesmerising SuperCam image of Orion

5 January 2022 Astronomy Now

The Flame Nebula in Orion, photobombed by the Horsehead Nebula, blazes in a newly processed image captured by the SuperCam instrument at the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment.

Star birth and death in the Large Magellanic Cloud

28 September 2021 Astronomy Now

ESO’s Very Large Telescope captures NGC 2035 in the Large Magellanic Cloud where hot young stars are forming in a stellar nursery shaped like a dragon’s head. At the other extreme: the remnants of a supernova blast.

The mesmerizing outskirts of NGC 4603 – a key galaxy in Hubble’s ‘key project’

30 August 2021 Astronomy Now

The spiral arms of galaxy NGC 4603 are home to multiple Cepheid variable stars, “standard candles” that helped astronomers pin down the age of the universe in one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s first major projects.