Astronomy Now – Astronomy Now

Look to luminous Messier 77

14 November 2022 Mark Armstrong

Messier 77 (NGC 1068 and Arp 37) is an impressive spiral galaxy in Cetus that presents face-on to our Earthly perspective.

Messier 52 and NGC 7789: Observe a great pair of open cluster’s in Cassiopeia

24 October 2022 Mark Armstrong

Messier 52 (NGC 7654) and NGC 7789 are two of a trio of great open clusters found in Cassiopeia

Don’t miss Albireo: a glorious colour-contrast double star

2 August 2022 Mark Armstrong

Albireo (beta [β] Cygni) is unquestionably the finest colour-contrast double star in the entire heavens, providing an unmissable target on summer nights.

Don’t miss Rasalgethi, Hercules’ colourful secret

27 June 2022 Mark Armstrong

Look to southern Hercules and you’ll be thrilled to come across Rasalgethi (alpha [α] Herculis, the constellation’s lead star and a colour-contrast double star out of the top drawer.

A rung on the cosmic measuring ladder

25 May 2022 Keith Cooper

When measuring the Hubble constant by mapping the properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation to the standard model of cosmology, astronomers get a value of about 69 kilometres per second per megaparsec.

Messier 3: observe a great globular

23 May 2022 Mark Armstrong

There are very few deep-sky sights that can equal, let alone surpass, the magnificence of a great globular cluster filling the field of view of a high-power eyepiece, with myriad sparking suns crammed together and all vying for attention.

Milky Way’s supermassive black hole shines in stunning first portrait

12 May 2022 Keith Cooper

The black hole in the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy has been imaged for the first time, showing a ring of gas encircling the event horizon, beyond which no light can escape.

Link-up with the Lyrids

20 April 2022 Mark Armstrong

The return of the yearly April Lyrids meteor shower is very welcome for meteor observers, breaking the roughly 15-week hiatus since the maximum of the Quadrantids meteor shower on 3 January.

SharpStar D 150mm f/2.8 HNT: An imaging telescope with sharp vision

27 May 2020 Ade Ashford

Until comparatively recently, your best tool for capturing wide-angle vistas of extended deep-sky objects with a full-frame DSLR or CCD/CMOS camera was a fast prime lens from one of the big-name players in photography. Now you can attain these swift imaging speeds with hyperbolic Newtonians, such as the SharpStar 15028HNT.

Evidence of Uranus’ leaking atmosphere found hidden in Voyager 2 observations

27 March 2020 Keith Cooper

By going over old data collected by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986, two scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have made the startling discovery that Uranus’ atmosphere is gradually escaping into space.