Australian Sky & Telescope

THE DEATH THROES of stars can quite literally be the end of the world for their planets, as they are vaporised or flung onto infalling orbits. Now, scientists report in the December Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society an analysis of one

At visible wavelengths, the Taurus Molecular Cloud appears as a dark nebula of dust and gas. But longer wavelengths have pierced the veil to reveal a bustling stellar nursery. At some 450 light-years away, it's one of the nearest such regions, home t

THE TELESCOPE USED MOST across professional astronomy isn't the biggest or the newest, and it isn't in space. It's a modest telescope on a mountain in New Mexico. The images and spectra from this facility, the Sloan Foundation 2.5-metre Telescope at

Of all the observable celestial events, the one that most terrified the ancients was a total eclipse of the Sun. Suddenly, and seemingly without warning, the light of the Sun would be extinguished, and the world would go dark. It was judged an ill om

ASTRONOMERS HAVE CONFIRMED the existence of more than 5,000 exoplanets to date. The vast majority of these — approximately 95% — orbit stars in an evolutionary stage akin to that of our Sun, a stage known as the main sequence. Main-sequence stars act

IN COMPARATIVE PLANETOLOGY we can't run controlled experiments, altering factors such as initial makeup or distance from a star and then seeing what happens over billions of years. We can only study the random experiments nature has chosen to run and

ASK SOMEONE TO NAME a revolutionary space telescope right now, and they will probably answer ‘James Webb’. Ever since its launch in December 2021, this versatile successor to the Hubble Space Telescope has been stealing the astronomical limelight. Bu

SINCE 1930, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has officially recognised 88 constellations. The saga of how we got there is an interesting one that involves a colourful cast of characters — some familiar, some not. Many cultures have their ow

I grew up in a wide-open, flat rural area, and on clear nights the bright stars and clusters of late summer and early autumn remind me of moonlight on the fields and the lights of distant towns. Many parts of the the Milky Way at this time of year ar

Early autumn should see three comets within visual reach of backyard telescopes for southern observers. Two of them will probably be accessible to moderate-sized binoculars, given favourable sky conditions. The third will be somewhat fainter, though

A quick look at the full Moon reveals two main types of lunar terrain: expansive, light-hued regions and large patches of dark material. Closer study shows the bright material to be ancient highlands dominated by impact craters, while the dark region

Behold Orion, arguably the night sky's finest constellation. Gaze northward on any clear late summer night, and you can't miss the mighty celestial Hunter standing tall, near the meridian. Ruddy Betelgeuse brilliantly marks one shoulder, blue-white R

Following 1 Ceres is going to be a lot of fun this month. It reaches opposition on March 21 in Coma Berenices at magnitude 6.9 — its brightest apparition in five years. From the very darkest skies, experienced observers might be able to glimpse the t

Photographer Edward Weston famously once said that “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.” As astrophotographers, it's easy for us to become obsessed with the technical aspects of the pursuit. But too much pixel peeping leads to the

THE PLANETS ARE THE AMONG the most rewarding targets for backyard telescopes, but they can also be the most challenging. Although planetary observing is all but immune to the effects of light pollution, it is particularly sensitive to atmospheric tur

Over five days in October 2022, enthusiastic citizen scientists converged on Tamworth in NSW with a common aim - to immerse themselves in five days of intensive astronomical activities. Travelling from as far away as Cairns, Brisbane, Sydney and Melb

IT SEEMS LIKE HARDLY a month goes by when there isn't a new telescope mount debuting on the market. One of the newest to appear is the Colour Carbon Mark III German equatorial from the Chinese manufacturer Sharpstar. From the outside, the Mark III lo

The Astronomical Society of NSW's (ASNSW) South Pacific Star Party (SPSP) will be held from May 18 to 21, at the Society's rural site, ‘Wiruna’. This long-running (30 years!) astrocamp is a highlight of the calendar, giving amateurs the chance to obs

Everybody enjoys a good meteor shower. But did you know that something as tiny as a meteoroid can cause fatal damage if it slams into a spacecraft? That might be what happened to the satellite Olympus-1 in 1993 during the Perseid meteor shower, when

For well over 40 years I have been visually timing the occultation of stars by the Moon, and to-date have bagged more than 10,000 of them. In the late 1970s I also began observing the occultation of stars by asteroids. But asteroids are small and the