Astronomy Now

  The Red Planet in enhanced colour, pictured using data from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/G. Michael. Mars is celebrating New Year on 30 September. There are no fireworks, no champagne and (as far as we know) no Martians singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. But there is a surprisingly good story behind why the Red Planet is only turning 39. Just like Earth, Mars has days, seasons and years. The trouble is that none of them quite matches ours. A Martian year lasts 687

This figure illustrates the different distributions of dust (blue), gas (green) and ions (red) in 3I/Atlas.Credit: Lea Ferellec (CC BY 4.0) The more astronomers learn about interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, the colder its birthplace appears to have been. New observations made with the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma in the Canary Islands have revealed unusually large quantities of nitrogen in the comet’s gasseous plasma tail. The result suggests that 3I/ATLAS formed at temperatures below

The Roman Space Telescope launches. Credit: NASA/SpaceX. Roman lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 07:26 local time (12:26 BST) on 30 August. Roman separated from the rocket’s upper stage at 12:58 BST, successfully completing the launch and beginning its journey into deep space. The launch came around nine months ahead of NASA’s original schedule, an unusual achievement for a major space observatory. Roman is now beg

These nine massive, mature galaxies contain many more relatively small stars than previously thought. Credit: Chloe Cheng. The James Webb Space Telescope has already found distant galaxies that seem uncomfortably large for the young Universe they are seen in. Now astronomers have discovered evidence that such galaxies may contain even more mass in stars than previously estimated, deepening the mystery. The problem comes from estimating a galaxy’s population of small, faint stars such as red dwar

Total eclipse sequence over the waters of Lac Brome, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, on April 8, 2024. Credit: Alan Dyer On the evening of 12 August 2026, the Moon will pass between Earth and the Sun, producing a striking solar eclipse. The Moon’s dark umbral shadow will cross eastern Greenland and the western tip of Iceland before travelling over Spain and ending at sunset near the Balearic Islands. Across the UK, the event will be visible as a deep partial eclipse. The Moon will co

The Artemis II astronauts captured this image of the Moon during their lunar flyby in April 2026. Credit: NASA. Humans have been deliberately crashing spacecraft into the Moon for more than 65 years, while nature has been targeting our natural satellite for billions. What makes today’s collision significant is the changing role of the Moon itself. In the near future, astronauts and landers, bases and even observatories will begin to occupy the lunar surface. That means uncontrolled lunar impacts

This artist’s impression shows a quasar: a brief period of life for a big, bright galaxy during which large quantities of material spiral into its central supermassive black hole, releasing energetic light as it does so. Credit: ESA. One of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy is how the Universe managed to grow enormous black holes so quickly. Less than a billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe already contained quasars powered by supermassive black holes consuming vast amounts of g

An artist’s impression of the galaxy CRISTAL-02, with a huge plume of cold gas extending away from it. This plume is almost as long as the galaxy itself, which is a telltale sign that gas is being driven out of the galaxy. Credit: Joshua Worth via Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) Astronomers have caught a young galaxy system apparently blowing away the gas it needs to keep making stars, offering a natural explanation for one of the surprises thrown up by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope:

https://astronomynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/2403_029_AR_EN.mp4 ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover could touch down in the remains of a vast ancient water system on Mars, after new orbital mapping showed that clay-rich deposits at its landing site extend far beyond previous estimates. The rover is due to land at Oxia Planum, a low-lying region near the boundary between Mars’s southern highlands and northern lowlands, where clay minerals preserve evidence of a time when liquid water was active

  Schematic illustration of the formation and evolution of organic matter in lunar soil. Credit: HAO Jialong’s Group. The Moon may preserve a record of the raw ingredients that helped life begin on Earth. New analysis of lunar samples returned by China’s Chang’e missions has revealed a diverse suite of organic compounds embedded within the soil. They offer a rare glimpse of the early Solar System’s chemistry that has long since been erased from our planet. The findings come from mater

NASA’s Fermi five-year view of the gamma-ray sky shows an excess of radiation coming from the centre of out Galaxy (centre of the image). Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration Astronomers may not need to see the same dark matter signal everywhere in the Universe to confirm its existence. A new theoretical study suggests that dark matter could consist of more than one type of particle, potentially resolving a long-standing observational puzzle. Dark matter itself is inferred because the

NASA’s Space Launch System lifts off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 1 April 2026, carrying the Artemis II crew (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen) aboard the Orion spacecraft. The mission will take the four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back. Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) ORLANDO, FLORIDA. I’m a space-crazed Canadian who has somehow seen 11 launches across four different rockets since 2009. I’ve witnes

An artist’s impression of a planet so close it to its star that it completes an orbit in 10.5 hours. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Schaller (for STScI). An artificial intelligence tool developed at the University of Warwick has uncovered a rich haul of previously hidden exoplanets in data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), validating more than 100 worlds and identifying thousands more candidates. The new system, called RAVEN (RAnking and Validation of ExoplaNets), was ap

Strange X-rays from the naked eye star gamma-Cas have been confirmed to come from matter falling onto a hidden white dwarf companion, resolving a fifty-year astronomical mystery. Gamma-Cas, the central star in the familiar W-shape of Cassiopeia, has puzzled astronomers since the 1970s, when it was found to emit unusually strong high-energy X-rays. For decades two competing explanations have been considered. Either the X-rays arose from magnetic interaction between the star and its surrounding di

An artist’s impression of lava world L 98-59 d in orbit around its parent star. The interior of the planet could possess a vast magma ocean. Credit: Mark A. Garlick. Astronomers may have discovered a completely new kind of planet, one where a vast ocean of molten rock lies beneath a sulphur-rich atmosphere. The object, known as L 98-59 d, does not fit into any of the categories astronomers normally use to classify small exoplanets. Located about 35 light-years from Earth and roughly 1.6 times th

By Mark Armstrong A total lunar eclipse is centred on the mid-Pacific 3 March, visible to observers in New Zealand and sweeping eastern Australia and western USA, with a large partial eclipse extending further east and west. Phases of the 21 January 2019 eclipse captured by David Blanchflower. What is a lunar eclipse? An eclipse of the Moon occurs when our satellite moves into Earth’s shadow, when Earth lies between the Sun and the Moon. Normally, this alignment causes a full Moon to be seen in

…And now the weather… “And now the weather” appears every month in Astronomy Now magazine. Enjoy this free sampler from the February issue ahead of Valentine’s Day. The outer Solar System planets. Not to scale. Compilation by Astronomy Now/Greg Smye-Rumsby; original images NASA/JPL Diamond downpours in the outer Solar System Here’s some crystal-clear advice for you Valentine’s Day travellers this February. Head for the outer Solar System, where it is a jewellery-lov

Get ready for a month packed full of thrilling Moon-related events! From occultations of stars and planets, and even an eclipse, the Moon has some treats in store for astronomers around the world. List organised by date: In New York, Regulus is swallowed up on 2 February at 20:53 EST, reappearing at 21:49. Credit: Astronomy Now/Greg Smye-Rumsby 2 February, North America: Regulus engulfed The early evening of 2 February sees magnitude +1.36 Regulus, Leo’s alpha star, move behind the bright limb o

We were profoundly saddened to be informed of Dr Allan Chapman’s passing last week. A few months shy of his 80th birthday, Allan was a towering intellect in the field of the history of astronomy. His knowledge of the subject was second to none, and his indomitable spirit captivated audiences far and wide. Allan Chapman in 2006 with a bust of the great naked-eye astronomer Tycho Brahe. The image was featured in Allan’s recent article for us on Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg, Europe’s f

by Neil Norman A potentially large member of the Kreutz family comets is speeding its way to a perihelion encounter during the first week of April this year. The object was discovered on 13 January 2026. Although not fully confirmed yet, if it is a Kreutz family comet, it will be an unprecedented discovery. Image of comet candidate 6AC4721 (centre), taken via the LCO-SAAO LO9 35-cm reflector on 14 January 2026. Credit: Alan Hale A Kreutz family comet is a member of a group of ‘sungrazing’ comets