Deep-orbit observatory

In a remote mountain range in Chile, a newly unveiled observatory will soon begin mapping the sky. When its survey starts, the Vera C Rubin Observatory will spend every night for the next decade chart

Driving up dusty mountain roads flanked by cacti and colourful bursts of wildflowers, it’s hard to imagine these quiet peaks in the Chilean Andes are home to some of the most sophisticated astronomica

Isn’t it amazing that astronomy – humanity’s oldest science – continues to generate such a delightful amount of new knowledge? Seeing as we’ve been studying the motion of the stars for a good long whi

Of the hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our solar system, it is all too feasible that one could strike Earth. If scientists discover this is likely to happen, what are our options for defending ourselves – and who will make the key decisions? Tomas Weber reports

It’s difficult to fully grasp the enormity and extremity of Jupiter. The planet – a striped behemoth of swirling gas with around 100 moons, one of which is larger than Mercury – dominates the Solar Sy

‘The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space,’ wrote the American astronomer and author Carl Sagan in his book, Contact. Ever since humans first huddled