How the planets would look...

Scientists distinguish between weight and mass, which may seem pedantic until you see what happens on a world where gravity is radically different to Earth’s

BEST TIME TO SEE: From 03:30 BST (02:30 UT) all month. Closest approach on 12 August Venus is the brightest planet that can be seen from Earth. At its peak brightness, when 22% illuminated, Venus appr

Ten years ago, Pluto emerged from the gloom at the Solar System’s ragged edge – and a new world came in from the cold. Five billion kilometres (3 billion miles) from Earth, on 14 July 2015, NASA’s pia

The best discoveries, inventions and surprises

BEST TIME TO SEE: Nights of 9/10, 10/11 and 11/12 July A full Moon occurs when the Moon is opposite the Sun in the sky or, in other words, when its ecliptic longitude is 180° from the Sun. The eclipti

The Moon has a diameter of around a quarter that of Earth and travels around our planet in a circular orbit roughly every 27 days. But Earth also possesses a number of tiny co-orbital bodies – objects