William herschel

From colliding galaxies to supermassive black holes, we take a look at some of the strangest sights in the universe

In the 17th century, the great maritime nations were vying to solve a puzzle that had confounded philosophers for many centuries: how to determine exact positions on the Earth’s surface. And in Britai

A year in the life of the eighteenth-century naturalist

This October marks 50 years since a heavily shielded spacecraft, the Soviet Union’s Venera 9, parachuted into the atmosphere of Venus. Then, having landed, it did something extraordinary: it beamed ba

GEORGES SEURAT, GENERALLY ACCEPTED AS THE PIONEER OF NEO-IMPRESSIONISM, once said of his distinctive technique, “Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science.” He was referring to a ne

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