Ultimate guide to comets

Thirty years ago, on the evening of 23 July 1995, amateur astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp were both independently looking at the same globular star cluster. Experienced observers who knew the sk

We all love watching meteor showers like the Perseids in August. These dramatic events are one of the easiest astronomical events to observe because they’re regular, you don’t need to travel to see th

New model suggests Hawking radiation is speeding cosmic decay Scientists have long predicted that the Universe’s lifetime is effectively forever – specifically, 101100 years. But now scientists from R

You’re woken in the middle of the night by an urgent phone call. An asteroid is headed straight for Earth and it’s your job to find out if it’ll strike the planet and rain destruction down upon us all

Scientists from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have discovered the most energetic cosmic explosions since the Big Bang. Extreme nuclear transients (ENTs) occur when massive s

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