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

On the morning of Sunday, 3 September 1916, farm bailiff Charles Lewis set out across the fields at Abbott’s Hall near the village of Horsley Cross, in rural Essex, to check on the wheat crop. He took

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

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

TRAPPIST-1 is a red dwarf star located about ...

Astronomers love a challenge. They place their observatories on the highest mountains, in the driest deserts, on the coldest ice shelves, beneath the deepest oceans, in orbit around Earth and the Sun,