How are solar flares made?

Flicking through the pages of BBC Sky at Night Magazine each month, you’d be forgiven for thinking astronomers have black holes pinned down. Whether it’s the dramatic imaging of black hole shadows by

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

20 amazing answers t o curious

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

The Sun’s surface often looks speckled with darker regions. These are sunspots – cooler patches that form as a result of the Sun’s complex magnetic field preventing heat from reaching localised areas

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