Inside the sky at night

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a misnomer. Shooting stars, planetary nebulae, guinea pigs… none of them does what it says on the tin. Another great example is the term ‘physical constant’. These ar

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

I looked out of the window before bed while on holiday in Orkney in mid-August and was delighted to see my first-ever noctilucent cloud display! The reflections in the still waters of the Bay of Firth

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,

Stephanie Jones talks to the skippers in the 2025/26 Mini Globe Race to find out...

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