Inside the sky at night

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 universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space,’ wrote the American astronomer and author Carl Sagan in his book, Contact. Ever since humans first huddled

I find it hard to believe it’s been 25 years since I appeared on The Sky at Night for the first time. A scared student in a new suit, I’d been invited by Patrick to discuss viewers’ questions, which r

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

Asteroid 2024 YR4 is currently blazing towards the ...

For Sarah, it was a night that would go down in history – for more reasons than one