Memories of hale–bopp

The comet dubbed 3I/ATLAS, a rare extrasolar intruder, continues to barrel through the Solar System, attracting interest and speculation from astronomers and space scientists worldwide. Harvard astron

In late October, my friend and I took a three-hour drive to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California. It’s a beautiful place for hiking and for unusual geological formations, and it compl

You may have bought this December issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine because you’ve been given – or you’ve treated yourself to – a new telescope for Christmas. And you may be wondering what to do with

Astronomers are now regularly detecting planets thousands of light years from Earth – but have we missed one in our own Solar System?

The year 2025 has been a vintage one for astronomy. In January, we were hooked on reports of a building-sized asteroid on course to collide with Earth. The risk was quickly downgraded from worrying to

As an astronomer, I collect stars. There are several hundred billion of them in our Galaxy, the Milky Way, so it’s important to find a way to categorise them. While others might rank their stars by co