Who really invented the telescope?

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

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,

Ten years ago, on 14 September 2015, a new window on the Universe was opened, giving us a novel way of studying exotic, high-energy objects such as black holes and neutron stars: the first direct dete

So crude was television in the beginning that the BBC took time to be convinced by John Logie Baird’s invention. Born in Helensburgh on 13 August 1888, Baird enrolled at Glasgow’s Royal Technology Col

It was December 1983, and Belgrade in former Yugoslavia was suffering a typically harsh winter. Temperatures had plummeted to as low as -10°C. Yet something happened that month which would warm the he

I n 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the w