Such was George III’s passion for astronomy that he had an observatory built to observe the transit of Venus. Although his interest remains unrivalled, scientific curiosity gripped the Royal Family for centuries, as Matthew Dennison reveals

With emerald hills here and sinuous rivers there, a Yorkshire farmer’s years spent surveying the land on horseback resulted in a lavish and surprisingly accurate atlas of Elizabeth I’s Britain, says Ben Lerwill

From stargazing as a child to presenting the iconic The Sky At Night , Dame Maggie Aderin, 57, tells us how she beat the odds to become a space scientist, and why life beyond Earth matters to all of us

Before I can properly say hello to Maggie Aderin, she wants to apologise: the space scientist is about to take delivery of a new shed, so our interview might be interrupted. In the end we are not dist

So Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in October 1876, charting the latest instalment of the Holbein cult. He was renting a room in Isleworth, west London, still hoping for a religious career

Since JWST’s launch four years ago, some mind-blowing observations have been made by this internationally operated, state-of-the-art, space-based super-telescope