The lowell observatory

Driving up dusty mountain roads flanked by cacti and colourful bursts of wildflowers, it’s hard to imagine these quiet peaks in the Chilean Andes are home to some of the most sophisticated astronomica

In a remote mountain range in Chile, a newly unveiled observatory will soon begin mapping the sky. When its survey starts, the Vera C Rubin Observatory will spend every night for the next decade chart

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

‘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

Imagine an early human out on the savannah, stepping away from the evening fire, glancing up at the dark sky and being totally captivated by the tiny, twinkling sparks dotted everywhere. Eyes wide, he

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