All About Space

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If you've ever wanted to get into astronomy – also known as stargazing, as some of our readers like to call it – then this is the issue for you. From selecting the ideal observing site to the best targets to spot whether you're using binoculars, a te

Was life as we know it delivered to Earth by comets? According to Colin's recent findings, it's looking very likely. Turn to page 44 for the full details. Pavlo is aiming to launch the UK to the Moon with his space start-up company Spacebit. Discove

In the autumn of 2019, red giant Betelgeuse began dimming significantly, losing about two-thirds of its brightness by February. This dramatic dip spurred speculation that the star’s demise may have been imminent – perhaps just weeks away, from our pe

Brand-new stars are slowly being formed as gravity pulls gas and dust together in this 100-light-year-wide nebula in the constellation of Sagittarius. One of the most famous dusty places in the universe thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, the ‘Pil

O Oxygen – 65% Helps us convert food into energy via the process of respiration. C Carbon – 18.5% It is found in many important compounds in the human body. N Nitrogen – 3.2% A key ingredient in proteins and the bases found in our DNA. Ca Calci

An interstellar gas cloud collapses under its own gravity to form a group of new stars, one of which is the Sun. A dusty disc of material forms around the new star. Gravity slowly pulls this material together – a process that will eventually form the

up about 70 per cent of our universe, could have provided an unexpected input of energy after the Big Bang which caused the universe to expand faster than predicted. This is called the ‘early dark energy’. This could provide a new objective for the n

MESSENGER discovered water ice in the craters around Mercury’s north pole. These regions are shaded from the heat of the Sun. LIGO’s arms are long enough – four kilometres (2.5 miles) – that the curvature of Earth was a factor in their construction.

Forget about sky charts and smartphone apps – you can get a good idea of the distance between objects with nothing but your bare hands Hold out your index finger and you can measure the distance and apparent size of an object equivalent to one degree

An object’s magnitude tells you how bright an object is as it appears from Earth. In astronomy magnitudes are represented on a numbered scale. Quite confusingly, the lower the number, the brighter the object. For instance, an object of -1 magnitude i

The simple solution to finding a celestial object is to use ‘GoTo’ systems on a modern telescope. These orientate a telescope to a desired object with almost no user input. If not available, you must star hop: navigate through the night sky by jumpin

Editor-in-Chief Gemma Lavender gemma.lavender@futurenet.com Art Editor Jonathan Wells Staff Writer Lee Cavendish Production Editor Nikole Robinson Research Editor Baljeet Panesar Senior Art Editor Duncan Crook Photography Olly Curtis Stuart Atkinson,