BBC Sky at Night

Sky at Night magazine is your practical guide to astronomy. Each issue features the world’s biggest and best night sky guide complete with star charts, observing tutorials and in-depth equipment reviews to ensure that amateur astronomers never miss those must-see events.

Welcome • Dragonfly gears up to earn its place in spaceflight history

Sky at Night – lots of ways to enjoy the night sky…

This month's contributors

THE BAR'S THE STAR • Take a close look at barred spiral galaxy NCG 4731

China's Chang'e 6 returns far-side lunar sample • The cache could reveal why the region looks so different from the near side

Comment

Food for galaxies from the dawn of time • Gas reservoirs spotted around early galaxies for the first time

Distant galaxy has a second, hidden heart • Bright flash revealing black hole's presence was predicted several years in advance

Starliner and Starship take next steps forward • Gas leaks plague Boeing's Starliner while SpaceX's Starship struggles with heat

Mars's morning frost dusts Solar System's highest peak • No spacecraft had been looking in the right place at the right time until now

Phoenix planet survives the radiation ravages of its star • The world should have been stripped down to bare rock but retained its cloud cover

Hubble changes how it slews across the sky • The modification will help keep the telescope observing for as many years as possible

Could we find aliens by looking for their solar panels? • Designed to reflect ultraviolet and infrared, the panels have a unique fingerprint

Where have all the Milky Way's early stars gone? • Our Galaxy has a curious lack of pristine stars

INSIDE THE SKY AT NIGHT • Two years ago, exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford received some of the first data from the JWST. In July's Sky at Night, we discovered what she's learned since then

Looking back: The Sky at Night • 16 August 1992

INTERACTIVE

SCOPE DOCTOR • Our equipment specialist cures your optical ailments and technical maladies

BBC Sky at Night

Once-a-century solar storm is overdue • If a Carrington Event struck today it would be catastrophic, says Minna Palmroth

Shooting the dark Universe with THE WORLD'S BIGGEST CAMERA • Jamie Carter reports from the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, where the largest camera ever built will soon start shooting the ultimate space movie: an ultra-wide, ultra-high- definition record of the southern sky

Who was Vera Rubin? • She provided the first compelling evidence that dark matter exists

The dark Universe • Rubin will help reveal how dark matter and energy have shaped our cosmos

Has Webb broken cosmology? • From theories of early galaxies to the expansion of the Universe, JWST has fundamentally challenged what we thought we knew, writes Caroline Harper

Why JWST is a cosmology-breaker • The telescope continues to reshape our understanding of the Universe. This is how it does it

Constant, tension and crisis • Why cosmologists can't agree on an answer to how fast the Universe is expanding

Antimatter • In our continuing series, Govert Schilling looks at antimatter, the strange counterpart to most of the matter filling our Universe

Antimatter falls down • Until recently, the interaction of antimatter and gravity was a mystery

LUNAR OCCULTATION OF SATURN • Watch a rare sight as the Moon covers the ringed planet and its bright moons

AUGUST HIGHLIGHTS • Your guide to the night sky this month

NEED TO KNOW • The terms and symbols used in The Sky Guide

THE BIG THREE • The top sights to observe or image this month

Perseids...