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 • What would you tell the Universe about humanity?

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

This month's contributors

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STARBURST CIGAR • JWST peels back M82's dusty veil to uncover a staggering 16.5 million stars

The case for life on Mars just got stronger • Perseverance finds extensive organic carbon in ancient river rocks

The Milky Way is wider than we thought • New measurements show spiral arms lie up to 10 per cent farther away than expected

World's darkest material may save dark skies • Will a new paint job stop satellites ruining ground-based astronomy?

Could Earth have been sending life to Venus all along? • Study examines whether microbes might survive the journey between the two planets

‘Super-puff’ planets the size of Jupiter found • The newly discovered giant worlds have a density lower than candy floss

Euclid uncovers trove of ancient quasars • Massively old and distant discoveries may challenge our understanding of the young Universe

First image of Earth's ‘mini moon’ • Chinese probe takes a picture of the ‘quasi-satellite’ Kamoʻoalewa as it orbits Earth

Would you volunteer to live in isolation for a year? • A NASA simulation mission will test how humans cope with deep-space exploration

Euclid captures 60 million stars in Milky Way's core • Space telescope pauses its dark matter hunt to turn its gaze on our own Galaxy's heart

We'll soon see the flash when two alien planets collide • The glowing aftermath of giant impacts may reveal how rocky worlds take shape

Time and place explain the Sun's odd chemistry • Analysis of 79 ‘solar twins’ suggests we're different – but not special

INSIDE THE SKY AT NIGHT • Black holes are already astronomy's big-shot celebrities. Now they're in the spotlight again, says George Dransfield, as ‘little red dots’ shed new light on their origins

A desert doorway to the stars

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BBC Sky at Night

We've never seen a black hole • We've detected their influence, tracked their collisions and even imaged their shadows. But, asks Brian Clegg, can we ever really know what black holes are?

Searching in the DARK • The hunt for dark matter – a hypothetical, invisible substance – has cost billions and has so far been fruitless. Andrea Henderson de la Fuente explains why the experiments continue to be funded

Silencing the noise • A sensitive question: why dark matter detectors have to live deep beneath mountains

What if we never find dark matter? • The dark matter hunt is testing the limits of known physics. What happens if it fails?

Stars and cars in the Arizona desert • As Route 66 celebrates its 100th anniversary, Demi Perera takes us on a tour of dark skies, world-class telescopes and meteor craters along the Arizona section of the historic highway

America's first dark-sky city • Set high in Arizona's pine-covered mountains, Flagstaff has taken big steps to preserve its night skies

A journey back in time • Among America's 4 million miles of roads, what makes Route 66 so special?

Who owns the Moon? • As humans prepare to return to the surface of the Moon, Jamie Middleton looks at how the law is racing to catch up with a new lunar land rush

The Sky Guide • SEPTEMBER...