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 happened to Mars's great lost moon?

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

This month's contributors

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BRAIN POWER • Cracking open PMR 1: JWST peers deep into the Exposed Cranium Nebula

Scientists catch two planets colliding • A star's erratic flickering reveals a catastrophic world-ending collision

Microbes turn meteorites into precious metals • ISS experiment shows bacteria and fungi can harvest valuable elements from space rocks

Rover investigates the giant spiderwebs on Mars • Curiosity finds delicate structures offering clues to the Red Planet's watery past

NASA unveils Moon base and nuclear Mars mission plans • The agency pauses Moon-orbiting station in favour of a long-term lunar presence

Giant star may be on brink of explosion • Astronomers witness rapid upheaval in one of Universe's biggest stars

Did our Sun escape from the centre of the Galaxy? • Our home star may have been part of a mass migration from the Milky Way's core

Molten planet discovery is first of its kind • Sulphur-rich world with a magma ocean challenges existing planetary classification

A giant cosmic ‘sheet’ surrounds the Milky Way • The vast, flat dark-matter structure could explain the motion of nearby galaxies

ALMA captures the Milky Way's core • Largest-ever radio survey reveals the chaotic, destructive, star-forming heart of our Galaxy

How Mars will tear its moon apart • New modelling suggests Phobos's demise could be earlier - and more dramatic - than we expected

The mystery of Mira B • Is this one of the lowest-mass white dwarfs ever discovered?

INSIDE THE SKY AT NIGHT • As The Sky at Night returns to our screens with an Artemis mission special, George Dransfield considers how the Moon-bound astronauts will inspire the young

Jodrell Bank: Tuning into the Universe

Io performs like clockwork

BBC Sky at Night

Why I'm thrilled we're going back to the Moon • For Stuart Atkinson, the Artemis II mission represents a reconnection with the moment long ago when he became enchanted with space

The lost moon of Mars • NASA's Curiosity rover has uncovered tantalising evidence that the gravity of a long-lost Martian satellite acted on the Red Planet's ancient oceans. Jamie Carter reports

What Curiosity saw in Martian rock • The curiously laminated rocks that suggest Mars's oceans and lakes were driven by tides

So where did Mars's extra moon go? • Any lost moon may have been one in a long line of Martian moon-making and moon-breaking

Farming the Moon • What will humans eat on the Moon? Joseph Phelan explores the cutting-edge food systems and extraordinary plants being developed for settlers on the lunar surface and beyond

Moon rice for dinner? • ‘Super-dwarf' rice may be the perfect crop for sustaining life on long-duration missions

Moon food: the benefits to Earth • How does engineering plants that can grow anywhere help our planet?

Voyager 1: One light-day away • Now 48 years from home, humanity's farthest-travelled probe will soon be so distant that light will take a day to reach it

Distance is not the only challenge • It isn't easy communicating with a craft which uses tech that's almost 50 years old

The Sky Guide • MAY 2026

MAY HIGHLIGHTS • Your guide to the night sky this month

NEED TO KNOW • The terms and...