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 • Are Einstein’s white holes too weird to be real?

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

This month's contributors

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SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR… • This spiral duo shows that appearances can be deceptive

New exoplanet defies explanation • Baffling helium-and-carbon world breaks the rules of planetary science

Black hole unleashes record-breaking jet • Super-heated galaxy-wide stream is so powerful that it's shutting down star formation

Mini factory with 1,000°C furnace ignites in space • Breakthrough in low-Earth-orbit manufacturing could transform semiconductors industry

Half of Mars was once under water • Coastlines seen from orbit reveal that a vast ocean covered the northern hemisphere

Spaceflight's surprising impact on the brain • Microgravity causes the brain to move upward and backward within the skull

Revealed: how the most common planets form • Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are everywhere – now we finally know how they’re made

Iron ‘bar’ found in iconic Ring Nebula • The Mars-sized amount of iron, trillions of miles wide, was hiding in plain sight

Hubble Telescope finds Cloud-9 • New class of starless cloud offers rare insight into dark matter and galaxy formation

Galaxies caught in a cosmic tango • JWST and Chandra data reveals spiral galaxies locked in a slow gravitational embrace

Could we chase comet 3I/ATLAS out of the Solar System? • An audacious plan could get a probe up close to the interstellar oddity

Private gamble on the next space telescope • Ex-Google boss may launch a biggerthan-Hubble scope within three years

INSIDE THE SKY AT NIGHT • Do we really need to send humans to the Moon and Mars? George Dransfield thinks the case – and the true motivation behind NASA’s Artemis programme – is anything but clear

Voyage to Mars: The Longest Goodbye

Star trek - the next generation

BBC Sky at Night

SOCIETY IN FOCUS

How a supermoon really affects life on Earth • Earthquakes, floods and far-fetched claims – supermoons certainly get the internet buzzing. Penny Wozniakiewicz sifts the lunar facts from the fake news

The explosive Universe • Join Govert Schilling on a turbulent tour through the most powerful explosions in the cosmos

Artemis II return to the Moon • As Artemis II becomes the first crewed voyage around the Moon in over 50 years, Stuart Atkinson explores how it compares with the mission that did it first: 1968’s groundbreaking Apollo 8

NASA's grand Moon-return plan • Each Artemis mission builds on the last to get humans safely to the lunar surface

Star tech: from Apollo to Artemis • It’s a similar mission, but how has the technology changed in 57 years?

Mining in space The great off-Earth gold ruch • Sam Walker examines the scramble to harvest metals from asteroids – and why we should think twice about it

Riches without limits? • From rare metals to rocket fuel, what’s driving the race to mine near-Earth asteroids

The Sky Guide • MARCH 2026

MARCH HIGHLIGHTS • Your guide to the night sky this month

NEED TO KNOW

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

THE PLANETS • Our celestial neighbourhood in March

The planets in March • The phase and relative sizes of the planets this month. Each planet is shown with south at the top, to show its...