If all goes according to plan, by the time this article is published, the next great cosmic observatory should be on its way to its new home. The Nancy Grace Roman telescope is NASA’s latest offering to aid in our understanding of the Universe. It will join Hubble and James Webb in scouring the cosmos, trying to unlock its deepest and darkest secrets.
Every August, the night sky puts on one of its most reliable and spectacular performances: the Perseid meteor shower. Peaking around the second week of the month, and coinciding with New Moon, observers may see dozens of meteors per hour streaking across the heavens, leaving brief trails of silver, green, or gold.
The successful completion of the Artemis II mission marked another defining moment in modern spaceflight. For the first time since the Apollo era, humans once again travelled beyond low Earth orbit, circled the Moon, and returned safely.
Jupiter is currently visible in our night sky as a steady, golden point of light that outshines almost every star around it. To the naked eye, it looks calm and unchanging. But aim a simple pair of binoculars at it, and something remarkable happens. Four tiny pinpricks of light appear alongside the planet. These are Jupiter’s four largest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They shift position from night to night, quietly orbiting their giant host in a celestial dance, first noticed by Galileo over 400 years ago.
In 1903, the Wright brothers conducted the first successful powered flight, yet just 66 years later, on the 20th July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to set foot on another world. This monumental achievement marked one of mankind’s greatest achievements.
Every summer Christmas in South Africa comes with its own traditions: evening braais, warm nights outdoors, and the soft glow of festive lights decorating homes and gardens. But while we hang strings of coloured bulbs and ornaments on our trees, the night sky above us is already glowing with its own natural Christmas palette – stars shining in brilliant blue, crisp white, warm yellow, glowing orange, and deep red.
As the nights grow warmer, new regions of the heavens drift into view, offering us a chance to meet some of our closest and most spectacular galactic neighbours.
Since the dawn of mankind, we have wondered if we are alone. According to scientific estimates, the Universe contains more than a septillion planets (that’s 1 followed by 24 zeros!!). Surely, somewhere in this seemingly infinite darkness, other life might exist.
On the 7th of September, the world bore witness to a moment of celestial theatre as the Sun, Earth, and Moon took to the cosmic stage.
Nestled on a mountain top, 1500m above sea level in Chile, the latest great Earth-based telescope system recently captured its first photographs of the cosmos. Astronomers call this First Light.
