Innehållsförteckning för January 2026 från BBC Sky at Night

Astronomers have captured the earliest moments of a supernova ripping through a star. How such a shock is launched and propagates through a massive star when it dies is a decades-long puzzle, but swift reactions by an international team of scientists caught data on the shape of the blast only 26 hours after it happened. Supernova SN 2024ggi was first detected on the night of 10 April 2024 in the galaxy NGC 3621. When Yi Yang, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and lead author of the study, heard the news, he knew he had to act fast. He requested an observation from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), which was approved in time to capture the initial breakout shape of the supernova. Using spectropolarimetry, a…

On only its second-ever launch, Blue Origin has shown it can deliver a payload into orbit and recover its first-stage booster for reuse. After two delays, one for bad weather and another for a massive solar storm, the 98-metre (322ft) New Glenn rocket launched into the skies above Cape Canaveral in Florida on 13 November. For Jeff Bezos's space technology company, this was the first New Glenn mission for paying customers, delivering two NASA satellites to the first stage of their trip to Mars. These ESCAPADE satellites will ultimately orbit the Red Planet to measure its atmosphere and magnetic field, and gather information to aid future crewed missions. The successful recovery makes Blue Origin the second company after SpaceX to land an orbital-class booster on a ship at sea for…

In a discovery that could reshape our understanding of how life began in the Universe, astronomers have identified multiple complex building blocks of life in a galaxy outside the Milky Way. Researchers using the JWST discovered five organic compounds in the ice around a protostar called ST6 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, our closest galactic neighbour. The compounds were methanol and ethanol (common types of alcohol), methyl formate and acetaldehyde (used as industrial chemicals on Earth) and acetic acid (the main component of vinegar). The latter has never been definitively detected in space ice before. They also found hints of glycolaldehyde, a sugar and a precursor of DNA, but this has yet to be confirmed. “It's all thanks to JWST's exceptional sensitivity combined with high angular resolution that we're able…

Email us at inbox@skyatnightmagazine.com MESSAGE OF THE MONTH In late October, my friend and I took a three-hour drive to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California. It's a beautiful place for hiking and for unusual geological formations, and it completely encloses the village of Borrego Springs, which achieved International Dark Sky Community status in 2009. We went specifically hoping to see comets Lemmon and Swan. While we had no luck with Swan, we did see C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) and I'd be thrilled if you were to publish my representation of it – my first foray into astrophotography! It shows what we saw shortly after sunset on 21 October, with comet Lemmon represented by the cotton ball and the Big Dipper represented by discards from a three-hole punch. Through binoculars,…

Movie posters for the classic 1979 horror film Alien warned us: “In space no one can hear you scream.” And while it's true that sound can't travel through a vacuum, it doesn't follow that the Universe is quiet – or that we can't learn a lot by keeping our ears open. In fact, listening in to the mysteries of the cosmos gives us new insights that our eyes can't reveal. That's why in October 2025, scientists from around the world, and across several different disciplines, met at a workshop hosted by New York's research-focused Flatiron Institute. Titled ‘Sonification for Research: Techniques, Efficacy, and Applications (SoniTEA)’, its aim was to push forward the practice of sonification – using sound to represent data, especially as a research tool. One of the workshop's…

One of the best ways to study the Universe is to inspect actual materials from our celestial neighbours. Some naturally fall to Earth as meteorites, but these are few and far between, limited in their origins and are not likely to be pristine. That's why scientists have put great efforts into remotely grabbing samples of the Solar System's worlds and returning them to Earth. These sample-return missions (SRMs) provide important insights which cannot be obtained by any other means. Scientists use a huge range of exotic-sounding techniques to analyse these samples, including electron microscopy, spectroscopic analysis, isotope analysis and even muon beam imaging. Together, the results can reveal a treasure trove of data: when, where and how the object formed, its history and evolution, and its relation to other objects.…

Wasat (Delta (δ) Geminorum) is a mag. +3.5 star in Gemini, a constellation representing celestial twins. Its name means ‘middle’ and it marks the junction of the twin Pollux's legs. Lying 60.5 lightyears away, Wasat's spectral class is F0 IV, indicating a yellow subgiant. It currently sits 10 arcminutes south of the ecliptic. To visualise the Sun's path between 11 July and 23 August, imagine a line from Wasat through Asellus Australis (Delta (δ) Cancri, 5 arcminutes north of the ecliptic) to Regulus (Alpha (α) Leonis), which sits 28 arcminutes north of the ecliptic. Wasat also has an unusual claim to fame: Pluto was discovered 0.5° east of it by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. Wasat is a triple-star system: the main star forms a spectroscopic binary with…

Churchill's aurora is unmatched, but for darker-sky astronomy, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's 22 Dark-Sky Preserves offer stellar options. Jasper National Park, Alberta, blends mountain access with vast darkness and hosts a dark-sky festival each October. Wood Buffalo National Park (Alberta/Northwest Territories) remains one of the largest protected dark areas on Earth. In Atlantic Canada, a proposed Fundy Dark-Sky Corridor aims to link a string of dark-sky communities on the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, encompassing two dark-sky preserves, Fundy Trail Provincial Park and Fundy National Park. In Manitoba, options for stargazing and astronomy (and frequent displays of aurorae) include Bakers Narrows, Pisew Falls Provincial Park near Thompson, and Gillam. Closer to Winnipeg – the gateway to Churchill and Manitoba – are Hecla-Grindstone Provincial Park and Gimli on Lake…

When I stood on Dundee's Balgay Hill last autumn, looking up at Mills Observatory's dome, I couldn't help thinking how close the city came to losing it. The UK's first purpose-built public observatory – a place that has inspired generations to look at the stars – had spent months under the threat of closure. Just two years earlier, BBC Sky at Night Magazine had named Mills Observatory number one on its list of the 10 best astronomical observatories in the UK. For Dundee, it was a moment of pride. For many of us, it confirmed what we already knew: that this little sandstone building overlooking the River Tay is one of Scotland's most remarkable cultural assets. But pride alone wasn't enough to save it. In early 2024, Dundee City Council…

There's a lot to master in astrophotography processing. Pulling fine detail from noise and coaxing out faint colour is rewarding, but it can also be very time-consuming. Today, editing software ranges from manual hands-on options that let you tweak every pixel, to AI-powered tools that make sweeping image-wide enhancements. Adobe Photoshop remains a favourite, thanks to its extensive functionality for both deep-sky and landscape images. An often-overlooked feature, however, is its ‘Actions’ tool. Actions let you record a full sequence of edits, save them and apply them to other images with a single click. No more repeating the same fiddly hue adjustment or adding the same watermark over and over again. An action turns a laborious workflow into one quick, automated step, meaning more time under the stars, fewer hours…

VITAL STATS Price £599 Optics Honders advanced catadioptric Aperture 125mm Focal length 250mm, f/2 Focuser Primary mirror/helical Extras M42 × 0.75 adaptor, 1.25-inch adaptor Weight 3.82kg Supplier Optical Vision Limited Email info@opticalvision.co.uk www.opticalvision.co.uk Sky-Watcher's HAC125DX is an upgraded evolution of the original HAC125 design with rear focusing, designed for widefield, deep-sky astrophotography. Nicknamed a ‘minigraph’, it's fast and portable and there isn't much on the current market that compares to it – so of course, we had to put it through its paces. Out of the box, the first thing we noticed was the telescope's compact size. While it is heavier than a refractor of similar length, it is more than manageable. Balancing it on our observatory mount was straightforward, and any mount with a payload of roughly 5kg will…

JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE, 28 OCTOBER 2025 Planetary nebula NGC 6537 is nicknamed the Red Spider Nebula for its narrow ‘body’ and spindly ‘legs’ that stretch into the cosmos. But in this new view from the James Webb Space Telescope, what leaps out are the vast blue lobes extending from either side of the nebula's dying central star. These are jets of ionised molecular hydrogen that are forming bubble-like structures as they smash into surrounding material. JWST's infrared vision reveals their full extent for the first time. To put things into perspective, each of the blue lobes measures three lightyears across. We're sure none of us would fancy finding that in our bathtub… FREE BONUS CONTENT Explore a gallery of these and more stunning space images www.skyatnightmagazine.com/bonus-content Busy, busy, busy…

The return of three Chinese astronauts from the Tiangong space station had to be aborted on 5 November, when the spacecraft destined to return them to Earth was hit by space debris. The China Manned Space Agency reported “tiny cracks” in a window of the Shenzhou-20 return capsule, making it unsafe for re-entry. After a slightly extended stay, the crew were able to leave the space station on another spacecraft, the Shenzhou-21, on 14 November. Although the delay was short – nine days compared to the 286-day wait that NASA's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams faced on the ISS after issues with their return craft – it highlights the increasing problem of space debris. Since the start of the Space Age, tens of thousands of missions have launched into space,…

Astronomers have broken two records at once by spotting the largest and the most distant flare ever seen, coming from a supermassive black hole 10 billion lightyears away. Appropriately dubbed ‘Superman’, the flare shines with the power of 10 trillion Suns and is thought to result from a supermassive black hole consuming a massive star. First detected in 2018, the flare was initially dismissed as unremarkable. It was found by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at the Palomar Observatory in California, which uses a widefield camera to scan the sky for short-lived cosmic phenomena such as flaring supernovae. However, in 2023, a team of astronomers at the California Institute of Technology notice that the flare was still surprisingly bright five years later. Using the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii, they…

There are some Really Big Things coming up in the world of exoplanets in 2026. Sadly, they're not until the tail end of the year – tough for someone like me who struggles with patience. (True story: as a child, I'd get so excited about my birthday that I'd spend the night before throwing up – I. Just. Couldn't. Wait.) So, yes, there's a non-zero chance I'll be nauseous with exoplanet anticipation for months. If you watched July's episode of The Sky at Night, you'll know that PLATO – PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations, ESA's upcoming planet-hunting space telescope – is due for launch in December 2026. PLATO's precision will be exhilarating; it's going to find the kind of exoplanets I love: long-period, really slow-orbiting, cold planets far from their stars.…

If you often find yourself lying awake into the small hours, with thoughts and to-do lists whizzing endlessly around your mind, you're not alone. In the UK, a 2024 study in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal found that almost one in five people aren't getting enough sleep, while the 2022 study ‘Need for Sleep’ revealed that 14 per cent were getting an average of less than five hours’ sleep a night – a dangerously low level. As astronomers, you might think being awake at night is an occupational hazard, but we're no more immune to the health impacts of nocturnal wakefulness than anyone else. Not getting enough sleep puts us at risk of cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, dementia, type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease, not to mention related…

16-PAGE CENTRE PULLOUT JUPITER AT OPPOSITION Jupiter steals the show this month, dazzling at opposition on 10 January and dancing with its major moons BEYOND GALILEO Test your skills on Jupiter's fainter, smaller moons About the writers Astronomy expert Pete Lawrence is a skilled astro imager and a presenter on The Sky at Night monthly on BBC Four Steve Tonkin is a binocular observer. Find his tour of the best sights for both eyes on page 54 TWIN PEEKS Six deep-sky sights hiding near the Gemini twins Also on view this month… ✦ Moon, Saturn and Neptune together ✦ Comet 24P/Schaumasse at its best ✦ Lunar occultation of the Pleiades Red light friendly To preserve your night vision, this Sky Guide can be read using a red light under dark…

1. M35, the Queen of Clusters Winter skies teem with sparkling star clusters and one of the finest is M35, aptly dubbed the Queen of Clusters. Find mag. +2.9 Tejat (Mu (μ) Geminorum) and put it at the southeast edge of your field of view. Look for a large misty patch near the opposite side. Under suburban skies, you should be able to resolve at least 10 stars with 10x50 binoculars against the rich background of the Milky Way. ☐ SEEN IT 2. The 37 Cluster Midway between Tejat and mag. +0.5 Betelgeuse (Alpha (α) Orionis), you'll find a pair of brilliant white mag. +4.4 stars, Nu (ν) and Xi (ξ) Orionis. In the same field of view, looking in the direction of Betelgeuse, you'll see a tiny rectangular cluster…

If Ursa Major, the Great Bear constellation, dominates the northern sky above Canada, then below it - across the frozen Arctic tundra - it's Ursus maritimus, the polar bear, that rules. And between the constellation and the polar bears lies the auroral oval, a near-permanent ring of light that circles Earth's poles. Churchill, Manitoba is bear country in every sense. Even the word Arctic comes from the Greek ‘arktós’, meaning bear, a nod to the constellations circling Polaris, the North Star. That North Star always hangs high above this frontier town located at latitude 59° north, where 890 people - and almost as many polar bears - live on the shore of Hudson Bay. ▶ I'm here with 15 others on a special science-themed Lazy Bear Expeditions trip to see…

Ever wondered why your stars turn into little streaks during long exposures, or your mount sounds like it's quietly complaining? Chances are, your setup is out of balance. Getting an equatorial mount properly balanced is one of the simplest – and most overlooked – ways to make stargazing easier and your imaging results much sharper. An equatorial mount works by tracking the rotation of the sky using two axes: right ascension (RA), which follows Earth's rotation, and declination (dec.), which points and adjusts north to south. Together, they let your telescope follow the stars across the night sky and stay locked on target during long exposures. An unbalanced mount places strain on motors and gears, forcing them to work harder and eventually damaging components. Even the cleverest guiding software can't…

FREE BONUS CONTENT Find our extended Gallery at www.skyatnightmagazine.com/ bonus-content PHOTO OF THE MONTH The Cone Nebula and Christmas Tree Cluster Bill Lowry, Chiddingstone Hoath, Kent, UK, 2–4 January and 26 March 2025 Bill says: “I wanted to experiment with the Hubble palette by assigning different colours to the standard SHO, and chose NGC 2264 as a target due to the abundance of data in each wavelength. I ended up with HSO.” Equipment: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro camera, William Optics GT-81 IV refractor, Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro mount Exposure: Ha 10x 1,200”, OIII 21x 1,200”, SII 14x 1,200”, LRGB 40x 30” each, total 13h 20’ Software: PixInsight Bill's top tips: “Data-rich targets like this are great for practising your processing skills. Use narrowband filters with long exposures to capture all that data.…

How do astronomers currently think the Universe is expanding? Astronomers have long believed the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, driven by what we call ‘dark energy’. This led to a model known as Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM), in which the density of dark energy doesn't vary with time. Then, 27 years ago, a group of scientists observed distant supernovae – specifically Type Ia supernovae – and found they were dimmer than expected. This fitted the predictions of ΛCDM very well, which is how we got the model of the Universe we have today. What did your team discover instead? Type Ia supernovae were used to test ΛCDM because they were thought to explode with an almost identical intrinsic brightness, making them good reference objects. Instead, we found…

For the first time, a study has revealed Earth-sized planets orbiting each of the stars in a binary system. An international team found the worlds around a stellar pair called TOI-2267: two small, cool red dwarf stars gravitationally bound extremely close together. The exoplanet find isn't uncommon, but finding two warm, Earth-sized planets – and even potentially a third – transiting in front of both individual stars of a binary is unprecedented. “Until now, in binary systems with known planets, these were always found around a single star or, in very rare cases, around both, but in those systems the stars were very far apart,” explains Francisco Pozuelos, a co-leader of the study. “A case like TOI-2267 had never been observed before.” NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) first observed…

The prevailing Nobel Prize-winning theory that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate due to the unseen influence of dark energy has been called into question by a new study. Astronomers at Yonsei University in South Korea found evidence that the ‘standard candles’ used to measure cosmic distances and calculate how fast the Universe is expanding may not be as standard as thought. These ‘candles’ are Type Ia supernovae, exploding stars that all reach a consistent, well-known peak of brightness, meaning the dimmer the Type Ia supernova, the farther away it is. However, by measuring a larger sample of 300 galaxies, the team found evidence that these supernovae are strongly affected by the age of their progenitor stars and are less reliable as brightness benchmarks. They declared a high…

Back in 2023, a massive collision was detected as two enormous black holes merged into one gargantuan singularity. But the gigantic masses, and the very fast spin of those black holes, were of a kind that astronomers previously thought couldn't form at all, let alone collide. Now, a new study carried out by Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics has shown a way for them to exist – and it's all to do with magnetic fields. The gravitational waves produced by the merger (named GW231123) were picked up by LIGO's sensors in Washington and Louisiana, and pointed to two black holes merging into a single black hole with a mass of 225 Suns, a size current theories struggle to explain. When a massive star comes to the end of its…

This month, we're taking a different approach. Instead of reviewing a preprint journal paper, we're looking at a summary guide on how humans might terraform Mars. Prepared by Devon Stork and Erika DeBenedictis of Pioneer Labs – a non-profit startup focused on engineering microbes for Mars – it served as background information for attendees of their 2025 Green Mars Workshop. And I think it does a good job of outlining how the Red Planet could one day be terraformed to support human life. Today, Mars is a freeze-dried desert world, punishingly cold and exceedingly arid with only a minimal atmospheric blanket. But our exploration through the Space Age has revealed that the planet was once a much warmer, wetter place, and so efforts directed to terraforming the Red Planet effectively…

The year 2025 has been a vintage one for astronomy. In January, we were hooked on reports of a buildingsized asteroid on course to collide with Earth. The risk was quickly downgraded from worrying to virtually non-existent, but it set the tone for a year packed with discoveries and surprises. We're living in a golden era of space observation. Telescopes on the ground and up in orbit are revealing more of the Universe than ever before, and in exceptional detail. And we're not just talking about the distant cosmos – some incredible discoveries have taken place close to home. Visitors from outer space, leopard print on Mars, vast hydrogen clouds hiding in plain sight…. At times it's felt like science fiction. So, let's take a whistle-stop tour through 10 of…

Sonification has been around for longer than you might think. Your GP's humble stethoscope is, after all, a means of collecting and processing audible data, and intensive care units are filled with equipment that provides far more detailed information than the simple beep-beep of an electrocardiogram. Elsewhere, financial institutions are experimenting with turning stock-market data into sound cues, helping analysts detect trends, anomalies and volatilities in real time. Of course, sound also opens up new opportunities to make scientific data more accessible to visually impaired and blind people – assuming, of course, that the tools on which it's produced or processed are also accessible. Wanda Díaz-Merced, arguably the planet's best-known blind astronomer, has found sonification an increasingly useful means of analysing data. Nevertheless, as she noted in MIT Technology Review…

PICK OF THE MONTH Jupiter Best time to see: 10 January, 00:15 UT Altitude: 59° Location: Gemini Direction: South Features: Complex atmosphere, moons Recommended equipment: 100mm or larger Jupiter reaches opposition on 10 January, when the planet will be at its brightest and largest when viewed through the eyepiece. Opposition is the date when the ecliptic longitude of Jupiter is 180° offset from the ecliptic longitude of the Sun – in other words, Jupiter is opposite the Sun in the sky. Although it's often stated that opposition is the best time to view a planet, in reality it's a longer window of time; the weeks leading up to and after opposition also give the best views. At opposition, Jupiter will shine at mag. –2.5. Jupiter has a complex atmosphere that…

Comet 3I/ATLAS is a rare interstellar visitor, a comet not gravitationally bound to any star, and only the third such object ever identified. When discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on 1 July 2025, it was 670 million km from the Sun, technically within the inner Solar System. Its closest approach to Earth, 270 million km or 1.8 AU, was on 19 December 2025. Perihelion occurred on 29 October, 203 million km or 1.36 AU from the Sun. Thought to originate from a region of the Milky Way populated by older stars, 3I/ATLAS may be over 7 billion years old – older than our Solar System. As far as amateur observations go, it's a tricky object due to its low brightness. On…

Jupiter may boast 97 confirmed moons (at the time of writing), but only four – the Galilean giants, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – are generally described as being within easy reach of amateurs. And very easy they are too – lining up with the planet from time to time and readily visible through a small telescope. But what about the rest of Jupiter's moons? Are they all hidden from view? The answer is no, and some of the fainter ones are definitely viable amateur targets. They do, however, take a bit of hunting and, to be fair, they are pretty faint. While the four Galileans aren't tricky, thanks to their bright magnitudes ranging from +5.5 to +6.9, locating something like 15thmagnitude Amalthea next to mag. –2.7 Jupiter is altogether…

Earth's orbit around the Sun is slightly elliptical, which means our distance from the Sun varies over the course of the year – and that brings effects that are fascinating to capture. The variation sounds quite impressive: Earth swings from 147,099,894km (91,403,636 miles) from the Sun in early January, to 152,087,774km (94,502,961 miles) in early July, a difference of 4,987,880km (3,099,324 miles) – small in astronomical terms, but you wouldn't want to walk it! Tracking time and size In an elliptical orbit, an object moves fastest when closer to its star, and Earth is no exception. This affects the apparent speed of the Sun across the sky: slightly faster at the start of the year and slowest in the middle. This makes timekeeping based on the position of the Sun…

VITAL STATS Price £1,799 Sensor Sony IMX533 colour CMOS Resolution 9MP, 3,008 × 3,008 (sensor); 2,560 × 2,560 (display screen) Apparent field of view 90° Eye relief 12mm Barrel size 2-inch Size 94mm x 124mm Weight 795g Supplier The Widescreen Centre Email sales@widescreen- centre.co.uk www.widescreen- centre.co.uk Smart telescopes have transformed the way we approach astronomy. Tasks that once required detailed knowledge of mounts, scopes, accessories and software are now handled automatically. The downside is that all that manual kit you've invested in over the years may be gathering dust. This Pegasus Astro SmartEye electronic eyepiece promises to buck this trend and give your gear a new lease of life. Rather than replacing your equipment, it's an eyepiece–camera hybrid that attaches directly to your telescope, turning your astronomy setup into a…