Table of contents for No. 98 in All About Space

Problems with the mole ©NASA/JPL-Caltech Not every mission goes entirely to plan, and NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander is no exception. This recent image taken by one of the onboard cameras shows part of an instrument that is meant to dig five metres (16 feet) into the Martian surface in order to measure the heat coming from within. This instrument, commonly referred to as ‘the mole’, has hit a snag, and can’t seem to dig further than about 0.3 metres (one foot). In this image it appears to have popped out of the ground after engineers tried pinning it to the wall of the hole using InSight’s robotic arm to increase friction.…

Up-close and personal with Jupiter © NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Juno spacecraft is still flying around Jupiter, getting up-close and personal with the gas giant approximately every two months, but only for a brief period. These close encounters – known as a ‘perijove’ – mean the instruments are put to work to collect as much data as they can in a short time. Its JunoCam snaps as many photos as it can, and they are put onto the Juno website for members of the public to edit and enhance. This particular image was enhanced by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, and it flaunts the entangled nature of jet streams in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere, known as ‘Jet N3’.…

Trick or treat? ©NASA/ESA Halloween always bares wicked faces and ghastly sights, but it’s not often they are seen in space. This isn’t a trick, but definitely a treat: NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope snapped this picture of two galaxies – both of equal size – caught in a gravitational tangle. The galactic collision in this Arp-Madore system, located 704 million light years from Earth, remarkably resembles a ghostly face, making it a perfect present for Halloween enthusiasts around the world.…

NASA’s Voyager spacecraft may only have five years left © NASA/JPL The twin Voyager probes have about five years before they fall silent, when they'll no longer be able to send word of their adventures back. The Voyagers' journey will continue indefinitely, but we will no longer travel with them. "It's cooling off. The spacecraft is getting colder all the time and the power is dropping," Ed Stone, the mission's project scientist and a physicist at Caltech, said during a news conference held on 31 October in conjunction with the publication of a handful of new scientific papers. "We know that somehow, in another five years or so, we may not have enough power to have any scientific instruments on any longer." Their success is unprecedented, even by NASA standards;…

NASA eyes a possible return to Pluto Words by Mike Wall NASA is thinking about going back to Pluto, this time to stay for a while. The space agency has funded the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to conduct a wide-ranging study into a possible Pluto orbiter mission. The study will lay out design and instrument requirements and investigate the feasibility and costs of the potential project, SwRI representatives said. SwRI leads NASA's New Horizons mission, which zoomed past Pluto in July 2015, snapping the first-ever up-close photos of the dwarf planet. The historic flyby revealed Pluto to be a surprisingly diverse and complex world, with 3.2-kilometre (two-mile) mountains of water ice and vast plains of nitrogen ice, among other features. On 1 January of this year, New Horizons conducted a…

Our hunt for another universe There have already been some hints that we live in a multiverse Is inflation an eternal process? Inflation – a period of rapid initial expansion – is a modification to the theory of the Big Bang which makes it easier to explain the resulting universe we observe. Most models of inflation suggest it is a never-ending process – where you get one universe you get many. Cosmic microwave background cold spot Most temperature variations in the CMB are small, yet there is an unusually large one in the Southern Hemisphere sky. Some researchers point to it as evidence of a collision between our universe and another, although that idea continues to be the subject of fierce debate. Planck Launch: 14 May 2009 Mission objectives: Map…

Focus on Martian habitats INSIDE A MARTIAN HABITAT What are humans going to live in once they’re on Mars? One New York company thinks it has the answer © Spacefactory Earlier this autumn, space.com visited the main offices of AI SpaceFactory, an architecture and technology design agency that specialises in designing and 3D-printing Martian habitats. The company recently competed in and won NASA's 3D-printed habitat challenge with a design called Marsha. AI SpaceFactory founder and CEO David Malott took space.com around this space factory to see what it really takes to build a Martian habitat. "The whole reason to do that is, it's too expensive to ship materials to Mars," Malott said to space.com. "We want a place for the astronauts to stay in," he added. When we are ready…

The theories There are various explanations for what it could be – and where it's come from A home-grown comet When Gennadiy Borisov first discovered the object on 30 August 2019, it was thought to have been born within our Solar System. Perceived to be a near-Earth object, it was given the designation gb00234 by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center and was later noted to be a comet, designated C/2019 Q4 (Borisov). © NASA An interstellar interloper Within two weeks scientists were already suspecting it was a comet from outside of our Solar System, even though it's similar to those born within. By 24 September 2019 the International Astronomical Union had given it the interstellar designation 2I/Borisov – following on from 1I/‘Oumuamua. This remains the most accepted explanation.…

Earth's explosive evolution DO WE NEED TO REWRITE EARTH’S HISTORY? From metal rains to devastating explosions, new discoveries and surprising theories are changing how we look at the early days of our planet Reported by Giles Sparrow © Shutterstock The era of Earth’s formation, alongside the other planets in orbit around the young Sun, has long been seen as a time of dramatic collisions and cataclysmic encounters between newborn planets, but new discoveries have suggested that conditions could have been even more violent than previously suspected. And according to one theory, the most devastating event in our planet’s entire history was triggered not by a chance encounter with a random rogue planet, but by a ticking timebomb beneath Earth’s own surface. Astronomers have pinned down the age of the Earth…

Earth's explosive evolution History of the Earth With over 4.5 billion years of history, Earth has gone through some remarkable changes to produce the hospitable planet we know today © Richard Bizley /Science Photo Library 14.54 billion years ago: the Earth forms Earth and the other rocky planets formed through violent collisions between planetesimals. The core formed rapidly as heavy elements filtered down through the mantle towards the centre of the planet, while bombardment continued to spread metallic elements across the surface. 24.5 billion years ago: origin of the Moon The Moon formed 50 to 100 million years after the Earth. The most popular current theory for the Moon’s formation involves a substantial part of the mantle being blasted away from Earth by a giant impact, but some argue that…

Sean Carroll QUANTUM MECHANICS 101 With a new book recently hitting shelves, Sean Carroll speaks to All About Space about the world of super strange physics and why there needs to be more attention on the subject Interviewed by Lee Cavendish Richard Feynman said about 50 years ago: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Is that still the case? I think that is the case as long as we interpret what he says in a certain way. What is absolutely the case is that physicists don't agree about quantum mechanics. Even if one physicist does understand it, nobody else thinks that they understand it. As a field I would say it's safe to say that physicists don't claim to understand quantum mechanics. Did you write…

Martian meteorites found around the world 1. ALH84001 Allan Hills, Antarctica 27 December 1984 1.9 kilograms (4.3 pounds) 2. Nakhla Abu Hummus, Beheira Governorate, Egypt 28 June 1911 Ten kilograms (22 pounds) 3. Yamato 00593 Yamato Glacier, Antarctica December 2000 13.7 kilograms (30.2 pounds) 4. ALH77005 Allan Hills, Antarctica 29 December 1977 0.5 kilograms (1.1 pounds) 5. Los Angeles Mojave Desert, California, 30 October 1999 0.7 kilograms (1.5 pounds) 6. Jiddat al-Harasis 479 Jiddat al-Harasis desert, Oman 2008 0.5 kilograms (1.1 pounds) 7. Chassigny Chassigny, Haute-Marne, France 3 October 1815 Four kilograms (8.8 pounds) 8. Zagami Zagami, Nigeria 3 October 1962 18 kilograms (40 pounds) © NASA…

Hottest astronomy products 2020’S HOTTEST ASTRONOMY PRODUCTS All About Space’s round-up of the telescopes, books and accessories guaranteed to enhance your views of the night sky throughout the new year FirstScope Signature Series Moon by Robert Reeves Cost: £59.00 (~€68.85/$76.30) From: Celestron 1 Celestron has joined forces with master lunar imager Robert Reeves on this new addition to the beloved FirstScope family. This quality Dobsonian features a spherical glass mirror with a generous 76mm of aperture. The FirstScope’s wide field of view provides bright, sharp views of the Moon’s mountains and craters in crisp detail. You’ll also enjoy using the FirstScope to pan the Milky Way, explore open star clusters, marvel at Saturn’s rings or view favourite deep-sky objects like the Orion Nebula. This compact, lightweight telescope is an ideal…

The present and future landing sites on Mars © NASA/JPL-Caltech Phoenix lander InSight’s predecessor, Phoenix, landed in the northern-latitude region of Vastitas Borealis on 25 May 2008 in order to examine local habitability and the area’s history of water. Mars 2020 rover NASA’s next Mars mission is the highly anticipated Mars 2020 rover, launching from Earth in July or August 2020 and landing in the Jezero Crater. InSight lander Landed on 26 November 2018 in the Elysium Planitia, the team needed this lander to be located close to the equator in order to gain maximum possible solar power. ExoMars lander and rover Europe and Russia will launch their own special Mars mission in July 2020, placing the Roscosmos-built Kazachok lander in the Oxia Planum region before releasing the European Space…

Celebrating a year in space © NASA NASA’s latest exoplanet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), recently marked off its first anniversary of operations in space, which was celebrated by producing a mosaic image of the southern sky from TESS data. 18 July 2019 was the official anniversary of its first year of science operations, but it has taken a while to put together 208 TESS images to create this view of the southern night sky, divided into 13 sectors, showing the arc of our Milky Way.…

Cubesat shopping © ESA On display at a recent European Space Agency Antenna workshop was a replica of the agency’s Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer, or M-Argo. This nanosatellite isn’t big enough to warrant its own space launch, so it will have to hitchhike a lift with a larger space mission going beyond the orbit of Earth. Once the suitcase-sized satellite is launched it will eventually rendezvous with asteroids and map their natural resources, such as hydrated minerals, which could potentially be harnessed for exploration missions in the future.…

India has a new planetary target in mind: Venus © ESA India is already eyeing a new destination. Scientists and engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have sent plans for a Venus orbiter to the Indian national government and are hoping they'll get approval to go ahead with the mission. The spacecraft could launch in just a few years and would carry more than a dozen instruments. "The major objective is to map the Venusian surface and subsurface," Nigar Shaji, an ISRO scientist, told a group of Venus experts during a meeting held this week in Colorado. According to Shaji, the Venus orbiter that ISRO is designing would be able to create such a dataset for Venus in about a year. In addition to mapping the surface itself,…

Sun as lens could check for alien life Words by Meghan Bartels © NASA Our Sun may be able to shed light on whether life is hiding on a distant planet, assuming humans can execute a delicate manoeuvre in space. Astrobiologists searching for signs of life beyond Earth target biosignatures, characteristics most likely caused by life. But scientists are excellent at hypothesising alternative, nonlife processes for creating biosignatures, which means identifying these characteristics on distant worlds isn't a guarantee you've found life. "We want to find a way to get closer," Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said. "We want to get another look. We don't really have any ways to do that now." Seager referenced one possible solution to that quandary: designing tiny satellites that…

What happens in other universes? Physicists have contemplated different levels of multiverse created by different physics processes © Tobias Roetsch Level I Even if there is only one universe, there could still be exact copies of this planet knocking around. As there are only a finite number of ways of arranging things, in an infinitely big universe repeats are guaranteed to occur. What happens inside this universe? Everything that happens in the observable universe is repeated an infinite number of times. Also, every possible combination of events can unfold an infinite number of times. There are planets where you don't exist, but also those where you do and you're the ruling monarch of the universe or a sentient slug – or even both. Level II The process of eternal inflation…

MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE DOES COMET BORISOV HAVE ALIEN ORIGINS? A second interstellar interloper has been discovered within the Solar System, but it won’t be hanging around Reported by David Crookes © Tobias Roetsch Some mysteries have been perplexing astronomers for some time, while others have arrived on the scene only recently. In the case of the Solar System's newest guest, the latter is most certainly true. It was 30 August 2019 when amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov pointed his telescope skywards in Crimea, and what he saw that night not only amazed him, but sent fellow scientists scurrying for a look. Borisov's observation was extraordinary. “It was the most exciting discovery of 2019,” exclaims Paul Kalas, adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. What he discovered that…

Spot the comet Peer skywards at the right time with the right equipment and you may be able to observe Borisov from Earth Reaching its perihelion On 8 December, 2I/Borisov will reach its perihelion, making its closest approach to the Sun. At this stage it will be 300,000,000 kilometres (186,411,358 miles) from both the Sun and Earth. How visible it will be depends to a great extent on the coma's degree of condensation. Closest to Earth The comet will be closest to Earth on 28 December, when it will be about 1.9 AU away. This will be the best day to observe the comet, although it is likely to be at its brightest in the southern sky and peak at a magnitude of 15 – which makes it as faint…

Inside planet Earth Our world’s internal structure seems to be more complex than previously thought © Getty Asthenosphere In the upper part of Earth’s mantle, temperature and pressure weaken the strength of rock – it can be stretched more easily. Inner core Earth’s inner core is a mix of solid iron and nickel with some lighter and heavier elements. It is able to ‘superrotate’ at a rate slightly faster than Earth’s surface. Core-Mantle boundary The boundary between the core and the mantle is marked by a region of the lower mantle where rocks become molten. Mantle Earth’s mantle is dominated by silicate minerals that change their form at a transition zone around 500 kilometres (311 miles) down. Crust Earth’s outer crust is broken into tectonic plates that move slowly but…

Martian meteorite THE CURIOUS CASE OF ALH84001 35 years ago, a meteorite was discovered in Antarctica that changed the course of Martian exploration and investigation Reported by Lee Cavendish © Getty; Adrian Mann On 27 December 1984, a piece of rock was found in the Allan Hills region of Antarctica by the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) programme. What they originally identified as a mediocre meteorite turned out to be arguably the greatest catalyst in the field of astrobiology, and in particular the search for life on another planet. The rock, designated ALH84001 – ALH referring to Allan Hills – was left in the archives for about a decade after it was found, as the ANSMET team labelled it as a piece of leftover space rock from the formation of…

Martian meteorite Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) NASA’s only operating Martian rover is still returning eye-opening information about Mars’ hospitable past © NASA Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) This instrument analyses the organic materials and gases that are in both solid samples and the Martian atmosphere. Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) This spectrometer identifies and quantifies mineral abundances using X-ray diffraction. Confirming meteorite origins Measurements of atmospheric argon made by SAM confirmed the Martian origin of some Earth-bound meteorites. Methane detection SAM detected methane in the Red Planet's alien atmosphere, raising more questions about life on Mars since methane is a known biosignature.…

InSight NASA’s latest Martian lander has been busy learning about the secrets that are buried beneath the Red Planet Mission type Lander Operator NASA Launch date 5 May 2018 Target Mars Arrival at target 26 November 2018 Primary objective Study Mars’ interior to understand its formation Status Active © NASA/JPL-Caltech Dr William “Bruce” Banerdt Principal investigator for the InSight mission Bruce Banerdt is the head of scientific operations for the InSight lander and is situated at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. His previous work includes other Mars missions such as the Mars Exploration Rover project, the Mars Global Surveyor and the Magellan mission. NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight for short, was one of the major launches of 2018, signifying the 12th…

Shifting the problematic mole HP3 deployment 12 February 2019 HP3 was deployed roughly one metre (three feet) from the SEIS instrument ahead of measuring Mars’ temperature with the self-hammering 40-centimetre (16-inch) long ‘mole’. x7 images © NASA/JPL-Caltech Hitting the wall 28 February 2019 Under the HP3 support stand, the mole struggled to fully evacuate the support instrument before hitting a tough patch. This began the problem of shifting it through alien terrain. Hammering the mole 11 April 2019 With help from the SEIS instrument, the team began hammering the mole while listening to the seismic activity to help define the object that is blocking the heat probe’s path. Developing a new tactic 5 June 2019 Earth-based tests were of top priority as the InSight team replicated the conditions on Mars…

What is a quark? They make up all matter Quarks are elementary particles that form the components of the atomic nucleus’ protons and neutrons. They are therefore building blocks of all ordinary matter in the universe. They are ruled by gluons Quarks are governed by quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a theory that describes the ‘strong interaction’ between individual quarks through a force-carrier particle called the gluon. They come in different flavours We know quarks come in six different types, or flavours: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. They behave like a quantum spinning top Quarks have another property called spin that gives them a form of angular momentum, like a quantum spinning top. They don’t like their own company While combinations of three quarks form hadrons, and pairs form mesons,…

STARGAZER Planet of the month This month’s planets Venus, Jupiter and Saturn will form a bright planetary chain across the twilight sky this month Our ‘Planet of the Month’ this issue really deserves its title because it will look like a lantern blazing in the western sky over the festive period. Venus will be a gorgeous ‘evening star’, outshining everything else in the sky apart from the Moon and the Sun. Even after we move into 2020 it will continue to dominate the sky after sunset, appearing the most impressive it has for a long time. Being closer to the Sun than Earth, Venus is hotter than our world, but its thick, curdled atmosphere of carbon dioxide has inflicted brutal global warming on Venus for many millions of years, so its…

Deep sky challenge Tour beyond the Orion Nebula Track down some of winter’s lesser-known wonders on the next clear and frosty night ©NASA © ESO Just as it’s easy for them to return to the same ‘celestial celebrities’ night after night in the summer – the Ring Nebula, M13 and M51 all repeatedly draw the eye away from other things – the deep-sky observer’s winter comforts are the bright, swirling clouds of the stunning Orion Nebula and the glittering spectacle of the Pleiades. But there are many other objects in the winter sky just as – if not more – deserving of attention. And given that December nights are often beautifully clear and brutally cold, this is a good time to wrap up warm, head out and track down some…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE Concentrating on the past © ESA/Hubble/NASA NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope is back at it again, this time capturing the curvature of a galaxy present during the universe’s Epoch of Reionisation. Four major arcs of light are present in this image, nicknamed the ‘Sunburst Arc’, because of a cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This phenomenon takes the light of distant background galaxies and focuses it towards Earth due to the intense gravity of the foreground galaxy, curving it like a glass lens. An image such as this allows astronomers to probe the earliest years of the universe, roughly 150 million years after the Big Bang.…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE An eye over the Atacama Desert © ESO The La Silla Observatory is one of the busiest observatories in the world, known for unveiling stunning sights from the depths of the cosmos. However, when photographers take a step back, the site itself can create some equally stunning pictures. In this instance, looking down on one of La Silla’s telescopes is the Moon with a 22-degree halo surrounding it. This occurs when light reflected by the Moon hits cirrus clouds high up in the atmosphere and the tiny ice crystals present within the clouds refract the light.…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE Mercury transit © NASA 11 November 2019 brought a rare celestial event that won’t be seen again until 2032: Mercury’s transit across the Sun. A large majority of the globe – unfortunate for central and eastern Asia, Japan, Indonesia and Australia – had roughly six hours to catch the innermost planet’s path across the Sun’s surface. This rare sight put into context the journey ahead for the European and Japanese space agencies' highly anticipated Mercury mission, BepiColombo. This mission will be put into orbit around that miniscule silhouette in six years' time.…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE The universe might be a giant loop Everything we think we know about the shape of the universe could be wrong. Instead of being flat like a bedsheet, our universe may be curved like a massive, inflated balloon. That's the upshot of a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy which looks at data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the faint echo of the Big Bang. But not everyone is convinced; the new findings, based on data released in 2018, contradict both years of conventional wisdom and another recent study based on that same CMB dataset. © ESA “Gravity seems to be bending the microwaves of the CMB more than existing physics can explain” If the universe is curved, according…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE ‘Improbable planet’ somehow survives being swallowed by red giant star Words by Chelsea Gohd © NASA Using astroseismology data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, a team of researchers studying the red giant stars HD 212771 and HD 203949 detected oscillations. This is the first time that oscillations have been found by TESS in stars that host exoplanets. Because these stars have orbiting exoplanets, the investigation was able to go even deeper. "TESS observations are precise enough to allow measuring the gentle pulsations at the surfaces of stars. These two fairly evolved stars also host planets, providing the ideal testbed for studies of the evolution of planetary systems," Tiago Campante of the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço and…

Multiverse HUNT FOR THE MULTIVERSE Could there be another you reading this article somewhere out there in space? Reported by Colin Stuart © Tobias Roetsch Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov descends to the foot of the ladder before placing his boots into the grey dust. His words are beamed back to Earth and ring out of television and radio sets across the planet. “For my country, my people and the Marxist-Leninist way of life,” he says, as the hammer-and-sickle flag stands proudly behind him. For the first time in history human beings have finally set foot on the Moon. If you're scratching your head knowing full well that the Soviets didn't land people on the lunar surface, this is the historical twist on which the new Apple TV drama For All…

Charting the comet’s path How is 2I/Borisov making its way through the Solar System? Crossing the plane It crosses the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun at a 40-degree angle. Its hyperbolic trajectory has an orbital eccentricity of between 3.3 and 3.4 and it is not bound to the Sun. Closest approach to the Earth Having made its closest approach to the Sun, it passes closest to Earth and goes through the constellations Crater, Hydra and Centaurus at a 44-degree orbital inclination, which steers it away from any planets. Entering from the north The comet came to our Solar System from the north and the direction of Cassiopeia, near the border with Perseus. It possibly came from the binary star system Kruger 60, which is 13 light years…

Future tech The next-generation spacesuit INTRODUCING THE NEXT-GENERATION SPACESUIT Under NASA’s Artemis program, the agency has revealed its new attire for future exploration missions © Adrian Mann NASA’s custom fit NASA’s Anthropometry and Biomechanics Facility will complete a preliminary 3D full-body scan in order to match the astronaut with the best components, ensuring comfort and the broadest range of motion. The lifeblood of the xEMU The improved Portable Life Support System (PLSS) will continue to regulate the air and temperature with improved electronics and plumbing systems to counter against any potential system failures. Astronauts need their layers Spacesuits can have up to 16 different layers. This is because astronauts need the protection of a space station all confined into a single suit. Goodbye ‘Snoopy cap’ The old, uncomfortable communications cap,…

By the numbers Earth’s core c.1.88 gigacandela per square metre c.8 million-times brighter than a laptop screen 5,800 °C Surface temperature As hot as the surface of the Sun 6,800km Twice the size of the Moon 0.07° a year Inner core rotation rate At the equator, a spot on Earth’s solid inner core directly beneath your feet creeps 20 metres ‘ahead’ of you each day. 2,440km Diameter of solid inner core Distance from London to Greece © Getty 8g/cm3 Average density About as dense as bronze 1% The proportion of gold in Earth’s core Enough to cover Earth’s surface to a depth of 30 centimetres (12 inches)…

Mars 2020 The space agency’s next ambitious mission has some exciting plans to study the planet’s past biology © NASA Sample-return mission Mars 2020 will collect and store samples of the Martian surface ahead of a future sample-return mission. Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) With the help of an ultraviolet laser, this instrument will detect organics using fine-scale imaging. SuperCam Not only will it image the surface, SuperCam will provide chemical composition and mineralogy analysis. Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) Using an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, this instrument will reveal the elemental composition of the tiniest surface materials.…

STARGAZER Moon tour Mairan crater Overshadowed by its more famous neighbour Plato, Mairan is well worth a look on a clear night © NASA There are a lot of craters on the Moon that would be more famous and better appreciated if they weren’t so close to other features that were bigger, more prominent or just better looking. If you scan the lunar landscape around ‘celebrity’ craters like Copernicus and Ptolmaeus you’ll find lots of smaller craters that would be very popular targets for lunar observers if only they weren’t so close to those beasts. Likewise, in the low-lying areas on either side of the curved dinosaur spine of the jagged Appennine Mountains, you’ll find lots of smaller craters, hills and rilles worth looking at, but with the Appenines jutting…

STARGAZER Celestron NexStar Evolution 6 This catadioptric GoTo promises accessibility for astronomers of all abilities, but does it live up to this statement for the price? Ever since Celestron introduced the NexStar Evolution, we couldn’t wait for its arrival at the All About Space office. According to Adam Hinds of David Hinds Ltd, this catadioptric instrument brings the latest technology to the already comprehensive GoTo and promises to make finding your way around the night sky simple, even if you have very limited knowledge. Not only that, but this telescope is a great way to get into astrophotography. The assembly was a breeze, something we saw as a big plus, and certainly making this telescope a winner for beginners with quite a large budget – though we wouldn’t recommend paying…

WORTH £149! WIN OREGON OBSERVATION 20X80 Courtesy of Opticron, these binoculars provide clear and crisp views of a selection of terrestrial and astronomical targets The Oregon Observation 20x80 binoculars are the perfect companion – not just for viewing landscapes and wildlife on Earth – but also getting closer to a variety of planets, galaxies and star clusters that populate our night skies, as well as our own satellite, the Moon. Fitted with a BAK4 Porro-prism multi-coated optical system, these exquisite binoculars provide an excellent object magnification while maintaining crisp and contrasted colours. These elegant binoculars also feature fold-down rubber eyecups, a soft carry case with rainguard and a wide nylon strap. Along with its integral tripod adapter socket and comfortable, long eye-relief eyepieces, a long night of observing can be…