Spot spring’s deep-sky objects from the town or country
When friends and family hear about your stargazing adventures, the chances are they will assume you’re observing from a dark sky site, far from city lights. Yet few of us have pristine dark skies at home, in cities or suburbs where the sky is bright. But in his feature this month, author and veteran amateur astronomer Rod Mollise shows that you can view deep-sky objects in light-polluted skies, and in our feature entitled ‘From city lights to deep space‘ he provides a tour of more than two dozen such targets within reach of telescope observers in urban and suburban back gardens.
Nevertheless, there are times when we all want to get away to somewhere that we can experience truly dark skies, and Jamie Carter did just that for his feature. He headed to the Cambrian Mountains in the heart of Wales and discovered some of the darkest of night skies, beneath which lies the Astro Trail, a new 80km-route linking accessible Dark Sky Discovery Sites and areas recognised by the International Dark-Sky Association. Dotted with stargazing focused accommodation, it’s a stellar location for an astro getaway.
One location with dark skies like nowhere here on Earth – literally – is the Moon, and this month we take a look at the missions gearing up to visit it. In her feature science communicator Niamh Shaw covers perhaps the biggest upcoming lunar launch, that of NASA’s Artemis I mission, now set to depart this summer. And there are a host of other, smaller landers and orbiters destined for the Moon too, which our news editor Ezzy Pearson writes about in her article about Apollo 16.
Enjoy the issue!
PS Our next issue goes on sale on Thursday 21 April 2022.