Found all the Easter eggs? Go on a spring galaxy hunt
Spring skies mean one thing for stargazers, it’s galaxy time. This is the season when the constellations that have the Milky Way running through them are conveniently out of the way when darkness falls; and when we’re presented with a view out of our own Galaxy, many more are there waiting to be discovered. So join the hunt in our article ‘Welcome to galaxy season‘, where author and amateur astronomer Stuart Atkinson reveals 19 deep-sky highlights to track down with telescopes, including the wonderful Sombrero Galaxy featured on the cover this month.
We stay on those vast intergalactic scales thanks to science writer Govert Schilling, who looks at seven famous cosmologists who have pioneered the concept of dark matter –a term that was first used 100 years ago this month. Turn to our feature to discover what these seven scientists have added to our understanding of this mysterious form of matter, which best explains the view we see of the far-off Universe, but which has so far eluded all observation itself.
Yet, as well as concerning itself with the very largest scales, physics is also intent on investigating the very smallest. Philosopher Toby Friend investigates the reasons behind this seeming conundrum in our ‘From particles to parsecs‘ feature, and finds that advances in cosmology and particle physics have often been intertwined. Indeed, some of the biggest developments in our understanding of the Universe over the past century, from the make-up of stars to the observation of black holes, began with theories looking inside the atom.
Enjoy the issue!
PS Our next issue goes on sale on Thursday 19 May.