Lewis Dartnell

1 week ago | skyatnightmagazine.com | Lewis Dartnell

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is interested in finding alien civilisations by detecting signs of their activity. The use of radio telescopes to listen out for alien broadcasts dates back to the 1960s, but SETI researchers also look for evidence of enormous engineering projects. For example, an alien civilisation might construct a thin shell around its host star to harvest energy.

3 weeks ago | skyatnightmagazine.com | Lewis Dartnell

Earth is often considered to be a water world: over 70% of our planet’s surface is covered in oceans. Since our planet orbits within what’s known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’ around the Sun, the warmth it receives is just right for keeping water in its liquid state. But there are several moons in the outer Solar System that are also known to hold significant bodies of liquid water. Could these ocean worlds in our Solar System be habitable worlds, where life might take hold?

3 weeks ago | skyatnightmagazine.com | Lewis Dartnell

Over 5,500 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting other stars in the Galaxy. This tells us that planet formation is a universal process across the Milky Way and the majority of stars probably have at least one planet. But before you plan an extraterrestrial trip, you’ll want to pin down the best Galactic neighbourhood to visit. Not every planetary system looks the same: there are differences between the number of gas giant planets and lower-mass, mostly rocky worlds.

1 month ago | skyatnightmagazine.com | Lewis Dartnell

While Saturn is the uncontested Lord of the Rings, it is by no means the only body in the Solar System to host a ring system. The flickering effect of stellar occultation – when a planet passes in front of a background star, briefly blocking it – revealed the presence of rings around Uranus in 1977 and Neptune in 1984. A set of tenuous rings were discovered around Jupiter too, during the Voyager 1 fly-by in 1979.

Jan 26, 2025 | skyatnightmagazine.com | Lewis Dartnell

Cosmic rays are high-energy subatomic particles that zip around in outer space. They’re accelerated to enormous speeds by astrophysical events like coronal mass ejections on the Sun or supernovae exploding across the Galaxy. When a cosmic ray encounters planet Earth, it soon hits a gas atom high in the atmosphere, creating a burst of other particles which themselves fly forwards to trigger further interactions, until a huge cone-shaped cascade of different particles develops.