July 2009

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The world's best-selling astronomy magazine offers you the most exciting, visually stunning, and timely coverage of the heavens above. Each monthly issue includes expert science reporting, vivid color photography, complete sky coverage, spot-on observing tips, informative telescope reviews, and much more! All this in an easy-to-understand, user-friendly style that's perfect for astronomers at any level.

Features

How dying stars bring new planets to life

By Ray Villard

A doomed star can awaken frozen worlds and even forge new planets out of death's debris.

pg. 22

Web extra: A dying star gives birth to new planets

By Richard Talcott

Astronomers have long known that planets form in dusty disks around newborn stars. Now, researchers suspect that planets also can develop in debris disks surrounding exploded stars.

Invasion of the robotic telescopes

By Daniel Pendick

Step aside, puny humans! Faster and smarter telescopes are tkaing over much of the nightly drudgery of astronomical research. Soon they may make their own discoveries.

pg. 28

Web extra: How robots are looking for planets

By Daniel Pendick

A new generation of intelligent robotic telescopes search for planets in other solar systems.

Illustrated: Light's dual personality

By Liz Kruesi, Roen Kelly

Is light a wave or a particle? Science says both.

pg. 34

Go deep for faint nebulae with astroimager Dean Salman

By Dean Salman

A dark sky, wide-field scope, and filtered CCD camera enable this Arizona skyshooter to capture distant HII regions in the Milky Way.

pg. 46