April 2011

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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

Hunting for earthlike planets

By Ray Villard

First astronomers have to find a nearby planet in its star's habitable zone, and then they’ll need to characterize its atmosphere to determine if life might exist there.

pg. 28

Web Extra: Extrasolar atmospheres

By Liz Kruesi

Studying the atmospheres of earthlike planets may be a few years in the future, but astronomers are analyzing weather on the largest worlds now.

Messages from Mercury

By Richard Talcott

The MESSENGER spacecraft enters orbit around the innermost planet in March to explore its geological history, thin atmosphere, dense core, and the strange stuff at its poles.

pg. 34

Web Extra: Mercury in the cross hairs

By Richard Talcott

NASA’s ambitious MESSENGER spacecraft will have company by the end of this decade, when the BepiColombo mission reaches the innermost planet.

Star-struck in Iceland

By Stephen James O'Meara

The tiny North Atlantic island nation boasts a large amateur astronomical society, inspires the world’s space artists, and features some of the most dazzling auroral displays anywhere.

pg. 48

Web Extra: Appreciating a celestial light show

By Bill Andrews

Iceland isn’t alone in offering dramatic views of the northern lights.

Explore the Centaurus A galaxy cluster

By Richard Jakiel

Point your telescope toward the south this spring, and target this group of little-observed objects.

pg. 54

Target galaxies with a big gun

By David J. Eicher

These eight spring showpieces reveal exquisite detail through large scopes.

pg. 58