Advice

best tabletop telescopes

Best tabletop telescopes, 2023

A family with young children observing the night sky through a telescope

Top tips for helping your family and kids use a telescope

Credit: abriendomundo / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Buyer's guide Best telescopes for astrophotography

Display and share your telescope view on a laptop for everyone to enjoy

How to get your telescope view on a laptop or computer screen

The final, corrected image of the Monkey Head and Jellyfish Nebulae. ‘Background Gradient’ and ‘Rounds Stars’ from Georg Hennig’s suite of astronomy plug-ins removed vignetting, flattened the background and refined the stars.

Astrophotography guides

Fix uneven backgrounds and bloated stars in astrophotos

A good telescope combined with excellent viewing conditions away from light pollution will give you incredible views of the night sky. Credit: iStock

Amateur astronomy societies in the UK and Ireland: a guide

lunar occultation of mars

How to calculate and observe lunar occultations

Illustration of the constellation Gemini

A guide to star Alhena (Gamma Geminorum)

A view of Venus through a Canon SX610HS hand-held camera and (inset) through an 80mm refractor telescope captured by Roger Samworth from his upstairs window in Warwickshire, UK, 12 November 2018.

See Venus return to the evening sky this month

How to calculate the length of time it takes Earth to rotate. Credit: Pawel Wewiorski / Getty

Calculate the speed of Earth’s rotation by observing the night sky

Image of a girl observing the Moon through her telescope.

2023 is set to be a spectacular year for observing the Moon

Meade Series 6000 115mm apo refractor

11 of the best telescopes to see the planets with 2023

The best night-sky shape to use as a guide is the Plough: it’s large, bright and visible year-round in the northern hemisphere. It has two stars called the 'pointers' that point to Polaris, the North Star. Polaris is almost exactly above Earth’s axis at the North Pole, so doesn’t move and shows which way is north.

How to star-hop the night sky

The Plough / Ursa Major. Credit: Christophe Lehenaff / Getty Images

A complete guide to observing the Plough in the night sky

The famous Pillars of Creation, M16, photographed using the StarGate 500 motorised Dobsonian paired with Altair GPCAM 290c, 158x 5”. Credit: Paul Money

Astrophotography guides

How to stack and derotate images with Astro Pixel Processor