March 2012

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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

Probing Einstein's relativity

By Liz Kruesi

Through the Gravity Probe B experiment, scientists developed cutting-edge technologies on the journey to test gravity.

pg. 24

Web extra: The first test of Einstein's gravity

By Liz Kruesi

Scientists first found evidence that general relativity was correct about four years after Einstein published his theory.

Dead stars and doomed planets

By John H. Debes, Marc J. Kuchner

When the Sun dies, it will become a white dwarf surrounded by the decaying remnants of planets, asteroids, and comets. Astronomers are watching similar fates befall dozens of other systems in our galaxy.

pg. 30

Flying in Pluto's shadow

By Richard Tresch Fienberg

NASA’s new airborne observatory can travel nearly anywhere, including to the elusive center of a distant planet's shadow on Earth.

pg. 44

Web extra: See more SOFIA

By Bill Andrews, Richard Tresch Fienberg

Whether on the ground or in the air, NASA’s flying observatory is a wonder to behold.

2012 — a historic year for solar eclipses

By Richard Talcott

Two solar eclipses — one total and one annular — and the last transit of Venus until 2117 make this a stellar year for observers.

pg. 52